Rashida Ng, R.A. Selected as the 2025 Emanuel Kelly Award Recipient

Congratulations to Rashida Ng, R.A. on being selected as the first awardee of the Emanuel Kelly Award!

The Emanuel Kelly Award recognizes contributions to architectural education through research, teaching, and service. The recipient has developed new teaching models, published scholarly work, or led educational initiatives.

Named after Emanuel Kelly, FAIA, a longtime leader in Philadelphia’s architectural community, the award is intended to highlight the role of educators in shaping future architects and advancing the profession. With five (5) architecture programs here in Philadelphia, so many of our members teach and invest their time in the next generation of architects. The Board of AIA Philadelphia chose to honor this work with the inaugural Emanuel Kelly Award, presented for the first time at the 2025 Design Awards Celebration.

Rashida Ng, R.A.

Rashida Ng, R.A. is a licensed architect, educator, and scholar whose work explores the intersections of climate change, racial equity, and architectural pedagogy. Her research examines how design practices have shaped racial and environmental disparities affecting Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, while advancing design as a tool for reparative justice and collective care.

She is equally committed to equity in higher education, using scholarship and leadership to foster more inclusive models of pedagogy. As the 2019–2020 President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture—the first Black woman elected to this role—she advanced equity through racial justice training, national dialogues on access and success, the 2019–2023 Strategic Plan, and a restructured Annual Meeting that broadened inclusion and transparency.

Ng is Chair of Undergraduate Architecture and Presidential Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. Her contributions have been recognized with the G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award and designation as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania.