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Monday, 7 January 2008 | Levent OZLER
2008 AIA Honor Awards Recognize Excellence in Architecture, Interior, and Urban Design
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced the 2008 recipients of the AIA Institute Honor Awards, the profession's highest recognition of works that exemplify excellence in architecture, interior architecture and urban design. Selected from over 800 total submissions, 28 recipients will be honored in May at the AIA 2008 National Convention and Design Exposition in Boston.
2008 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture
The 2008 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture recognize 13 unique projects. The types of projects range from museums and arts centers, to trend-setting residential projects. These projects, which span the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and South Korea, spotlight sustainable building practices and distinguished architecture. Jury members include: Jury chair Peter G. Kuttner, FAIA, Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc., Philip M. Crosby, Assoc. AIA, City of St. Petersburg, John Grable, FAIA, John Grable Architects, Walker Johnson, FAIA, Johnson Lasky Architects, Marsha Maytum, FAIA, Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects, George Nikolajevich, FAIA, Cannon Design, Mark Reddington, FAIA, LMN Architects and Tallman Trask, Hon. AIA, Duke University.
"In the final 13 the jury found themselves fascinated at the craftsmanship in intimate and very personal projects, while simultaneously impressed with the bravura expression in major new projects, and the intelligent restoration of several historically significant buildings," said Jury chair Peter G. Kuttner, FAIA. "This year, more than ever, the award recipients proved that inventive sustainable approaches and the highest caliber design can mesh beautifully in the right hands."
26th Street Low-Income Housing, Santa Monica, California
Kanner Architects
The low-income family housing project is the product of an exhaustive community outreach mission. The design incorporates the region's mild climate, historical precedents of Southern California Modernist architecture, and the human scale of residents and pedestrians.
Delta Shelter, Mazama, Washington
Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects
This 1,000-square-foot weekend cabin is essentially a steel-clad box on stilts that can be completely shuttered when the owner is away. Raised above the ground to minimize potential flood damage and take in 360-degree views of the surrounding forest and mountains, the cabin was conceived as a low-tech, virtually indestructible weekend house.
Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles
Pfeiffer Partners Architects
The renovation took the famous telescope into new dimensions, restoring its mix of Beaux Arts, Neoclassical and Art Deco features while more than doubling its size with the addition of new exhibition spaces, a theater, and a cafe. Griffith Observatory, one of Los Angeles' most visible and beloved landmarks is an iconic presence in the Hollywood Hills.
Heifer International World Headquarters, Little Rock, Arkansas
Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects
The Heifer International Headquarters is designed as a series of ringed bands that radiate outward. Its narrow corridors ensure that all offices have access to natural sunlight, and a bevy of green features earned the design a spot on the AIA Committee on the Environment's Top 10 Green list and LEED Platinum certification.
Loblolly House, Taylors Island, Maryland
KieranTimberlake Associates LLP
The Loblolly House, by the 2008 AIA Architecture Firm Award winner KieranTimberlake, draws inspiration and formal cues from the surrounding coastal flora and landscape: loblolly pines and saltmeadow cordgrass. The 1,800-square-foot house was modularly constructed with simple tools in only six weeks and is intended to sit lightly on the land.
Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle
Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism
This project is located on Seattle's last undeveloped waterfront property, sliced by train tracks and an arterial road. The design connects three separate sites with an uninterrupted Z-shaped "green" platform, descending 40 feet from the city to the water, capitalizing on views of the skyline and Elliot Bay and rising over existing infrastructure to reconnect the urban core to the revitalized waterfront.
Residence Halls Units 1 & 2 Infill Student Housing, Berkeley, California
EHDD Architecture
The architects' solution of infill student housing remedies the urban design challenges of an existing residential site, one block south of the University of California at Berkeley campus. The project increases the density of housing units, creates more usable open space for students, maintains a street wall with units oriented toward the public street and helps to reduce the scale disparity between the existing housing and the more modest structures in the neighborhood.
Shaw Center for the Arts, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Schwartz/Silver Architects, Inc.
The architects combined two primary public venues, the Museum of Art and the performing arts theaters, to form a single structure that cantilevers over the historic rebuilt Auto Hotel. Clad in channel glass and aluminum, the building is designed to withstand major hurricanes as demonstrated by weathering hurricanes Katrina and Rita shortly after it opened.
