MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – April 15, 2026 – The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 SAH Publication Awards and SAH Award for Film and Video. The awards recognize distinguished publications in architectural history, urban history, landscape history, preservation, and architectural exhibition catalogues; an outstanding JSAH article written by an emerging scholar; and the most distinguished work of film or video on the history of the built environment. The Society announced the winners during a ceremony at its 79th Annual International Conference in Mexico City.
The 2026 winners are:
Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award
The Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award was established in 1949 to recognize annually the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of architecture published by a North American scholar.
2026 Winner
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi
Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement
Duke University Press, 2024
2026 Winner
Richard Wittman
Rebuilding St. Paul’s Outside the Walls
Cambridge University Press, 2024
SAH Exhibition Catalogue Award
Architectural history exhibitions address historical and critical questions in special ways, through the presentation of both documentation and artifacts to a diversified audience. Exhibition catalogues have become distinctive vehicles for the expression of scholarship in architectural history. They remain as the substantial and enduring contribution after the life of the exhibition is spent. The SAH Exhibition Catalogue Award recognizes excellence in this form of scholarship and publication.
2026 Winner
Gilles Delalex, Yves Moreau, Claudia Shmidt, Mauricio Pezo, and Sofia von Ellrichshausen; edited by Franceso Garutti and Alexandra Pereira-Edwards
AP205 Amancio Williams: Readings of the Archive by Studio Muoto, Claudia Shmidt, and Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Canadian Centre for Architecture and Spector Books, 2024
2026 Winner
Edited by Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, Jocelyn Piirainen, and Rafico Ruiz. Managing Editor: Alexandra Pereira-Edwards
Towards Home: Inuit and Sámi Placemaking
Canadian Centre for Architecture and Valiz, 2024
Spiro Kostof Book Award
This award was established in 1993 in recognition of Spiro Kostof’s extraordinarily productive and inspiring career. In the spirit of Kostof’s writings, the award recognizes interdisciplinary studies of urban history that make the greatest contribution to our understanding of the growth and development of cities.
2026 Winner
Min Kyung Lee
The Tyranny of the Straight Line: Mapping Modern Paris
Penn State University Press, 2024
2026 Winner
Farshid Emami
Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran
Yale University Press, 2024
2026 Honorable Mention
Faiza Moatasim
Master Plans and Encroachments: The Architecture of Informality in Islamabad
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023
2026 Honorable Mention
Erica Allen-Kim
Building Little Saigon: Refugee Urbanism in American Cities and Suburbs
University of Texas Press, 2024
Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award
The Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award was established in 2005 to recognize annually the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of landscape architecture or garden design. Named for SAH past president and landscape historian Elisabeth MacDougall, the award honors the late historian’s role in developing this field of study.
Amanda Shoaf Vincent
Constructing Gardens, Cultivating the City
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023
Founders’ JSAH Article Award
Established in 1970, the Founders’ Award recognizes an article published by an emerging scholar in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) that exhibits excellence of scholarship and presentation.
Yasmina El Chami
A Mutual Project: Architecture and the Imperial Foundations of American Missionaries in Nineteenth-Century Beirut
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 83 No. 4, December 2024
Historic Interiors Article Award
This award was conceived by the SAH Historic Interiors Affiliate Group in 2022 and is focused on fostering new approaches to the history of the interiors as both an independent line of scholarly inquiry and as an important aspect of the expanded study of the built environment. This award recognizes excellence in research of a scholarly article from an English-language publication that has made a significant contribution to the study of historic interiors.
2026 Winner
Grace Ong Yan
“From Interior Supergraphics to Participation in the Public Sphere.” In Public Interiority, pp. 20-31. Routledge, 2024
2026 Honorable Mention
Chunyao Liu, Lian Liu, and Erin Cunningham
“Towards a cross-cultural hybridisation: An exploration of furniture design and advertising in Shanghai, China (1912-1949).” Fabrications 33, no. 2 (2023): 306-331
SAH Award for Film and Video
The SAH Award for Film and Video recognizes the most distinguished work of film or video on the history of the built environment. The most important criterion for award recognition is the work’s contribution to the understanding of the built environment, defined either as deepening that understanding or as bringing understanding to new audiences.
Skin of Glass
Director/producer: Denise Zmekhol
Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award
Named for Antoinette Forrester Downing, this award recognizes excellence in a published work devoted to historical topics in preservation and honors her scholarship and recognition of the value of local inventories and surveys.
No award given.
Nominations for the 2027 award cycle will open in June 2026.
About the Society of Architectural Historians
Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is an international nonprofit membership organizations promoting the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by vocation or avocation, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national and international programs. Learn more at sah.org.