Left to right: Gail Sullivan, Founder and Managing Principal, Studio G Architects and Gabriela Shelburne, Principal, Studio G Architects at Fast Company 2026 Innovation by Design Award Ceremony
Studio G Architects is proud to announce that Franklin Cummings Tech has been named an honorable mention in the Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards for 2026 in the Small and Mighty: Fewer Than 100 Employees category.
Now in its 15th year, the Innovation by Design Awards celebrate the designers and businesses addressing today’s most urgent challenges while anticipating the problems of tomorrow. The program is one of the most prestigious design competitions in the industry, spotlighting work that exemplifies originality, beauty, sustainability, user insight, cultural significance, and measurable business impact.
Franklin Cummings Tech’s 68,000-square-foot campus in Boston’s Nubian Square reimagines technical education as an accessible, community-centered engine for economic mobility and workforce development. Designed by Studio G Architects in collaboration with STUDIO ENÉE, the all-electric, LEED Gold-targeted campus serves a predominantly first-generation student body that is 73 percent students of color, while creating a welcoming and visible presence in the historic heart of Boston’s Black community. The compact, flexible design brings 18 educational programs, including automotive technology, engineering, robotics and the building trades, under one roof, encouraging collaboration across disciplines while turning the building itself into a hands-on teaching tool through exposed structural and mechanical systems, rooftop renewable-energy laboratories and public-facing learning spaces. By transforming a long-vacant and challenging site into a state-of-the-art educational hub, the project demonstrates how architecture can advance equity, connect education directly to emerging industries, engage the surrounding community and catalyze neighborhood investment, all while giving students the opportunity to learn from the very technologies and sustainable systems they will encounter in the workforce.
“Being recognized by Fast Company for Franklin Cummings Tech is especially meaningful because this project reflects our belief that great design can expand opportunity and strengthen communities,” said Gail Sullivan, Founder and Managing Principal of Studio G Architects. “We set out to create more than a new campus. We wanted to design a place where the building itself becomes part of the education, where students can see and engage with technologies they are preparing to work with, and where the surrounding community feels welcome and connected. This recognition celebrates the incredible collaboration behind a project that is helping prepare the next generation of skilled professionals while contributing to the continued vitality of Nubian Square.”
Honorees were selected by a panel of top designers, business executives from leading organizations, and Fast Company editors.
“The Innovation by Design Awards have always recognized the ideas that challenge convention and show what’s possible when design is treated as a strategic force, not an afterthought. Congratulations to this year’s honorees, who demonstrate how thoughtful design can solve meaningful problems and create new possibilities for people and businesses,” said Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company.
To see the complete list, go to fastcompany.com/innovation-by-design/list, and read about the winners in the Fall issue of Fast Company magazine on newsstands September 22, 2026.