The residential project in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village has won the overall Craftsmanship Award in the 2025 Brick in Architecture (BIA) Awards.
The contemporary design of 64 University Place pays homage to the neighborhood’s historic Revival-style buildings, responding to its context through scale, materiality, and texture. The façade features a grid of deeply recessed, shallow arches constructed from hand-set brick, adding depth and texture without ornamentation.
An expression of craft in construction, the brick façade relied on the expertise and precision of the bricklayers as much as the thoughtful detailing and carefully selected materials. Flashed bricks were specified for their subtle color variation and laid with an atypical 3/8-inch raked mortar joint, using grout in a similar color to allow the façade to read as a sculptural form. The resulting building connects the old and the new with a vigorous piece of contextual architecture.
Since 1989, the BIA Awards, organized by the Brick Industry Association, have recognized the year’s most impressive clay brick projects. The 2025 awards honored 42 projects with Best in Class, Gold, Silver, and Bronze distinctions across nine categories, as well as the overall Craftsmanship Award, which was won by 64 University Place.
