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Residential architecture is often where an architect’s ideas become most personal. The scale is intimate, but the questions are broad: how a home responds to its landscape, how materials shape everyday life, and how design can reflect the people who inhabit it. The 14th Architizer A+Awards’ Best Residential Firm category brings together practices approaching these questions from very different perspectives.

From studios working between continents and drawing on distinct cultural traditions to architects focused on low-impact design or the relationship between architecture and daily life, these firms demonstrate the range of contemporary residential practice. Together, the Jury Winner and Popular Choice Winner, alongside the other shortlisted practices, offer a look at how leading residential architects are shaping homes around ideas of place, material, climate and living.

Mork-Ulnes Architects

Jury Winner, Best Residential Firm, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Troll Hus by Mork-Ulnes Architects, Placer County, California

With offices in San Francisco, Honolulu and Oslo, Mork-Ulnes Architects brings together Scandinavian practicality with the Californian “can-do” spirit that shapes its approach to design. Founded by Casper Mork-Ulnes in 2005, the practice works across a wide range of scales, from master plans and mixed-use buildings to ground-up residences and compact cabins. Its work is marked by a sense of playfulness held within a restrained architectural language, developed through a rigorous, concept-driven process and an economy of materials. Today, the firm is working on projects ranging from a new community in the California Sierras to a cross-laminated timber home in Oregon and a surf cabin in Brazil. Its residential work remains an important part of a practice that has built across three continents.

Sanjay Puri Architects

Popular Choice Winner, Best Residential Firm, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Based in Mumbai, Sanjay Puri Architects works across India and internationally, with a design philosophy rooted in contextual and sustainable solutions. Founded by Sanjay and Nina Puri, the practice has developed projects across 51 Indian cities, alongside work in Australia, Spain, Montenegro, the UAE, Oman and the United States. Its architecture explores spatial perceptions through new directions in form, responding closely to the conditions of each site. With a current team of 108, the firm has received more than 475 awards, including over 350 international design awards, and has been recognized by the World Architecture Festival, Architizer A+Awards and other international programs. Its residential portfolio forms an important part of this wider practice, which continues to explore how architecture can respond to climate, context and contemporary life.

Walker Warner

Kua Bay by Walker Warner, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Driftwood by Walker Warner, California

Founded in 1989, Walker Warner is a full-service architectural firm specializing in custom residential and hospitality design. The practice is led by partners Greg Warner, Kathy Scott, Mike McCabe and Greg Mottola, alongside principals Amadeo Bennetta and Brooks Walker. Its work begins with a close sensitivity to both client and place, shaping architecture through careful attention to detail and a strong sense of harmony and flow. The firm’s design teams bring a rigorous approach to each project, creating spaces intended to endure while supporting the way people live. Across its residential work, Walker Warner continues to explore architecture as a thoughtful response to its setting, with each home shaped by its particular landscape, character and way of life.

Daniel Berg Arkitekter

For Daniel Berg, architecture begins with delight. The Norwegian architect sees beauty and sustainability as closely connected, arguing that people will only care for buildings and cities they genuinely value. His approach centers on simplicity, reducing the footprint of each project and bringing nature back into the built environment through added green space and the use of natural materials.

Wood plays a central role, both for its low carbon footprint and its tactile qualities, while low-tech solutions inform a broader belief in doing less, but better. Berg’s work responds to what he describes as the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, calling for a shift toward simpler forms, greater sensitivity to context and a more optimistic approach to the future of architecture.

Atelier About Architecture

Founded by architect Wang Ni in 2013, Atelier About Architecture explores contemporary life through the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures. With a Bachelor of Design in Architecture and a Master of Architecture from the University of Sydney, Wang brings this cross-cultural perspective to a practice interested in the beauty of everyday life and how it can become a more sensory experience.

The atelier’s work has appeared in international publications including Dezeen, ArchDaily, Architectural Digest and Wallpaper*, while Wang Ni has been repeatedly named to AD100 and ELLE Decor’s A-List. Her work was also included in Phaidon’s Making Space: Interior Design by Women. In 2025, Atelier About Architecture received a Commended Award in the AR House Awards for Best Residential Project.

Rangr Studio

Modern Cabin by Rangr Studio, Southampton, New York

Compound in the Hudson Valley by Rangr Studio, Columbia County, New York

Since 2004, Rangr Studio has looked to ancient design principles to inform contemporary architecture, creating forms that respond closely to their surroundings rather than imposing themselves upon them. Founded by Jasmit Singh Rangr, who grew up along the coasts of India and was educated at Yale, the studio works between California and New York. Its approach is shaped by Rangr’s interest in the relationship between climate, landscape, culture and architecture, drawing particular inspiration from Mughal architecture and the environmental intelligence of Indian step-wells. This dialogue between past and present extends to the studio’s material choices, where new sustainable methods meet ideas drawn from traditional design. Across its work, Rangr Studio seeks simple architectural forms that use context as an active part of the design.

RAMÓN ESTEVE ESTUDIO

Based in Valencia, Ramón Esteve Estudio brings architecture, interior design and product design together under a single creative vision. The international practice brings architects, designers and thinkers into a collaborative process, creating spaces and objects guided by clarity, harmony and a sense of timelessness. This approach allows ideas to move between scales, from the architecture of a building to the interiors and objects that shape everyday experience. At the center of the studio’s philosophy is a simple ambition: to create “Places you would like to live in.” Its work reflects this idea through an architecture that considers how people inhabit and experience spaces, treating buildings, interiors and their smaller details as connected parts of the same design language.

The 15th Architizer A+Awards has officially launched! Seize the lowest pricing of the season by entering before October 23rd, 2026. Learn more →

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