Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fabric, Studs, the design-build pavilion produced by fourth-year students in the School of Interior Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was awarded the 2026 Tau Sigma Delta Bronze Medal on May 15.
The project — a 625 sq ft modular exhibition space built from a fixed budget of ordinary materials — hosted 13 student essays and billboard-style posters on contemporary Latin American architecture, drawing on American roadside advertising culture as its formal language. It was exhibited at the McNutt-Burks Building in Knoxville's Old City as part of First Friday Knoxville earlier that same month.
The pavilion's structural design, layout, and curatorial strategy were developed simultaneously as a single design problem, rather than as sequential decisions — the module's construction logic, the flow between pieces, and the encounter with each essay resolving one another. The studio worked from a starting concept of scarcity: as in a supermarket, once you know your budget, you try to get more for less.
The award recognizes Charlotte Albright, Adele Berelsman, Lauren Bouchoux, Margaret Bremner, Michelle Chen, Ella Chipley, Abigail Dearstine, Jackson Gupton, Alison Hamplin, Nora Heely, Jenna King, Emma Kissel, Brittany Portas, Adriana Scialla, and Alexandra Vega-Cruz, who authored the pavilion under the direction of studio instructor Nicolás Valencia.