2026 Portman Symposium: AMOR MUNDI 

 

An extension of the Georgia Tech School of Architecture's Portman Prize Studio, the Annual Portman Symposium brings thought leaders to Atlanta for an outward-facing event. Guests, faculty, students, and the broader professional community discuss the themes and topic of the Portman Prize Studio, while diving deeply into student work. 

Highlights from the 2026 Portman Symposium

The second Annual Portman Symposium took place on Saturday, April 25, 2026, from 10 a.m to 2 p.m. in the Reinsch-Pierce Auditorium on Goergia Tech campus. Students from the Portman Prize Studio, their instructors, the studio's jury and the Visiting Portman Prize Critics presented the studio's projects from the Spring Semester. Click the arrows on either side of the photographs below to see highlights from the symposium.

Julie Kim
William H. Harrison Professor and School of Architecture Chair Julie Kim welcomed students, instructors, alumni, and the guest jury to the Second Annual Portman Prize Symposium. She explained that the School’s flagship studio that proudly bears alumnus John Portman’s name — the Portman Prize Studio — advances academic discourse and helps our students learn from some of the most creative and change-making practicing architects in the world. Of this year’s studio, Kim said, “Amor Mundi means our love of the world, and it feels especially urgent today. In this studio, our students grappled with architecture’s ability to bind people and places, adding on a layer of ethics and imagination. Architecture is our way of taking care of the world, but we’re always asking, ‘What does the world need of us?’” Kim also thanked Jana Portman Simmons and Joannah Portman-Daley, who attended the symposium on behalf of the Portman family.
Brian Bell
Professor of the Practice Brian Bell, who runs the Portman Prize Studio, thanked his fellow instructors for helping support almost 60 students in the studio this year. The Portman Prize Studio is the is an integrated studio, and the culminating core studio of the Master of Architecture program. Bell discussed the ways the studio uses key pillars from the M.Arch curriculum — climate, architectonics, and buildings — and creates an important opportunity to dive deeply.
Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu
“We went really far, probably as far as we could go, to connect with people, environment, and culture,” said Jing Liu as she and Florian Idenburg began their keynote presentation. The Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu team presented the environmental, cultural, and political history of the studio’s site on Ishigaki Island. The island experiences strong natural forces like typhoons and tectonic plate movement. It is part of historic trade routes between China, Japan, and America. It has a distinct archipelago culture and 90% of the shoreline has been untouched for centuries. The two Visiting Portman Critics asked the students to embrace Ishigaki’s material culture, using their studio projects to think through the history of the island and its use of American goods after World War II. In keeping with a culture that has used both bamboo, timber, and concrete in buildings that must withstand high winds and earthquakes, students were charged with using bamboo and pre-fabricated concrete.
Saiko and Hidehito Nose
Site owners Saiko (left) and Hidehito (right) Nose traveled to Atlanta, Georgia for the Portman Symposium and to be part of the studio jury. The Nose-sans spoke to the students and the studio instructors in English and in Japanese (translated by Jing Liu.) Saiko and Hidehito Nose said they were truly grateful to be part of this studio. They noticed innovation and compassion in all the students’ projects, and invited them all to come back to Ishigaki. “Everyone in Japan knows Georgia Tech,” said Saiko Nose, urging the students to boldly bring their ideas to the world.
Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam
Mack Scogin began by honoring Frank Gehry, a contemporary of Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects. They often competed with him for projects or awards, Scogin said, and while Gehry used pictures of the buildings he’d designed in presentations, Scogin and Elam used photos of places that inspired them, “which seemed to frustrate Gehry,” he said. Their presentation was a collection of these photos. In the spirit of Amor Mundi, Elam said, these are the places they love which have profoundly affected their architecture work. “They remind us how small the earth is, how close we are together, and how architecture persists in places over time,” she said. Photos included American and European landscapes, a fish Mack caught, neighborhoods in Japan, a garage in Virginia, a Bar-be-cue pit in Tennessee, a slave quarters in Alabama, the canals of Venice, and a shack restaurant called Fish Delight. “We’re so interested in mankind using water to make spaces and places," Elam said.
Masoud Akbarzadeh
Masoud Akbarzadeh presented several projects from his Polyhedron structures lab, which he said uses geometry to bridge the gap between design and performance. Trained as a structural engineer and an architect, Akbarzadeh said his work stems from the famous idea of Robert Hook’s hanging chain: pure compression, pure tension. He started looking at the 3-D possibilities of this around 2012, finding ways to minimize the use of material and maximize strength in architectonics. Relevant to some of the work in this year’s Portman Prize Studio, he showed a progression of his work that used this geometry to result in a minimal amount of cement that bears the greatest load. Examples include the geometry of a dragonfly wing to design an airplane wing; a modular glass bridge design that reexamines construction methods with glass through an elegant structure; and carbon-absorbing, 3D-printed concrete structures.
Dana Bauer
Dana Bauer began her presentation by explaining her professional experience: that she worked for years as an architect but found that she was most interested in the ground. She started working with an artist and somehow architecture and art became landscape. The rest of the presentation focused on several projects throughout Los Angeles, which she said, “are growing together as a continuity habitat, as an expansive sustainable idea.” Projects included: a residential work that included hardscape and plants chosen for pollinating qualities; a veteran housing project with Frank Ghery’s office that provided therapeutic landscapes helping veterans recover from PTSD; an urban campus where buildings were stitched together through street art and planted areas; a temporary landscape for a visiting pavilion; and a work environment build on top of a parking garage with glass office pods and winding landscaped paths that provided shade and privacy.
Portman Prize winners, studio instructors, and jury lined up in front of the Architecture West building.
The Portman Prize winners pose on the external staircase of the Architecture West Building on Georgia Tech campus, while the Portman Prize jury and studio instructors pose in the foreground. From left to right (stairs): Arsh Khanna, Stazia Goutier, Samantha Lowrie, Diya Nair, Pururava Kalavadia, Garret Hinton, Genesis Santana Aguirre, Ashwin Raman Sullikunte Kodandaramaiah, Ethan Cofer. Foreground: Masoud Akbarzadeh, Dana Bauer, Charles Rudolph, Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, Brian Bell, Kim Steiner, Katherine Wright, Saiko Nose, Hidehito Nose, Mack Scogin, Merrill Elam, Mark Cottle.

