Join us in honoring Theresa Hyuna Hwang and the student winners of the Center for Architecture and Design's 2023 Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Awards. Theresa Hyuna Hwang (she/her) is a community-engaged architect, educator, and facilitator. She has spent over 15 years focused on equitable cultural and community development across the United States. Theresa/Hyuna holds spaces of mindful dialogue to address collective neighborhood-based trauma and co-design radical solutions based on first-hand experiences, centering folx who are most impacted. She is the founder of Department of Beloved Places, a participatory architecture practice based on occupied Tongva Land (Los Angeles, CA). Theresa was the former Director of Community Design and Planning at the Skid Row Housing Trust, a non-profit supportive housing organization where she was the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow from 2009-2012. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design (2007) and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Art History from Johns Hopkins University (2001). She is a licensed architect in California. 

The 2023 competition asks students to focus on the roughly 50-acre area in Chinatown and Chinatown North where there are several parking lots, as well as multilane streets and highways cutting pedestrians off from segments of the neighborhood (“Competition Site”). The Competition Site is in Center City Philadelphia and abuts one of William Penn’s “four squares” in the original grid plan for Philadelphia1. This neighborhood is the home of a large Asian immigrant population, but it is also the cultural hub for Asian families living outside the neighborhood.The community has a strong, impactful, and progressive organization called the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC) which has led community planning efforts, redevelopment, and economic development in this community. 

The ceremony will be followed by a coffee + dessert reception for all in attendance.

With the purchase of a VIP ticket, we invite you to join the award winner and us before the ceremony at 5:30 PM for our VIP Reception which features hors d'oeuvres, wine, beer, and music. In attendance will be Theresa Hyuna Hwang, local dignitaries, and our built-environment-focused sponsors, without whom this program would not be possible.

Thank You to Our Sponsors