Steven Bingler — 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient
The UVA School of Architecture and the members of the Dean’s Advisory Board are pleased to announce that Steven Bingler, AIA, REFP, NCARB (BArch ‘72) has been selected as the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient. The award, which recognizes exceptional graduates from the School of Architecture who have demonstrated creativity, innovation, leadership, and vision through their distinguished body of work, within the professional, academic, civic, or artistic realms, as well as their service to the University of Virginia, will be presented to Bingler at the Annual Dean’s Forum Dinner at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on October 19, 2024.
“Throughout his career, Steven Bingler has demonstrated tireless commitment and passion for expanding the boundaries of architecture in service to the greater public good,” shared Dean Malo A. Hutson, “Through creative and innovative methods of community engagement, he has positioned democratic decision-making as central to the design and planning process, raising awareness and prompting solutions that meet the needs of diverse constituencies and address society’s pressing issues. His service-driven dedication is an exemplar of one of our core values and it is a great honor to recognize him as a distinguished alumnus of our school.”
Growing up as part of a working-class family living in Charlottesville, Virginia, Bingler was one of the first in his extended family to graduate from high school. He recounts that rather than pursue a career as an auto mechanic, he decided to study architecture and planning. “As a resident of Charlottesville, and with a special interest in Virginia history, I was always enamored with Mr. Jefferson’s democratic ideals,” Bingler recalled. With some critical guidance from then-Dean Joseph Bosserman and the unwavering support of his colleagues in the class of 1972, Bingler’s education at UVA offered “amazing experiences in collaborative design thinking.” These early experiences shaped his future career and laid the foundation for his practice. “They provided important lessons that ultimately contributed to the creation of our design firm, Concordia, and working alongside my business partner Bobbie Hill, to a longstanding exploration of a more community-centered process of planning and design.”
Bingler received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Virginia in 1972, taking with him a passion for a design process where formal aesthetics are comingled with other critical social, cultural, and economic outcomes. “In the end our designs must reflect not only our own visions, but also the visual and functional aspirations of the public that we are meant to serve,” said Bingler.
The foundations laid at the School of Architecture evolved throughout Bingler’s remarkable career, from his first job at Perez Associates Architects in New Orleans, to founding his own multi-disciplinary and internationally acclaimed company in 1983, Concordia, which he continues to lead today. For over four decades, Concordia has grown into a model community-centered planning and architecture firm, dedicated to is mission to pursue systemic, equitable, and collaborative design practices.
With Concordia, Bingler has spearheaded innovative projects across the country, yet his established roots in New Orleans have also grounded his passion in making a positive difference in the community where he lives. In 2006, Concordia coordinated the development of the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP), a comprehensive strategy for the redevelopment of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Involving the work of 12 urban planning firms, 54 community planning district meetings, and 3 citywide community congress events with combined participation of more than 9,000 New Orleans citizens, the project exemplified the ethos of community building that has driven Bingler throughout his career, driven by the essential questions: Who is this for? Who are we serving?
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The strategy included a set of ten district plans that outlined resettlement patterns around clusters of community services, across a wide set of programmatic types from schools and gymnasiums to libraries and health care centers. The following year, Concordia was named the lead design partner in the multi-year, multi-disciplinary development of a master plan for the rebuilding of New Orleans public school facilities as part of the post-hurricane recovery efforts. As part of this award-winning plan, selected by Metropolis Magazine as a “Game Changer,” the more than $2 billion of facilities replacements and renovations included over 2,500 New Orleans citizens’ participation.
In New Orleans, Bingler has also co-founded a series of organizations with missions focused on community-centered entrepreneurship and design innovation including Shibusa Systems, an affordable housing design and production company focused on precision component assemblies; New Harmony High, a progressive public open-enrollment high school focused on coastal restoration and preservation; and Common Edge Collaborative, an online news site and database of more than 700 essays published on community-centered planning and design and dedicated to public engagement.
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By developing an integrative process to address many issues facing society, from reassessing education, the impacts of climate change, or the challenges of affordable housing, Bingler has demonstrated a kind of creativity and vision that Bobbie Hill, partner at Concordia, described as “unparalleled…[setting] him apart as a true leader in our field.” Hill elaborated, “In today’s turbulent landscape, characterized by the complex challenges of climate change, political polarization, and eroding trust in our societal institutions, Steven’s leadership and creative prowess are more crucial than ever. His unwavering commitment to fostering innovation and encouraging calculated risk-taking has not only propelled our endeavors forward but has also paved the way for meaningful solutions to these pressing issues.”
Central to Bingler’s advocacy is his notable efforts to bring people together in shared dialogue and discovery around actionable ways to bring about positive change. Over a three-year period from 2017 to 2020, he served as the principal investigator for the Global Transformation Roundtable, which resulted in the report “Sea Changes”, outlining planning principles for addressing sea level rise, wildfires, drought, and other climate-driven challenges, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Concordia’s research alliances have included the MIT Media Lab, Harvard University’s Project Zero, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Thornburg Institute, and Appalachian Education Lab.
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In 2022 Bingler, in collaboration with alumni from the School of Architecture’s Class of 1972, helped develop the “Urgent Actions” fund and endowment “for our Public Mission” in honor of their 50th reunion and to support the School’s mission by financially supporting purposeful and community-engaged interdisciplinary research and education experiences that address today’s societal challenges. A year later, their philanthropic generosity, resulted in the launch of the Climate Futures Research Challenge and the awarding of three $25K grants to seed transdisciplinary research teams to address climate justice.
“I am deeply honored to receive this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award,” shared Bingler. “I am reminded of the importance of giving back to such an amazing public institution that was created to support not only those with financial means, but others like me who would not otherwise have had access to such life-changing opportunities.”
Concordia’s award-winning projects have appeared in many local, national, and international publications, including Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, as well as Architectural Digest, and Architecture and Metropolis magazines. Bingler’s research papers have been widely published in books and journals on urban planning, architectural design, public health, and education. His OpEds, developed in collaboration with Common Edge co-founder Martin Pederson, have been widely quoted and disseminated.
He has served on many honorary positions throughout his career, including as a special consultant to the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education for policy related to the design of schools as centers of community, and as a member of the Urban Land Institute’s Executive Board, the UVA School of Architecture’s Dean’s Advisory Board, and UVA’s prestigious Raven Society.
The significance of Bingler’s impact as “a bright and guiding light for many clients, design firms, Foundations, and the city of New Orleans,” as described by architect Stephen Michael Evans, FAIA, Emeritus (BArch ’72) is marked by values shared across the University of Virginia: of citizenship, responsibility, and empathy. “His range and depth of community-centered design, with impact across local, regional, national, and international design, planning, and public engagement provide lasting lessons and his distinguished career is an extraordinary example of public impact."
