Substance Architecture is pleased to announce the winner of the 2026 Substance Architecture Student Award, recognizing outstanding work from the 2025 ARCH 4030 and 6030 studios at Iowa State University. Presented through the Substance Design Forum, the award continues a growing tradition of supporting experimental design thinking, critical inquiry, and emerging voices in architecture.
Substance Architecture extends congratulations to all finalists whose work demonstrated rigor, imagination, and thoughtful engagement with urgent cultural and environmental questions.
This year’s competition culminated in a final review featuring an accomplished interdisciplinary jury:
Description:
Our project is inspired by the theories of Kathryn Yusoff which argue that the extraction of materials is not simply an economic act, but a political system that determines whose lives are protected or treated as expendable. Her work reminds us that architecture participates in a broad and complex array of material histories. The project tells the story of ‘Orenda’, a fictional landscape atop a geologic Black Strata experiment that exists beneath it. It manifests as a full cinematic narrative of a secret coalition inside the Black Strata, comprised of architectures, political structures, human and non-human inhabitants, cultural challenges and vulnerabilities, all sustained by the belief that another world could exist beyond extraction. The core feature of our design is a series of ‘machines of refusal’ constructed to carry out the task of dismantling the systems that normalize extraction and to interrupt the logic that made both land and life expendable.
Students: Aiden Hodge and Michael Hull
Instructor: Mitchell Squire
Established in 2018, the Substance Design Forum is an annual juried design competition and lecture series at Iowa State University that recognizes exceptional work from final-year architecture studios while fostering dialogue between practice and academia. Organized in collaboration with the College of Design, the forum pairs invited lectures from leading practitioners with a competitive student review and award program, creating a platform for critical inquiry, design discourse, and emerging talent.
The forum builds on Substance Architecture’s long-standing commitment to architectural education. With members of the practice teaching studios at Iowa State since 2005, the forum extends that relationship through mentorship, jury participation, and support for student work that advances the discipline.
