Mission-Driven Brooklyn Architect Selected for ENR New York Legacy Award

Sylvia Smith, partner emerita at design firm FXCollaborative, was named to receive ENR New York’s 2025 Legacy Award for her creation of its award-winning cultural and educational studio and its numerous project innovations. She will be featured in the March print issue of ENR East, the newly formed ENR region that includes New York and New Jersey. 

Smith formed the studio about 15 years after joining Brooklyn, N.Y-based FXCollaborative in 1981. Despite recently stepping down from firm leadership, she remains active as a mentor and advisor, also continuing philanthropic work with the FXCollaborative Foundation.

Her renovation of the historic Bronx Zoo Lion House was the first LEED-certified New York City landmark. The adaptive reuse project incorporated high-performance energy-efficient technologies in an environment with Madagascar flora and fauna.

Also for the Bronx Zoo, Smith’s work on the Center for Global Conservation created an elegant, high performance structure incorporating principles of biophilia in indoor and outdoor spaces with daylighting.

Renovations for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, SUNY Purchase College, and Pace University required building consensus among multiple stakeholders around program and design goals while maintaining project momentum.

Before the creation of LEED, Smith’s work in the 1990s incorporated sustainable design, including two buildings for the Black Rock Forest Center for Science and Education. Her design of the recently completed LEED Platinum, net zero energy David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center demonstrates that a modern adaptive reuse project can sustainably transform a distinctive turn-of-the-century building while maintaining its historic elements.  

Smith won the American Institute of Architects' New York State Fellows Award in 2013 and chaired its Fellows committee. In 2019, she also won the Pillar Award from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and was named Kea Distinguished Professor by the University of Maryland School of Architecture in 2014. Smith was also among those featured in The Women Who Changed Architecture, published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2022.

A trustee of her alma mater Dickinson College for 20 years and chair of its facilities committee for 14 years, she guided incorporation of contemporary design at an historic campus. 

To learn more about Smith’s career, check out the March issue of ENR East.