DLR Group Design Excellence Scholarship

Carnegie Mellon Architecture is currently accepting applications for the fall 2025 award. Applications are due on Monday, November 24, 2025 at 11:59pm ET.

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At DLR Group, design excellence is a foundational element of the firm’s culture — an ethos that unites and propels the team across all aspects of their work. The firm has defined 10 design tenets that guide its approach to elevating the human experience for clients, communities, and the world. These tenets are: 

• Spirit of Place: Engage with the site's historical, cultural or personal memories. Acknowledge context and create outdoor spaces that restore ecology and build community.
• Beauty & Delight: Elicit a strong emotional response through harmonious and poetic interplay of light, shadow, color, texture, line, scale, rhythm and proportion.
• Health & Well-Being: Support mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Be a catalyst for users' health, cognitive function, physical performance, and personal goals.
• Environmental Stewardship: Commit to carbon reduction, energy use reduction, water conservation, and healthy communities by maximizing value and minimizing waste.
• Elevated Value: Create a lasting value to society. Meet project budget goals and align with program requirements.
• Clarity of Concept, Form & Organization: Use design elements, massing, and spatial sequences purposefully to clearly support the concept.
• Elegant Detail & Craft: Celebrate the art of building. Use materials responsibly, consider how they meet, and develop sophisticated detailing.
• Community & Culture: Demonstrate appreciation, understanding, and authentic reflection of users' diverse cultural identity. Ignite positive change by addressing community needs and creating inclusive experiences.
• Resilient & Adaptable: Mitigate effects of climate change with long-term strategies that respond, absorb, and adapt to disruptions, challenges, or environmental changes.
• Integration & Innovation: Engineer comprehensive and interconnected building systems with innovative advancements born from integrated design. 

For this scholarship, two design tenets are prioritized: 

• Environmental Stewardship, a core value of DLR Group.
• Integration & Innovation, which defines how the firm structures ideas and tells its design stories — serving as a pathway to design excellence. 

This merit-based scholarship provides financial support to students whose work focuses on design excellence throughout the design process in alignment with the design excellence tenants of DLR Group.

To be considered for the DLR Group Design Excellence Scholarship, applicants must submit a complete application that includes the following information:

• Statement about how their work embodies the tenets of Environmental Stewardship, Integration & Innovation, and one additional DLR Group design tenet of their choice (200 word maximum).
• Current resume
• Portfolio (maximum five (5) pages, 11"x17" landscape format preferred) showcasing how their work reflects the three tenets (Environmental Stewardship, Integration & Innovation, and one additional DLR Group design tenet of their choice) in alignment with the design excellence tenants of DLR Group.

Fall 2025 Jury: Joshua Bard, Erica Cochran Hameen, Jeremy Ficca, Kai Gutschow

Fall 2025 Award Amount: $10,000 each (one (1) available)

The DLR Group Design Excellence Scholarship is open to all fourth- and fifth-year Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) students whose work focuses on embodying Environmental Stewardship, Integration & Innovation, and one additional DLR Group design tenet. Applicants must have a cumulative QPA of 3.9 or higher to be eligible to apply.

Carnegie Mellon Architecture is currently accepting applications for the fall 2025 award. Applications are due on Monday, November 24, 2025 at 11:59pm ET.

This award is being offered for the first time in 2025.