Above: Dave Dimond, FAIA (center), with a JLG Architects team in 2024. Photo by Andrea Rugg Photography.

Minneapolis, October 14, 2026 — AIA Minnesota is pleased to announce that Dave Dimond, FAIA, is the recipient of the 2026 AIA Minnesota Gold Medal. Presented biennially, the Gold Medal is the association’s highest individual honor. It recognizes an individual or pair of individuals, living or deceased, whose work has made lasting contributions to the field of architecture.

Dimond, who served as design director at JLG Architects before retiring in 2024, was an industry pacesetter and pioneer of integrated design in Minnesota and beyond for 38 years. Through restorative solutions that advanced the AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence, he developed an enduring legacy of design that invites everyone to contribute to the vision of healthy, resilient, and meaningfully connected communities. 

As his career progressed, Dimond recognized that an industrialized design process—organized around linear tasks and executed in silos by specialists—led to predetermined design outcomes and stifled cost-effective sustainable innovation. Through iterative practice, he demonstrated that highly collaborative teams using a holistic, integrated design process can transform how people fit into buildings, how buildings fit into their physical environments, and how design can serve the greater good.

Dimond led design teams on local, regional, and global award-winning projects as what architect Richard Graves, FAIA, director of the Center for Sustainable Building Research at the University of Minnesota, described as the “conductor of high-performance teams.” Notable Minnesota projects include:

• Bell Museum, St. Paul: A natural history museum and planetarium that expresses the beauty of biodiversity and sustainability.
• Studio IDS, Minneapolis: A workplace that integrates research metrics and feedback loops to create a dynamic “free address” environment while honoring one of downtown Minneapolis’s most iconic office buildings.
• Great River Energy Headquarters, Maple Grove: Minnesota’s first LEED Platinum project and an AIA COTE Top Ten Award winner.
• Wilder Foundation’s Wilder Center, St. Paul: An early LEED Gold project that advanced ideas about sustainable urban site development for the nonprofit health and human services organization.
• Eagan Art House, Eagan: A fossil fuel–free building—the City of Eagan’s first—that encourages investment in the arts.

The 2026 Gold Medal Selection Committee, composed of AIA Minnesota board members and volunteer leaders, evaluated nominees based on the extent to which their contributions demonstrated exceptional depth and breadth; had a lasting impact on the architecture profession in Minnesota; addressed the future of architecture while honoring its traditions; transcended or united specific areas of expertise; and achieved broad recognition for excellence among architects, designers, educators, and the public.

The jury praised Dimond for a body of work that was innovative and influential in shaping the way architects practice: “Dave was an early contributor to the integrated design process that we all take for granted now—a process that is inclusive, multidisciplinary, and participatory. Each project in the submission was a kind of test case in scientific method, developing systems and measurement tools for other designers to use and build on.”

“Dave was ahead of his time, advancing sustainable, integrative design processes and outcomes well before the introduction of the COTE Top Ten measures and, later, the AIA Framework for Design Excellence,” wrote architect James Lammers, FAIA, in a letter nominating Dimond for the award. “As a testament, after touring the Great River Energy Headquarters, the Minnesota Legislature enacted the Sustainable Building (SB) 2030 law, which identified the national Architecture 2030 Challenge goals as requirements for funding new state buildings.”

Dimond also spent his career advocating for the profession and advancing its future as a mentor, educator, and leader within AIA Minnesota and the Minnesota Architectural Foundation. He served for 24 years as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design and helped shape AIA Minnesota’s Leadership Forum, a leadership development program for mid-career architecture professionals.

Before joining JLG Architects, Dimond was a longtime design principal at Perkins&Will and the Leonard Parker Associates in Minneapolis—two firms that received the AIA Minnesota Firm Award during Dimond’s integrated design leadership.

“For me, integrated design thinking is a social tool for empathically sharing the limited space and resources of our planet,” says Dimond. “It unites us on a journey to engage, question, learn, transform, and act together. Integrated design empowers individual agency to solve our most challenging social, economic, and environmental issues collectively. In community, we can design a future worth sharing and cultivate our will to share it.”

The members of the 2026 Gold Medal Selection Committee are Nicole Bauknight, Assoc. AIA, NOMA; Wale Falade, AIA, NOMA; Kevin Holm, AIA; Phillip Koski, AIA; Mary Springer, AIA; Ann Voda, AIA; and Angela Wolf Scott, FAIA. 

Dimond will be honored at an awards celebration during the AIA Minnesota Conference on Architecture on November 9, 2026. Learn more about the Gold Medal here.

The American Institute of Architects Minnesota, founded in 1892, is dedicated to advancing a vital profession, vibrant communities, and architecture that endures. For more information on the organization and Minnesota architectural firms, visit our website and subscribe to ENTER, our digital monthly newsletter that explores the people and ideas shaping a better built environment for Minnesota.