David Geffen Hall receives 2026 AIANY Design Award
For more information, please contact:
Andrea Chin, Communications Director
Email: [email protected]
Gary McCluskie, Principal
Email: [email protected]
David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, home of the New York Philharmonic, has received a 2026 AIANY Design Award – Honor Award in the Interiors category!
The re-imagined hall – designed by Diamond Schmitt (Masterplan and Theatre) and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects + Partners (Public Spaces) – replaces the former rectilinear shoebox with a unified, curvilinear room, improves sightlines and intimacy by moving the stage forward and eliminating the proscenium, and introduces flexible, acoustically tuned and technologically equipped spaces to accommodate various types of performance. Warm, expressive materials and expanded public areas bring new energy to Lincoln Center’s campus and the concert-going experience.
The jury praised the project’s ability to transform the concert hall to enhance acoustics and the overall concert-going experience, and opening the institution to the city as a more accessible, civic-oriented space:
“They were tasked with two separate sort of scopes, where one was an upgrade to the theater, they used formative space, and they had some very clever moves all based on making this space really perform at the highest level, but also integrating a lot of these moves into the second part of the scope, which was about really reintroducing this institution to the city and opening it up to the public. We really thought that the project successfully accomplished both of those scopes in a beautiful way,” says the Jury.
“It had a beautiful, refined material and sort of texture to it. And ultimately, I think the project really elevates the hall as a democratic public space, open and welcoming, and orients it towards this idea of collective civic life as the real performance of the space itself. So, it's an impressive piece of work. It is kind of graceful in the line of architecture,” adds the Jury.
AIA New York’s annual Design Awards program recognizes outstanding architectural design by AIA New York members, New York City-based architects in any location, and work in New York City by architects around the globe. The purpose of the awards program is to honor the architects, clients, and consultants who work together to achieve design excellence. This year, they received 208 submissions and there are 24 winners, 3 in interiors.
View the winners here.