Awards & Honors

M Arch Student Wins 2025 Center for Architecture Common Bond Scholarship

11. 14. 2025
  • A medium close-up of a young woman, Justine Flora, speaking at a podium during an evening event. She is wearing a dark blazer over a red turtleneck and has dark, short hair. The podium is clear acrylic with a black base that reads

    Justine Flora. Photo courtesy of AIA New York | Center for Architecture

  • A close-up, dark photo of a round dinner table setting at the Center for Architecture Gala. The center of the table features a small digital screen displaying the event logo: the words

    Photo courtesy of AIA New York | Center for Architecture.

  • A group photo featuring five women standing side-by-side in front of a white backdrop with the repeated black text

    Dean Marta Gutman, far left, and Justine Flora M Arch '27, second to left. Photo courtesy of AIA New York | Center for Architecture

  • A headshot of Justine Flora, a young woman with dark hair and a nose ring, standing outside and looking directly at the camera. She is wearing a brown, speckled tweed blazer over a darker shirt, and is framed against a background of lush, green shrubbery.

    Justine Flora

The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture is thrilled to announce that Justine Flora M Arch  ’27, has been named a recipient of the 2025 Common Bond Scholarship from the AIA New York and the Center for Architecture. This highly competitive $3,500 scholarship recognizes outstanding students who represent the future of architecture.

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Barnard College, Justine’s early career drafting for the luxury retail sector taught her the nuances of construction documents, code, and spatial layouts. Yet the rapid turnover of projects and use of rare materials left her questioning how design could engage more meaningfully with public life and environmental responsibility.

Her explorations into landscape architecture, graphic design, illustration, yoga education, and food activism deepened her belief in the primacy of space and community. Teaching showed her that play can spark curiosity and make learning joyful, a principle that continues to shape her design practice. In 2017, she co-founded Bowl Cut Table, an Asian-American, female-run collective that repositions meals as tools for resistance. During the pandemic, the group’s Not Too Sweet dessert boxes raised over $8,500 for grassroots organizations supporting food security, pandemic relief, and social justice.

These experiences remind her that design, from the kitchen to the classroom, has the power to strengthen collective networks. Her drawing practice, informed by early drafting, remains the medium that unites Flora’s pursuits. She aspires to become a licensed architect, a professor of architecture, and to establish a worker-owned practice committed to creating spaces that catalyze nourishing and supportive relationships within communities while addressing the realities of climate change and local history.

The Common Bond: The Center for Architecture Gala is the Center for Architecture’s single-largest fundraising event, held this year at Chelsea Piers, Pier 60, on October 23, 2025. This prestigious annual event brings together hundreds of professionals from the architecture, engineering, and construction communities to celebrate design excellence in New York City and provide critical funding for the Center’s exhibitions, public programs, K-12 education, and other scholarship activities. The 2025 gala honored four distinguished leaders for their contributions to the built environment: REX, Daniel Brodsky, Joel Towers, AIA, and Maria Torres-Springer.

Congratulations to Justine!

Video credit: James Eades at Studio 1810

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