French 2D , the Boston-based architecture practice founded in 2012 by Anda and Jenny French, has been named a recipient of the Architectural League of New York’s 2026 Emerging Voices award. An assistant professor in practice of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Jenny French (MArch ’11) is also a graduate of the school.
Presented annually, the Emerging Voices award recognizes North American individuals and firms with distinct design voices and the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. The jury evaluates significant bodies of realized work and considers accomplishments in both professional practice and academia. Each selected practice represents excellence in its field while addressing broader questions shaping architecture, landscape, and the built environment.
French 2D’s portfolio spans large-scale multifamily housing and micro-housing projects, public infrastructure, and cultural institutions. Across these commissions, the firm advances what it describes as “strange housing types”—unconventional residential forms that challenge familiar domestic arrangements through radical organizational strategies and reimagined typologies. By experimenting with how housing is structured and inhabited, French 2D probes the social and spatial assumptions embedded in contemporary development.
The firm describes its work as grounded in “the pursuit of new forms of collective resilience, with a focus on the social consequences of material, thermal, and formal effects.” Through close attention to construction, environmental performance, and spatial organization, French 2D positions architecture as a medium for rethinking how people live together under changing social and climatic conditions. Creating comfort is a large part of the practice as well as Jenny French’s pedagogy at the GSD.
French 2D will speak as part of the Emerging Voices lecture series on March 5, 2026.
GSD alumni Jack Becker (MAUD ’13) of B L D U S , Craig Reschke (MLA ’15) of Future Firm , and Juan Alfonso Garduño Jardón (MAUD ’07) of g3arquitectos also received this year’s Emerging Voices award.