Meet the Jury 2022
2022 AIAPV Jury:
Christian Rodriguez, AIA [Chair] – EskewDumezRipple+
Will Netter, AIA – EskewDumezRipple+
Jonathan Tate – OJT
Emilie Taylor Welty, AIA – Colectivo
Christian Rodriguez, AIA [Jury Chair]
Principal, EskewDumezRipple+– New Orleans, LA
AIA National Architecture Firm Award Recipient
Christian’s work focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to architecture and design, one that integrates landscape and buildings to produce sites where the network of indoor and outdoor spaces is conceived as one unified whole.
Through his diverse skillset, Christian has brought tremendous value to numerous studio projects, notably playing a key role on the major renovation of Tulane University’s main campus library and as project architect for the national award-winning St. Pius Chapel and Prayer Garden. More recently, Christian has served as the project manager for the Thaden School in Bentonville, Arkansas, a 30-acre master plan and high school campus with a high sustainability agenda.
Named a Principal in the practice in 2021, Christian is an active participant in advancing the studio’s Urban Strategies focus, one considering the multi-layered nature of large-scale campus work and life between buildings. Throughout his portfolio, Christian demonstrates a thoughtful, holistic design strategy that emerges from an innovative approach to sustainable design solutions, one utilizing technology as a new way to approach old problems.
Will Netter, AIA
Architect, EskewDumezRipple+– New Orleans, LA
AIA National Architecture Firm Award Recipient
Will joined EskewDumezRipple in 2019 with an international portfolio of work in mixed-use developments and office tower design. After 15 years of residing in urban cities across the East Coast and Midwest Will felt compelled to return home to his roots in New Orleans, bringing with him lessons learned from faraway places.
A native of Harvey, LA, his design career began at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA), where he studied in the Visual Arts. There he discovered architecture as a catalyst for marrying his passion for the arts with building and urban design. He went on to study architecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then receiving his Masters of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded the Penn Design Scholarship and Dales Traveling Fellowship.
Will has previously worked at Barras Architects in Lafayette, Gage Architects in NYC, and more recently Goettsch Partners in Chicago. His notable projects include the supertall Nanning Tower in China and the successful renovations at Illinois Center designed by the office of Mies van der Rohe located along the riverfront in downtown Chicago.
Jonathan Tate
Principal, Office of Jonathan Tate (OJT) – New Orleans, LA
Jonathan Tate is principal of OJT (Office of Jonathan Tate), an architecture and urban design practice in New Orleans. The office engages in numerous design-related activities, including applied research, opportunistic planning, strategic development and conventional architectural practice. Their work has received numerous awards, including National AIA Housing Award and the National AIA Honor Award in Architecture. The office has been recognized as a 2017 Emerging Voices by the Architectural League of New York, a Next Progressive by Architect Magazine and a 2018 finalist for the international Architecture Review Emerging Architect Award. Tate is the recipient of the 2020 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Emilie Taylor Welty, AIA
Principal, Colectivo – New Orleans, LA
Emilie is Director of the Architecture Program and Professor of Practice at Tulane's School of Architecture. She is a leader in academic design/build, and at Tulane focuses on teaching students how to be better designers through making and wider public engagement. Outside of academia, Emilie is part of a small design firm in New Orleans, Colectivo, that mixes traditional architectural practice with fabrication at a range of projects scales from educational spaces to coffee shops to Mardi Gras floats. While she most enjoys the sense of collective accomplishment many of these professional and academic design-build projects embody, for the sake of these bios it's worth mentioning that they win some awards and get some press. Most recently she was awarded the AIA/ACSA Practice and Leadership Award for her work in community engaged design-build courses. For more about the work see small.tulane.edu and colectivonola.com.
