Netta Architects received two honors in the 2024 AIA Newark & Suburban Architects Design Awards: a Silver Award for the Applegreen Whitney Houston Service Plaza and a Bronze Award for Essex County College’s West Essex Campus Building. Together, the projects demonstrate the firm’s work across commercial retail and higher education, with architecture shaped around the people who use each building.
Two Projects, Two AIA Design Awards
Applegreen Whitney Houston Service Plaza
Essex County College West Essex Campus Building
Both projects appear in the official AIA Newark & Suburban award winners gallery. The organization’s 2024 Design Awards page provides the program reference.
Silver Award: Applegreen Whitney Houston Service Plaza
The Whitney Houston Service Plaza, formerly known as Vauxhall, is part of Netta Architects’ collaboration with Upland Architects on Applegreen service-area projects in New Jersey. The 11,000-square-foot facility combines retail and foodservice within a setting designed for travelers along the Garden State Parkway.
Netta’s architectural work addressed the project from concept through completion, coordinating the building design with national food partners’ operational needs. The program required attention to customer circulation, the relationship between retail and dining, and the equipment and support spaces behind the public-facing areas.
The result is a service-area project that treats the traveler’s stop as a complete experience. The Silver Award recognizes the Whitney Houston project within the 2024 AIA Newark & Suburban program.
Bronze Award: Essex County College’s West Essex Campus
The West Essex Campus in West Caldwell, New Jersey received the Bronze Award. Netta Architects designed the new academic building to replace an aging facility and support the College’s educational, workforce-development, and student-service programs.
The campus building includes classrooms, science and computer laboratories, administrative offices, student-support spaces, an information commons, and multipurpose areas. Its position along Bloomfield Avenue gives the College a visible presence in the community, while the broader campus plan connects the academic building with parking, pedestrian routes, and athletic facilities.
These relationships matter to everyday campus life: a student arriving for class, a visitor finding support services, and faculty moving between teaching spaces all depend on a building and site that work together.
Related Applegreen Work: Connie Chung Service Area
Netta’s service-area portfolio also includes the Applegreen Connie Chung Service Area in Bloomfield. Developed with Upland Architects, the 7,500-square-foot prototype coordinates convenience retail, foodservice, shared dining, and the requirements of several national brands.
Connie Chung and Whitney Houston are separate Applegreen locations. The 2024 Silver Award was presented for Whitney Houston. The Connie Chung case study provides a complementary look at Netta’s approach to travel-plaza architecture and tenant coordination.
Design Recognition Grounded in Everyday Use
A highway service plaza and a college campus serve different communities, but both ask architecture to organize complex activities in a welcoming, understandable way. These two 2024 awards recognize projects within Netta’s broader work in retail, transportation, and education. Their project pages document the programs and design approach behind the recognition.
Originally published September 23, 2024. Updated September 12, 2026.