Design Awards Jury 2025
Roy Decker, FAIA
Roy Decker, FAIA, is a principal of Duvall Decker Architects, located in Jackson, Mississippi. He with his partner, Anne Marie Duvall Decker, FAIA, founded Duvall Decker in a place defined by both palpable need and engaging culture. The firm is a diverse and expanded practice, employing planning, development, design, and building care to promote the quality of the built environment and the health and well-being of its inhabitants. Duvall Decker delivers design excellence and promotes social, economic, and environmental quality, no matter the scope, type, budget, or scale of the project.
Roy sees architecture as didactic and as an opportunity to make critical and meaningful propositions for the health and growth of our culture. Roy is recognized as a design and critical thought leader, whether in the studio or participating in inner-city neighborhood meetings, serving on student reviews across the country, or sharing his perspective in lectures, juries, and publications. He is regarded as a multi-disciplinary contributor to advancing equity in public form. Roy Decker, FAIA received a Master of Architecture degree from Kent State University. Prior to founding Duvall Decker, he spent over a decade splitting his time between practice and teaching, and he has received recognition and honors for both endeavors. He has held architectural teaching positions at Temple University, Mississippi State University, and Jackson State University. He is a member of the American National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), the American Planning Association (APA), and the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
About Duvall Decker
Duvall Decker designs with hopeful speculation to create architecture that is durable in material and memory. We plan for diverse, healthy, and community-centered growth. We develop with civic-minded innovation, and we leverage our experience to care for buildings over time. The firm has been honored with many peer-reviewed design awards and has been selected for national design excellence projects such as the new Federal Courthouse in Greenville, Mississippi (a GSA Design Excellence project) and the new Springdale, Arkansas Municipal Complex (a Walton Family Foundation Design Excellence project). The firm’s work and approach have been highlighted in publications such as The New York Times, dwell, ARCHITECT Magazine, Journal of Architectural Education, Houses for All Regions, a book published by AIA’s Custom Residential Architects Network, the Oxford American, and in exhibits such as AIA’s Design for the Decades and “A South Forty” at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2017, the Architectural League of New York selected Duvall Decker as one of its Emerging Voices, and in 2019, the firm was highlighted as a “Game Changer”by Metropolis. In 2023, Anne Marie Duvall Decker was a recipient of Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Design Leadership Award. The Architect’s Newspaper named the firm the Best Medium Firm in the Southeast as part of its Best in Practice Awards.
Jennifer Charzewski, AIA
Jennifer Charzewski, AIA is a Principal at Liollio Architecture, an award-winning design studio celebrating nearly 70 years of practice in Charleston, SC. A graduate of Texas A&M and the University of Minnesota, Jennifer believes developing the vision and inspiration of a project through public engagement brings integrity and clarity to architecture and a building’s ability to play a key role in shaping a community’s future. Jennifer’s recent award winning projects include Charleston Fire Station #11, Ballentine and St. Andrews Libraries, James Island Town Hall, St. Helena Branch Library in Beaufort SC, the Charleston International Airport redevelopment and new SC Welcome Centers at Fort Mill and Hardeeville. Jennifer is currently working on a
GSA Design Excellence Federal Courthouse Preservation project and a new Charlotte Museum of Nature. A past president of AIA Charleston and ACE Mentor, Jennifer has served as SC Equity in Architecture Committee Chair, taught “firm studios” at Clemson’s Architecture Center in Charleston, currently teaches Clemson’s Internship/Mentorship course in Charleston, and serves as a NAAB Visiting Team Member for accreditations across the country. She has presented at the Raleigh Urban Design Conference, multiple Library Design Institutes, the South Carolina Library Association, and has served on several design awards juries throughout the country.
About Liollio Architecture
For nearly 70 years, Liollio has provided sustainable architecture, interior design, and historic preservation for public projects. Our clients have entrusted us with buildings both grand and modest, both historic and modern. We ground our practice in the particulars of place, people, and landscape, carrying a strong sense of social purpose as we serve communities through design. Every project design is a unique response to the history, climate, and culture of a place. Now in our third generation of leadership, we are a studio of 29 civic-minded design professionals who value subtle & restrained design, rooted in context, culture & collaboration.
Jane Smith, FAIA, IIDA
Jane Smith, FAIA, IIDA, is the founding partner of Spacesmith, a New York-based architecture, planning, and interior design studio. The firm’s design approach is rooted in the belief that function, and spatial experience are essential to the creation of meaningful interactions that enable physical, social, and psychological well-being.
With a diverse portfolio of mission-driven clients, Spacesmith has completed work for city, state, and federal agencies—including many US embassies—as well as schools, non-profit institutions, and private sector clients in bespoke retail, finance, and media. The firm has been honored with industry awards and has been featured in
prominent publications for its expertise in workplace design, its commitment to sustainability and well-being, and its sophisticated use of trauma-informed design principles. With its culture of inclusivity and transparency, the firm has been able to successfully adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the built environment, leading to innovative projects across all sectors.
Jane holds a BA in architecture from Arizona State University and an MBA in finance from New York University. She is currently pursuing an MLA in Creative Writing and Literature at Harvard. For thirteen years, Jane was the Chair of the Interior Design: Built Environments Department at the School of Visual Arts. In 2017, she was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects and awarded the prestigious AIA New York State President’s Award for demonstrating lasting influence within the profession. She has spent much of her career on industry boards, including six years on the AIA New York executive board and several years as co-chair of the Architecture Leadership Council for the NY Building Congress. Jane is currently a member of the Board of Trustees for the Olana Partnership; a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve the Olana State Historic Site in the Hudson Valley. Jane also current sits on the Industry Advisory Group for the US Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations.
About Spacesmith
Just as the word “smith” means “to craft, forge or design,” the name Spacesmith reflects our commitment to the tradition of great architectural craftsmanship, heightened service, and design excellence. We believe that well-designed buildings and spaces are the result of creating meaningful experiences that engage the senses and enable physical, social, and psychological well-being.
With a distinctive portfolio of mission-driven clients, we have completed work for city, state, and federal agencies, schools, non-profit institutions, and private sector clients. Our firm is made up of a tight-knit group of professionals in the disciplines of architecture, interior design, project management, programming, master planning, sustainability, and wellness. The diversity of our team and practice areas allows for knowledge sharing in a world that is constantly evolving. Sustainability is in Spacesmith’s DNA. Our firm has always been committed to seeking more sustainable methods, systems, and materials, with the belief that buildings not only need to be less harmful, but part of the environmental solution. Spacesmith is a collective of diverse professionals with experiences and sensibilities that span typologies. Informed by research, collaboration, and a proven process, we design for timelessness, not trend. Whether we are spearheading ground-up projects or specifying individual materials, our work has a positive impact at every scale.
We begin every project by developing a deep understanding of our client’s mission and analyzing how we can amplify it through design. We consider the project’s context and its potential impacts on people and planet. This foundation drives us to create emotionally and physically nurturing spaces that communities ultimately make their own, in both tangible and transcendent ways. When paired with our enduring aesthetic, this critical combination of caring about and for leads to longevity, a metric we associate with success—because we believe that timeless architecture is sustainable architecture is an architecture of understanding.