In March 2014, he was awarded the Brendan Gill Prize for his "insightful candor and continuous scrutiny of New York's architectural environment" that is "journalism at its finest.
Based in Berlin, he covered the crackdown on cultural freedom in Vladimir Putin's Russia, life in Gaza under Hamas, the rise of the far-right in Hungary and Négritude in France, among other topics.
He returned to New York from Europe in autumn 2011 as the paper's architecture critic, and his articles since then, on Hudson Yards,[5] Penn Station, sound,[6] climate change,[7] the New York Public Library, the World Trade Center, transit and infrastructure, redevelopment after Hurricane Sandy, as well as on Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris,[8] Syrian refugee camps as do-it-yourself cities,[9] cultural identity in Baghdad and public space and protest in Turkey, Rio and post-revolutionary Cairo, among other issues at home and overseas, have helped to reshape policy and the public debate about urbanism, architecture and architectural criticism.
[20] In 2018, the climate series authored by Kimmelman with visuals by Josh Haner in The New York Times won an award from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) for "two superb articles on the environmental threats facing two Asian cities" that was "journalism par excellence.
He is the founder and editor-at-large of a philanthropically supported journalism initiative at The New York Times called Headway which is focused on global challenges and paths toward progress.