2017 Young Architects Award Recipient
Emerging talent deserves recognition. The AIA Young Architects Award honors individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers.
A gifted architect and educator, Jeff Huber, AIA, realized at a young age that good design can provide hope, vision, and resiliency. Spurred to action as a 12-year-old when Hurricane Andrew leveled his childhood home, Huber has made a lasting impact on the built environment.
As a faculty member at Florida Atlantic University’s School of Architecture and a principal at Brooks + Scarpa, where he manages the firm’s south Florida office, Huber endeavors to expand the architects’ role through placemaking and resilient design. His development of new tools and design methodologies help connect segregated disciplines to meet the complex challenges that arise through urbanism. The projects with which he has been involved have received an overwhelming number of accolades, including more than 90 design awards, and have helped catalyze a shift in development codes and mainstream design practices.
In 2005 Huber joined the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), a think tank that functions much like a teaching hospital for design professionals. For nine years, in his role as an adjunct assistant professor and assistant director, he coupled practice with teaching. At the UACDC Huber expanded his repertoire of placebuilding frameworks to address community issues, including transit-oriented development, agricultural urbanism, and low-impact development, that have radically altered the ways in which practitioners and allied professions work. Huber’s research in agrarian urbanism was called cutting-edge by the Clinton Global Initiative and recognized with a 2016 AIA Institute Honor Award.
Upon his return to Florida, Huber joined Brooks + Scarpa and became a faculty member at Florida Atlantic University. Beyond his professional work, he has engaged with sea level rise research and has secured more than $325,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to pursue solutions for one of the biggest challenges facing the profession. Huber’s research will ultimately be condensed into an adaptation manual for urban areas situated in costal zones modeled after a previous volume he co-authored, Low Impact Development: A Design Manual for Urban Areas.
As a member of the AIA since his graduation, he has been involved at the local and state levels. Currently he is the president of AIA Fort Lauderdale and assists AIA Florida on its Strategic Council and Executive Convention Committee. Committed to the development of innovative practice and service, Huber also volunteers with many of his city’s initiatives and is a member of Fort Lauderdale’s Sustainable Advisory Board.
Huber’s inspirational and ethical approach to architecture has earned the admiration of his peers and colleagues. Engaged on multiple fronts and with an array of stakeholders, he’s elevated the profession while creating a resilient future.