The Liberty Memorial Restoration and Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
ASAI Architecture
Since structural and material decay shuttered it in 1994, the Liberty Memorial, with its iconic tower monument and public mall in Kansas City, Mo., was the sleeping giant of early 20th century history. ASAI Architecture's renovations restored the ailing facility and added 160,000 square feet of museum space, including an auditorium and education and research centers that are all derived from the memorial's original architectural vernacular.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Steven Holl Architects
The addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art places five translucent, rectangular boxes (called "lenses") on the eastern edge of the museum's campus. The new addition engages the existing sculpture garden, transforming the entire museum site into the precinct of the visitor's experience. The expansion of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art fuses architecture with landscape to create an experiential architecture that unfolds for visitors as it is perceived through each individual's movement through space and time.
Thomas L. Wells Public School, Ontario, Toronto
Baird Sampson Neuert Architects
The first of a new generation of high-performance "green" schools by the Toronto District School Board, Thomas L. Wells is intended to serve as a model demonstrating sustainable design principles and an enhanced learning environment. The building is conceived as a "system of systems," integrating architectural design with environmental performance.
Trutec Building, Seoul, Korea
Barkow Leibinger Architects
This 11-story building situated over a 5-level underground parking structure is clad in a mirrored fractal glass articulated into a series of crystalline-formed bays projecting 20 centimeters. This pattern refracts light and images, rendering the façade as a fragmented and abstract surface.
Unilever House (100 VE), London
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates
Following an extensive consultation process with Unilever, the City of London and English Heritage, proposals were developed that achieved a balance between retaining the important parts of the historic fabric of the building and providing a transformed workplace and spatial experience for the many visitors to the building.
2008 Institute Honor Awards for Interior Architecture
The 2008 Institute Honor Awards for Interior Architecture features a strong presence in the residential sector, with four of ten recipients going to private homes. The other recipients selected were for projects in various industries. Jury members include: Jury Chair Neil P. Frankel, FAIA, Frankel Coleman Architects, Thomas A. Meyer, FAIA, Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd., Julia F. Monk, AIA, Brennan Beer Gorman Architects, Sandra Parét, AIA, HOK Architects and Chuck Zabriskie, Zabriskie Company.
"The body of work submitted, while connected through the commitment of attention to detail, materiality and form making was refreshingly unique in concepts and focus," said Jury Chair Neil P. Frankel, FAIA. "Unusual this year was the variety of intentions and absent of reliance on trends or stylistic preferences."
Anthony Nak Flagship Store, Austin, Texas
M. J. Neal Architects
An elegant, subtle space shows exquisite designer jewelry. The plan is minimalist in the extreme, with white surfaces that vary subtly in texture and a single band of display cases running the circumference of the room.
Architects Office, Los Angeles
Lehrer Architects LA
Although the office would specifically house architects, the architects designed a multipurpose working space that simply and clearly honors the rudiments of work: vast work surfaces, a profusion of natural light, seamless connections to the landscape and fresh air, generous storage and clearly individuated workstations that add up to a coherent, palpable group.
Center for Theatre and Dance, Williamstown, Massachusetts
William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc.
Williams College's Center for Theatre and Dance contains four distinct performance programs: a 550-seat main theater, renovated 210-seat theater, glass-walled dance studio, and a versatile 200-seat studio theater that can be arranged in end stage, arena, or thrust configurations. The center's glass and wood lobby presents a narrow face to Main Street, maintaining a pattern of narrow facades established by other buildings on campus.
Central Park South Apartment, New York City
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects
The owner of the Central Park South Apartment wanted a densely programmed dwelling where the architecture would act as a "coequal frame for the art, the furniture and the view." Charles Gwathmey, FAIA, responded by using asymmetry and sculpted forms to create an enigmatic and unpredictable space that seamlessly incorporates the seemingly arbitrary layout of columns and plumbing lines.
Hotel Boutique La Purificadora, Puebla, Mexico
Legorreta + Legorreta
This renovation project, once a water purification factory from the 19th century, now houses the 32,290-square-foot Hotel Boutique. The original building, was included as part of the new design combining contemporary elements with the rest of the former water-bottling factory.
