Learning+:
Reimagining the School as Civic Infrastructure
Education today is being asked to do more than ever—with fewer spaces designed to support its evolving role. Schools remain vital, yet too often they function as closed institutions, disconnected from the civic life unfolding around them. In dense cities like São Paulo, where land is scarce and inequality is visible, this separation limits the full potential of learning environments. The reality is that education does not happen in classrooms alone—it is shaped by community, culture, and access to shared resources.
About the Competition
We believe in the power of great design. In its extraordinary ability to enhance lives. In its unique potential to solve some of society’s greatest challenges. As designers, we have an awesome responsibility to use that power wisely—to make the world a better, more beautiful place.
That’s why, every year, we ask our staff to participate a time-honored Perkins&Will tradition. Our annual internal design competition, now in its 22nd year, provides the chance to collaborate with colleagues near and far in pursuit of design excellence. United toward a common purpose, multidisciplinary teams from around the firm innovate design solutions to some of society’s most pressing problems. The process stretches our creative and design thinking skills to their limits, and gives all of us the invaluable opportunity to learn from each other. And time after time, the results are contagiously inspirational.
The competition is named in honor or our late friend and colleague Phil Freelon. Phil was a lifelong champion of beautiful, democratic design—of architecture that honors humanity. He was one of the most influential architects in recent history, and one of North America’s most beloved. He passed away in July 2019.
Over his 42-year-long career, Phil broke down socioeconomic and cultural barriers by designing places that express the spirit of community, promote cultural equity, and spur positive social change. He stood for everything our annual design competition stands for. And every year, he was an active and enthusiastic reviewer of the competition’s entries. Phil’s contributions helped make our annual tradition even stronger, our firmwide design culture even more robust.
Today, the Phil Freelon Design Competition reminds us of our shared values, and ensures that Phil’s influence on our firm, our culture, and our work will live on. We encourage you to take advantage of this unique opportunity, and look forward to seeing what you design.
Michael Peter Edson is a director, strategist, and thought leader at the forefront of transformation in the cultural sector. Michael was recently appointed as the Chief Museum Officer /Director of the Museum of Solutions (MuSo) in Mumbai, a new, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to inspiring and empowering young people to solve the world’s most pressing problems. Previously, Michael was the co-founder of the Museum of the United Nations – UN Live, and the Director of Web and New Media Strategy for the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex. Michael is Chair of the Europeana Foundation Advisory Board. He is a Salzburg Global Fellow; a Fellow at the Getty Leadership Institute; a Presidential Distinguished Fellow emeritus at the Council for Libraries and Information Resources (USA); an O’Reilly Foo Camp alumni; and he was named a “Tech Titan: person to watch” by Washingtonian magazine.
Mario Gooden is a cultural practice architect and director of Mario Gooden Studio: Architecture + Design. His practice engages the cultural landscape and the intersectionality of architecture, race, gender, sexuality, and technology. His work crosses the thresholds between the design of architecture and the built environment, writing, research, and performance.
Gooden is also a Professor of Practice at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) of Columbia University where he is the Director of the Master of Architecture program and co-director of the Global Africa Lab (GAL). He is a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a 2019 National Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture recipient. Gooden is the author of Dark Space: Architecture Representation Black Identity (Columbia University Press, 2016) as well as numerous essays and articles on architecture, art, and cultural production. Gooden is Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD) at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) and a founding board member of the Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC). In June of 2022, Gooden became the 63rd President of the Architectural League of New York.
Lisa Iwamoto received her Master of Architecture degree with Distinction from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Structural Engineering from the University of Colorado. She has previously worked as a Structural Engineer at Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco, and Architectural Designer at Schwartz Silver Architects, and Thompson and Rose in Boston, and Architectural Intern at Morphosis in Santa Monica. She became Chair of Architecture in December 2021 at the University of California Berkeley, where she has taught since 2001. Prior to this appointment she was Professor of Architecture and held the inaugural Doris and Clarence Malo Collegium Teaching Chair in Design at Berkeley, and where her design research concentrates on the perceptual performance of material and digital fabrication techniques. She has taught previously at the University of Michigan where she was a Muschenheim Fellow, Harvard University, Cornell University, Sydney University and Southern California Institute of Architecture.
Gene is the Chief Librarian of the National Library Board (NLB) and watches over the professional development of all librarians in NLB. As Chief Innovation Officer, he is spearheading the development of LAB25 (Libraries and Archives Blueprint 2025), a new transformative vision for the National Library, National Archives and the public libraries in Singapore. Previously, as the Executive Director of the Singapore Bicentennial Office at the Prime Minister’s Office, Gene helmed the Singapore Bicentennial which commemorated the 200th anniversary of Raffles’ arrival in Singapore in 1819. The commemoration included The Bicentennial Experience at Fort Canning which broke attendance records for exhibitions. He was also the Creative Director of the SG50 capstone event, The Future of Us Exhibition that captured the hopes and dreams of Singaporeans. Gene was formerly the Director of the National Library, where he developed the Singapore Memory Project, and also the former President of the Library Association of Singapore.
Dong Gong founded Vector Architects in 2008. He has elected as the Foreign Member of French Academy of Architecture in 2019. He has been successively employed as design tutor of Tsinghua University and Central Academy of Fine Arts, Distinguished Visiting Professor of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Visiting Professor of Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy. He and Vector Architects have been invited to various major exhibitions, including the first Chinese architecture exhibition at MoMA; the 2018 “FREESPACE” Venice Biennale, and have won international awards such as “The Gold award of ARCASIA Award for Architecture”(2022); “RIBA International Awards for Excellence”(2021); “100+ Best Architecture Firms” selected by Domus (2019); nominated for the Swiss Architectural Award (2018); the overall winner of the Italian “Archmarathon Awards” (2016); and the “Design Vanguard” selected by Architectural Record (2014). Dong Gong’s practice has earned international recognition by his representative works, including Seashore Library, Seashore Chapel, Yangshuo Sugarhouse, Renovation of the Captain’s House, and Changjiang Art Museum.
Rozana Montiel is director and founder of the Mexico City based firm Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura (REA) focused on architectural design, artistic re-conceptualizations of space and the public domain. The studio works on a variety of projects at different scales and layers ranging from the city to the book, the artifact, and other micro-objects. She is the first woman architect to receive the Luis Barragan, Project Prize 2023 granted by The Mexican Collegiate Society of Architecture CAMSAM, Mexico City. In November 2022 she received the International Women Architects Prize 2022 granted by ARVHA in Paris, France. That same year, her proposal –Terre Commune– was awarded 2nd place in a single-stage architecture competition for the new headquarters of the IOM (International Organization for Migration) in Geneva, Switzerland. In May 2022, she presented her installation Stand Up for the Seas! for the exhibition Terre! Land in Sight by the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine as part of the 2nd edition of the Biennale d’architecture et de paysage d’Île-de-France 2022 in Versailles.
