League Prize winner
Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison of Could Be Design
Could Be Design with Andrea Jablonski, Efrain Araujo, Evan Stolatis | Gary-goyles, Gary, IN, 2022. Image credit: Brian Griffin
Established in 1981, the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers is a juried portfolio competition for early-career practitioners in North America, organized around a yearly theme.
Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison of Could Be Design won a 2023 award.
Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison founded Could Be Design in 2015. The Chicago- and Urbana, Illinois-based design practice imagines the built environment as an animate being with agency of its own. Using vibrant colors and whimsical shapes, Could Be Design’s projects celebrate this animacy, inviting users “to find comfort (and even delight) in the discomfort and humility integral to a world in which humans do not claim a privileged dominance,” in the studio’s words. From exuberant commercial interiors to interactive public art, the practice embraces the joy of creative placemaking.
Recent projects include:
- Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, an annual program that pairs designers with community organizations to design and build small outdoor pavilions in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood
- Animate Arcade, a series of architectural “creatures” that activate the public spaces of Siebel Center for Design at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- McCormick AfterParti, an interactive installation in Elmhurst’s McCormick House that playfully recreates Mies van der Rohe’s original 1952 floor plan for the space.
Joseph Altshuler holds an MArch from Rice University and a bachelor’s in architectural studies from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he now teaches.
Zack Morrison also holds an MArch from Rice University and a bachelor’s in architectural studies from University of Illinois Chicago.
Altshuler and Morrison are 2022–23 Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellows.
Could Be Design has exhibited its work at Siebel Center for Design, Elmhurst Art Museum, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The practice received an honorable mention for the 2021 AIA Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Award.
Learn more about Could be Design
- Could Be Architecture Says Friendly Design Makes Us Kinder Humans, Metropolis
- Next Progressives: Could Be Architecture, Architect
- Chicago’s first-ever sukkah design festival seeks to do social good in an under-resourced neighborhood, The Architect’s Newspaper
