Signatures of Loudoun Design Excellence Awards

Nominations for the 2025 Signatures of Loudoun Design Excellence Awards are now open through April 7, 2025. Click below to submit your nomination!

Is there a Loudoun development, building, public space or architectural detail you’ve always admired? The Loudoun County Design Cabinet annually seeks nominations for the Signatures of Loudoun Design Excellence Awards Program. Nominations are encouraged from residents, project owners, developers and architects. All varieties of nominations are encouraged: private and public, large and small.

Categories:

• Details: Design excellence or whimsy demonstrated in the form of minutiae or finishing touches, which visually delight or offer a sense of continuity with Loudoun’s history. Be creative! Tell how the physical project demonstrates design excellence and makes a lasting mark on Loudoun.
• Contextual Design: Design excellence demonstrated in the exceptional attention given to surrounding buildings, places, and details during the project design. A highly “contextual” design solution in which the newly “adopted child” looks as if it had always been visually harmonious member of the larger family of forms, textures and colors which can be found in the neighborhood. (note, this is for new construction projects)
• Infrastructure: Design excellence demonstrated in infrastructure such as facilities, utilities, roadways, and bridges.
• Interiors: Design excellence demonstrated in an interior space. This could include space in residential, commercial, retail, and public-sector structures.
• Historic Renovation: Design excellence demonstrated in the form of historic renovation and/or adaptive reuse. These projects may mirror Loudoun’s unfolding reputation as a place of rich contrasts. Projects characterized by the preservation of a piece of Loudoun County’s unique history. Note: “before” and “after” photos must be included for this category.
• Pace Setters: Recent, visually groundbreaking projects that continue to shape Loudoun County as a unique environment. While Loudoun’s vernacular buildings, places, and details mark the community’s beginnings, these projects mark its current state of affairs and potentially set the pace for the future. Pace Setters may well be the Legends which the Signatures of Loudoun program honors a quarter-century from now.
• Public Spaces: Design excellence demonstrated in the form of public greens, plazas, squares, streetscape, parkways, and trails, which, by their attributes, have become a favorite mixing place. These are places where exceptional design has created gathering places that are icons of a community.

Click here for Rules and Eligibility
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For assistance, contact Katie Fleger at the Department of Economic Development.