Illinois State Capitol Chamber Restoration, Springfield, Illinois
Vinci | Hamp Architects, Inc.
The Illinois State Capitol building, designed by French émigré architect Alfred Piquenard, was constructed between 1868 and 1888. The work scope included the re-establishment of significant architectural features from Piquenard's era whenever possible while creating a functional setting for modern-day legislative activities.
Laboratory, Omaha, Nebraska
Randy Brown Architects
The design explores ways to intertwine what is man-made with what is natural. The intention is to create a house that is so interconnected with the land that it is simultaneously natural and man-made, much like abandoned tractors and farm machinery rusting away in the rural landscape.
Novelty Hill Januik Winery, Woodinville, Washington
Mithun
The new 31,000-square-foot winery in suburban Seattle represents a time honored tradition, but with a fresh interpretation that respects the client's love of modern architecture, advanced technology and winemaking. This is a functional, efficient production facility and a welcoming gathering place that clearly establishes an identity distinct from other wineries in the area.
Private Residence, Northfield, Illinois
Roszak/ADC
Thomas Roszak, AIA, designed his own house to be an exploration of how to foster interaction among family members even while each person is engaged in different tasks in different rooms. To this end, the 8,200-square-foot house eliminates the redundancy of the typical suburban family room/living room combination, places the kitchen next to the children's playroom, leaves the entire first floor unenclosed and uses glass paneled walls to further its sense of unencumbered interaction.
Tehama Grasshopper, San Francisco
Fougeron Architecture
This project transforms a warehouse in San Francisco into an office and residence with a rooftop penthouse. Glass panels separate the rooms, deconstructing traditional notions of public and private space, while an industrial palette of materials keeps the design consistent with the surrounding neighborhood. A surprising integration of old and new elements, of competing urban forces brings the remodeled warehouse alive.
2008 Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design
Five projects were selected to receive the 2008 Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design. The University of Arkansas Community Design Center won three of the five awards in this category, displaying an unprecedented concern and devotion for improving the quality of their urban environment. The 2008 Institute Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design Jury included: Jury Chair Harry G. Robinson III, FAIA, Howard University, Krista Ann Becker, AIA, Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners, Bert Gregory, FAIA, Mithun, Lyn Rice, AIA, Lyn Rice Architects and Gil Kelley, City of Portland.
"The range of urban design thinking and the application of sustainable strategies were both broad and deep across the submissions," said Jury Chair Harry G. Robinson III, FAIA. "The acknowledgement that urban design can be a healing undertaking is central to the vocabulary of the honor awards."
Campus Hydroscapes, Fayetteville, Arkansas
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Urban growth from the surrounding campus is disrupting a stream's ecosystem and causing erosion, flooding, groundwater pollution and the loss of aquatic life. Ranging from small arrays of "hydrology pixilation" of streams and wetlands to a large "total marsh," each "hydroscape" proposal uses the purifying processes of natural streams and wetlands to rehabilitate the site.
Habitat Trails: A Low Impact Development, Rogers, Arkansas
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Habitat Trails is a residential low-impact development (LID) consisting of 17 dwelling units for a nonprofit affordable housing provider committed to detached housing. The five-acre development incorporates LID technologies and a range of conservation planning strategies supportive of unit clustering that preserves a third of the site as commonly held open space.
Los Angeles River Rehabilitation Master Plan, Los Angeles
CIVITAS INC.
The 32-mile long concrete channel of the Los Angeles River cuts through the city with restrictive abandon. A team of engineers, urban designers and landscape architects led the urban design and river planning efforts to create a master plan that will rehabilitate the river into a green amenity and an economic engine.
Visioning Rail Transit in Northwest Arkansas: Lifestyles and Ecologies
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Northwest Arkansas (NWA) is the nation's sixth fastest growing region and is expected to double in population within the next 15 years. In the absence of strong local planning traditions, Visioning Rail Transit in northwest Arkansas is the first step in helping area residents envision smart growth development opportunities through context-responsive transportation planning at the regional scale.
Zuccotti Park, New York City
Cooper, Robertson & Partners
The project, a densely urban open space, sits across from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. The original park was severely damaged during the events of September 11, 2001, and later used as a staging area for the WTC clean-up. Afterwards, the owner retained the architect to develop designs for a new park in place of the old.
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