B L D U S
Cover: B L D U S | Adelaide Alley, Washington DC, 2021. Image credit: Ty Cole. Video Editor: Darlena Chiem
The Architectural League’s biennial Emerging Voices program spotlights North American architects, landscape architects, and urban designers who have significant bodies of realized work and the potential to influence their field.
Jack Becker and Andrew Linn of B L D U S are 2026 Emerging Voices winners.
Jack Becker and Andrew Linn founded B L D U S in Washington, DC, in 2013. The firm’s housing-focused portfolio includes renovating historic structures in southeast Washington, DC, and building infill housing in historically neglected areas of the federal district. Across projects, B L D U S prioritizes the use of natural materials both local, like oak and black locust, and renewable, such as cork and bamboo, to create “healthy domestic architecture fit for the Mid-Atlantic climate,” in their own words. This focus on unconventional building materials draws on the firm’s expertise across fields and trades, including architecture, development, and carpentry.
Projects include:
Grass House, a LEED Platinum–certified accessory structure built with BamCore, a material primarily comprising bamboo, sited behind a recently renovated Victorian house in the Historic Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, DC
Adelaide Alley, an alley dwelling constructed in response to Washington, DC’s updated zoning code and building regulations, which occupies a formerly unnamed lot and incorporates natural building materials, including tulip poplar bark covering the exterior wall and black locust eaves
Overbeck Alley, a single-family house that combines healthy construction materials, including a cork-clad facade reinforced by black locust wood slats and bamboo structural walls with cellulose and hemp insulation, with elements like a fenced-in terrace and a rooftop garden that balances privacy and light
B L D U S was named one of AN Interior’s Top 50 Architects and Designers in 2025 and 2020, and received Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard Award in 2023, among other recognitions.
Jack Becker holds a master’s of architecture in urban design from Harvard University and a bachelor’s of architecture from Cornell University.
Andrew Linn is currently a visiting professor of practice at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture. He holds a master’s of arts in history of science & medicine from Yale University and a bachelor’s of architecture from Cornell University.
