Patrick Suarez Named Winner of the 2026 Rieger Graham Prize

Patrick will spend three months as an Affiliated Artist at the American Academy in Rome

Patrick Suarez of Ferguson & Shamamian Architects in New York has been selected as the winner of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art’s (ICAA) 2026 Rieger Graham Prize, and will spend three months as an Affiliated Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Growing up in the Hudson River Valley, Patrick was trained in drawing from a young age by his mother, Teresa Suarez, culminating in a summer apprenticeship at the painting studio of Paul Ingbretson, in Merrimack, NH (2015). He received his M. Arch in architecture at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC (2020), where he also completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy, graduating summa cum laude.

In addition to his time in the Northeast, he spent a semester in Rome, Italy (2018), and participated in the Summer School in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Buckingham in Bloomsbury London (2019), drawing as he went. Patrick has eight years of design work in award winning residential architecture firms on projects in the United Kingdom, Bahamas, seven US states, and the District of Columbia where he is registered. Patrick has taught architectural design and drawing with the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art as well as at his alma mater, where he has returned as a visiting professor and juror.

Patrick will spend his time in Rome studying the design and symbolism of Roman portals through field drawing, historical and theoretical research, and analytic composition. Patrick describes Rome as a “city of portals,” in which thresholds in a variety of contexts and at a variety of scales mediate the relationships between individual and institution, public and private, sacred and profane. As a working architect, Patrick will use this study to inform his practice, not only to understand the past for its own sake but to “design architecture that is both disciplined and expressive, grounded in tradition yet responsive to contemporary needs with the wisdom of the genius contributions of the past.”

This opportunity to undertake post-graduate study in Rome represents the fulfillment of a longtime dream for Patrick. Patrick remarked that “the most common denominator among my architectural heroes, from the renaissance through the American gilded age, is time spent learning from Rome. Rome represents the primary source material, the bubbling spring of compounding creative genius over centuries that never runs dry.”

The Rieger Graham Prize is a biannual affiliated fellowship at the American Academy in Rome for distinguished American students or professionals with demonstrable commitment to the classical tradition and its contemporary practice in architecture. Its purpose is to advance the career of the recipient and to foster the continuity of knowledge of the classical tradition as a vital aspect of contemporary culture around the globe.