If you're familiar with Alys Beach, then you might have already heard about the second annual Digital Graffiti festival that will be held here on Saturday, June 6th. (If not, you should check out www.digitalgraffiti.com ASAP for all the fun details!)

Well, we’re all very excited to welcome Andrés Duany to the 2009 festival's panel of judges.

Andrés Duany, F.A.I.A., C.N.U.is a principal at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), widely recognized as a founder and leader of "New Urbanism," an international movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment.

Mr. Duany also happens to be one of the brilliant town-planners behind the award-winning communities here along Scenic Highway 30A, such as Seaside, Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach.

In fact, since designing the nearby town of Seaside in 1980 (later described by Time magazine as “the most astounding design achievement of its era”), DPZ has completed designs for nearly 300 new towns and community revitalization projects around the globe.

Duany received his undergraduate degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University, and after a year of study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, he received a master’s degree in architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. Duany has also been awarded several honorary doctorates, the Brandeis Award for Architecture, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Medal of Architecture from the University of Virginia, the Vincent J. Scully Prize for exemplary practice and scholarship in architecture and urban design from the National Building Museum, the Seaside Prize for contributions to community planning and design from the Seaside Institute and the Richard H. Driehaus Prize.

Duany has delivered hundreds of lectures and seminars, addressing architects, planning groups, university students, and the general public. His recent publications include The New Civic Art and Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. He is a founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which has been characterized by The New York Times as “the most important collective architectural movement in the United States in the past fifty years.”

Andrés Duany practices architecture and town planning with his wife Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who is also the dean at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

We're not only excited that Mr. Duany will attend the Digital Graffiti festival on Saturday, June 6th, but we're truly honored to have his participation as one of our esteemed judges.

For more information about Digital Graffiti and our other celebrity judges, please visit www.digitalgraffiti.com.