After reviewing more than 50 potential candidates nominated through an open process from all over the country, the 2018 jury for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards has chosen three award winners to be honored at the PastForward conference in San Francisco from November 13–16. The awards celebrate the most significant and inspiring historic preservation projects in America each year.

The coveted Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards honor cutting edge historic restoration projects that enhance neighborhoods, serve contemporary needs, and educate and inspire others. They celebrate the outstanding examples of the power and potential of preservation to improve lives. “While it was an especially difficult choice this year, we feel our winners are superlative examples of preservation in action,” noted the jury.

This year’s jury includes Getty Conservation Institute historian Jeffrey Cody, renowned Vanity Fair architecture critic Paul Goldberger, and longtime Atlanta preservationist and community activist Mtamanika Youngblood.

The jury touted the considerable achievements of this year’s three honorees. One project, they noted “is exemplary not just for its remarkable size but for the many ways it puts community first—in its many diverse uses, in the extent of grassroots involvement, and in the educational and artistic opportunities it will now afford local citizens.”

Another winner the jury said, “stands as an important reminder that many small and medium-sized cities have superb underused buildings that, if reused in an imaginative and socially beneficial way, can fulfill urgent social needs and benefit the entire city.”

The third Driehaus winner, according to the jury, “is a project of immense ambition and sweeping scope that overcame significant architectural as well as political and financial challenges. It represents a jewel in the crown of its city, which is working hard to make its architectural heritage an important cultural magnet.”

The announcement of this year’s winners will be made on October 15, ahead of the awards celebration at PastForward 2018, the nation’s largest historic preservation conference.

2018 National Preservation Awards jury members:

Jeffrey Cody is an architecture historian and a Senior Project Specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute. He has been at the GCI since 2004, focusing primarily on conservation training activities in Southeast Asia. From 1995 to 2004 he taught architectural history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000 (2003) and Building in China: Henry K. Murphy's "Adaptive Architecture", 1914–1935 (2001). He also coedited Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts (2011) and Brush & Shutter: Early Photography in China (2011). He holds a PhD in architectural history from Cornell University (1989).

Paul Goldberger, who HuffPost has called “the leading figure in architecture criticism,” is now a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair. From 1997 through 2011, he served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where he wrote the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City. He was formerly Dean of the Parsons school of design, a division of The New School. He is the author of several books, most recently Why Architecture Matters (2009), published by Yale University Press. His architecture criticism has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism.

Mtamanika Youngblood is a nationally recognized community development practitioner and proponent of equitable development and sustainability as the model for addressing both the human and physical development needs of revitalizing communities. She is currently the President of Sweet Auburn Works, a nonprofit organization committed to the revitalization of the Sweet Auburn commercial corridor and modeled after the successful National Main Street Center program. She has served as the Chair of the Board and President of the Historic District Development Corporation (HDDC), Atlanta’s leading non-profit, community-based developer of historic homes. She is also a Trustee Emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, having previously served as Vice Chair for the National Trust’s Board of Trustees.

About the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards recognize and celebrate the highest achievement in historic preservation. These are the most coveted awards bestowed upon a preservation project by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. www.savingplaces.org/awards