The Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization is delighted to recognize these outstanding individuals and organizations at our upcoming Annual Gala on Thursday, October 15, 2026 from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM at New York Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.
Meet our Honorees!
Sharon Prince
CEO, Grace Farms
Sharon Prince is Founder and CEO of Grace Farms, a cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, CT that advances good locally and globally. She commissioned Pritzker Prize-winning firm SANAA to design this boundary-defying public space on 80 preserved acres.
After recognizing exploitation in the building materials supply chain, Prince launched and leads Design for Freedom, a global movement to eliminate forced labor from it. Working with her dedicated team, she co-authored a groundbreaking report, developed an International Guidance & Toolkit with ethical sourcing strategies, initiated over a dozen Pilot Projects across four continents, and convenes an annual Summit of industry leaders.
Grace Farms Tea & Coffee, a certified B Corp, opened its first-ever café at the base of JPMorganChase’s new headquarters. Demonstrating ethical and sustainable supply chains, 100% of profits support Design for Freedom.
Fast Company named Prince among the Most Creative People in Business for cleaning up construction. She has also received the 2026 Champion of Architecture Medal from AIA NY.
Carrie Denning Jackson
Founder, Place as Medicine
Carrie Denning Jackson is the founder of Place as Medicine and an advisor to Jamestown LP and Off‑Ramp, where she advances healthier, more resilient places. She formerly led the Innovation and Sustainability teams at Jamestown LP and previously was a Director on the Real Estate Development team at Sidewalk Labs, Google’s urban innovation company. She is the incoming Board Chair of The Nature Conservancy, NY Division, and she is a board member of the Governors Island Foundation and PlanA Health. She is an advisor to Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Urban Analytics. Denning Jackson has a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Master of Business Administration from Stanford University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
Lindsay Baker
CEO, Living Future Institute
As CEO of the Living Future Institute, Lindsay Baker is the organization’s chief strategist, charged with delivering on its mission to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative.
Lindsay is a climate movement leader and a building scientist, focused on transforming the building sector towards a better future. She has worked with nonprofits including the US Green Building Council in the early days of creating the LEED rating system, as a researcher at UC Berkeley in Building Science, and as a private sector leader. She led the global Sustainability and Impact Team at WeWork, co-founded a smart buildings start-up called Comfy which grew over five years to 75 employees and a global portfolio of clients, and also had roles at Google and Rocky Mountain Institute. She serves on several non-profit boards, and is an advisor and board member for climate tech startups focused on the critical and complex world of buildings.
Avinash Rajagopal
Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis Magazine
About Avinash Rajagopal
Avinash Rajagopal is the editor in chief of METROPOLIS. He is an advocate for life-centered architecture and design, contributing his expertise to industry initiatives on sustainability and circularity. He spearheaded the creation of METROPOLIS’s Climate Toolkit for Interior Design, the first resource to address the embodied carbon emissions of interior renovations. Rajagopal is a board member at the International Living Future Institute, and a member of the Governance Council at the International Well Building Institute. Rajagopal has lectured at Parsons School of Design, where he was the 2024 graduation speaker for the School of Constructed Environments, as well as at the New York School of Interior Design and the University of Texas at Austin.
About METROPOLIS
For more than 40 years, METROPOLIS has been a trusted resource for architects and
interior designers and offers a forward-looking perspective rooted in purpose. It was the first design publication to dedicate an issue to sustainability in September 1996, the first to report the connections between architecture and climate change in October 2003, the first to address interior design’s carbon emissions in the November/December 2020 issue, and the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of the state of sustainable architecture in the United States through the METROPOLIS Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026. Through numerous events, summits, and convenings every year, METROPOLIS builds relationships between thought leaders in sustainability and empowers architects and designers to shape a better built environment.
Meet Our Awardees!
Exemplary Project Award – The Riverie, Java by Lendlease
About Lendlease
Lendlease is a leading real estate and investment group headquartered in Sydney, Australia, and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. Lendlease’s core capabilities are reflected in its operating segments of Investments, Development, and Construction, and provides the Company with a sustainable competitive advantage in asset and place creation. For more information, please visit lendlease.com.
About The Riverie
Developed by Lendlease, The Riverie is a sustainable development along the Greenpoint waterfront in Brooklyn, New York. Opened in 2026, the project comprises 834 rental units, 30% of which have been designated as affordable housing under the Affordable New York Housing Program. The all-electric property utilizes a vertical closed-loop geoexchange system, making it the largest geothermal residential development in New York State. Designed by Marvel, The Riverie includes a 37-story and a 20-story tower with a connected mid-rise podium with frontages on India, Java and West streets. The property features nearly 14,000 square feet of retail space, as well as an 18,000-square-foot public waterfront esplanade connecting to the India Street Pier, which is served by the NYC Ferry. Targeting LEED Gold certification and designed to meet or exceed Local Law 154, New York City’s legislation that mandates new construction to be all-electric, and Local Law 97, New York City’s decarbonization legislation, The Riverie aligns with Mission Zero, Lendlease’s industry-leading initiative to reach absolute zero carbon by 2040. For more information, visit: theriverebk.com.
Exemplary Project Award – East Side Coastal Resiliency
About East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR)
The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project is a $1.4 billion coastal protection initiative jointly funded by the City of New York and the federal government, designed to protect 110,000 New Yorkers from flood risk along Manhattan’s East Side. Led by the New York City Department of Design and Construction (NYC DDC), the project’s design team includes BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) as lead design architect, ONE Architecture & Urbanism for urban design and resiliency planning, and Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects (MNLA) for landscape design, with civil engineering and environmental review provided by the AKRF and KS Engineers (KSE) joint venture. Spanning Montgomery Street to East 14th Street, Project Area 1 includes the 45.88-acre John V. Lindsay East River Park, Corlears Hook Park, and several bridges and overpasses along the FDR Drive, and is delivered by program and construction managers HNTB/LiRo alongside contractor IPC Resiliency Partners. The project raises parkland 8-9 feet and installs floodwalls and gates engineered to extreme low-probability sea level rise projections for the 2050s, while reconstructing the esplanade and coordinating combined sewer overflow and utility work. Beyond flood protection, ESCR revitalizes the waterfront with renovated recreational facilities, universally accessible bridges, and an enhanced tree canopy featuring over 50 species and approximately 2,000 new trees selected for climate resilience.
The project targets Envision, Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines (WEDG), and LEED certification, incorporating sustainable design elements such as green roofs, permeable pavers, photovoltaic cells, electric vehicle charging stations, and reused tree material. Substantial completion is expected by 2026.
For more information, please visit nyc.gov/escr.
Chair Award – Nitin Desai
Nitin Desai is a distinguished Indian economist and international civil servant who played a leading role in shaping the global sustainable development agenda. He served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs from 1992 to 2003 and was instrumental in organizing major international summits, including the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, and the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development. Widely recognized for his contributions to sustainable development policy, Desai also served as Senior Economic Adviser to the Brundtland Commission and helped advance the concept of sustainable development on the global stage.