The 2026 Portman Prize Winners

Debris from Sagaru model

Grand Prize Tie

Debris from Sagaru
by Stazia Goutier
Shifting Grounds model

Grand Prize Tie

Shifting Grounds
by Arsh Khanna
Ruins Beneath the Landscape model

$1k Prize

Ruins Beneath the Landscape
by Ashwin Raman Sullikunte Kodandaramaiah
Path of Noro poster and model

$1K Prize

Path of the Noro
by Genesis Santana Aguirre
Memory of Living poster and model

$1K Prize

The Memory of Living
by Pururava Kalavadia
Woven Fields display

$1K Prize

Woven Fields
by Samantha Lowrie
Tangled Silence model

Honorable Mention

The Tangled Silence
by Diya Nair
Amor Mundi model

Honorable Mention

Amor Mundi
by Ethan Cofer
Basecamp Ishigaki model

Honorable Mention

Basecamp Ishigaki
by Garret Hinton

Amor Mundi — Love of the World

Studio Prompt:
"I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world… Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi.”
—Hannah Arendt,  August 6, 1955

Many might feel today, as Arendt did post-WWII, the difficulty in finding this Amor Mundi, love of the world, which, at its core, is a kind of deep and sustained exposure to the immense offering of the world that impels action. It impelled Arendt to write The Human Condition, which continues to nourish our world today. Amor Mundi in words binds us to our kins, our neighbors, and our nations, a person to their vocation, to God, to meaning, students to knowledge, us to the world we live and die in. It holds the world together. Amor Mundi in the Earth can do the same.

Amor Mundi names a way of standing in the world—receptive, porous, and attuned.  We participate, not dominate; knowledge is tacit and shared, not codified instruction. This architecture must hover at the edge, oriented towards the unknown and even the unknowable, and the land itself must be composed with equal care—not as a backdrop but as a structuring intelligence. The site is a sloped, dense, multi-layered subtropical forest with canopy, understory, vines, and extensive root systems, located on the northwest shore of the Japanese island of Ishigaki. It is 7+ acres of former farmland reforesting with extraordinary flora and fauna, Banyan and Adan trees, and the presence of freshwater springs and stone outcroppings.  

The tentative program (meant as guidelines, not requirements) includes an open area/event space/stage for up to 100, kitchen/dining, bathing/resting, library/study/workshop, dwellings of various sizes for groups from 3-20 people, and areas for cultivation.  Students have been challenged to use bamboo and/or ultra-high-performance concrete as structural components.

Studio Critics: 

Brian Bell
Mark Cottle
Charles Rudolph
Kim Steiner
Katherine Wright 

2026 Visiting Portman Critics: Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg

Jing Liu, left, and Florian Idenburg, right
Jing Liu (left) and Florian Idenburg (right)
SOLID OBJECTIVES IDENBURG LIU (SO-IL)

Jing Liu
Jing Liu co-founded SO–IL with Florian Idenburg in 2008. Over 20 years of practice, Jing has brought an intellectually open, globally aware, and locally embedded sensibility to her work spanning a wide range of mission-driven projects.

Through building practice and interdisciplinary collaborations, Jing has led SO–IL to explore new construction techniques, such as in Kukje Gallery in Seoul and K11 Museum in Hong Kong — and to engage with the spatial-material conditions of cities in transformation — in projects like Martin Luther King Library in Cleveland, Neighborhoods Now initiative in New York City, and the Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation. In each case, Jing carefully considers the feedback loop between the cultural, social and economic systems unique to the place and its design practices and seeks to make positive contributions toward its equitable, thriving future.

Jing is a current board member of Urban Design Forum and director of AIA New York Chapter, stewarding design culture, fostering global exchange, and engaging diverse communities in the city. She frequently writes for academic and design publications on topics including housing, design culture, and female practices.

Jing was an adjunct faculty at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and a visiting faculty at Princeton University's School of Architecture. She has been inducted to American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded New Generation Leader by Record's Women in Architecture, and received United States Artist Fellowship and the Vilcek Prize for her contribution and leadership in the field.


Florian Idenburg
Florian Idenburg is a globally recognized architect with over two decades of experience, particularly known for his innovative work in residential architecture. After honing his skills in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he co-founded SO–IL in New York in 2008 with Jing Liu. Florian has made significant contributions to multifamily housing in Brooklyn, where he has designed a number of widely recognized projects that push the boundaries of traditional typologies. His work spans both market-rate and affordable housing, demonstrating a unique ability to innovate within the constraints of market realities.

Florian’s expertise lies in re-imagining residential spaces, creating environments that enhance the quality of life for their inhabitants. His projects are marked by a keen intuition for the interplay of form, material, and light, transforming imaginative concepts into tangible, livable spaces. His approach to housing design is captured in the book *In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today*, which explores how SO-IL "hacks" traditional codes, cores, courts, and corridors to promote well-being and community in urban living. Through his thoughtful approach and collaborative spirit, Florian continues to influence the future of residential architecture, in urban contexts like Brooklyn and beyond..

In recognition of his contributions to architecture, Florian has received several prestigious awards, including the Charlotte Köhler Prize from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund in 2010, the Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2022, and the United States Artists Fellow Prize in 2022. He is a registered architect in the Netherlands and an International Associate of the American Institute of Architects.

2026 Portman Critic Team Kicks Off Studio With More Feeling SOLID OBJECTIVES IDENBURG LIU (SO-IL) Website

2026 Portman Prize Jury

Masoud Akbarzadeh

Masoud Akbarzadeh

Associate Professor of Architecture in Structures, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
Principal, Massive Form
Dana Bauer

Dana Bauer

Principal
Elysian Landscapes
Merrill Elam

Merrill Elam

Principal
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects
Photo Credit: Rubi Xu
Florian Idenburg

Florian Idenburg

Principal
Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu
Jing Liu

Jing Liu

Principal
Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu
Saeko Nose, left, Hidehito Nose, right

Saeko and Hidehito Nose

Site Owner / 'Client'
Makc Scogin

Mack Scogin

Principal
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects
Photo Credit: Rubi Xu

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