The American Institute of Architects has announced the recipients of its annual Honor Awards for Architecture, chosen by a jury of design professionals. This year’s eleven honored works are well distributed from coast to coast and in one case beyond, by firms small and large. They also reflect AIA’s current social and environmental concerns. A couple of them involve renovation or reuse of existing structures, in line with today’s sustainability objectives. Several make a point of increasing use of natural light versus artificial.
In terms of building types, a large proportion of the winners house cultural and educational functions of some kind. There are no houses, which would have figured strongly decades ago. In fact, there are no residential buildings of any scale – the most recent winner in this competition being a socially responsible multiunit urban complex so honored in 2019. There are no office buildings, no courthouses or city halls, no airport terminals – among types that appeared prominently among architectural honors in the past.
It’s not clear how much this shift in building-type recognition reflects evolution in the profession’s view of design distinction – and how much it reflects variations in the opportunities for architects to create exceptional work. Future awards programs may tell us more about that.
The Century Project at the Space Needle, Seattle | Olson Kundig, Architect
An icon of the Pacific Northwest, the Space Needle was completed in 1962 as the centerpiece of an international exposition. While the tower attracted some 60 million visitors during its first 50 years, surveys revealed that it had lost its original thrill for those stepping off its elevators through decades of interior renovations. Launched in the building’s 55th year, the Century Project is meant to enhance visitor experience for the next half-century.
The current renovation, which is certified LEED Gold for Commercial Interiors, is focused on new ways of seeing. On that top deck, floor-to-ceiling glass barriers with integral glass benches await visitors. The restaurant deck just below has the world’s first rotating glass floor, providing vertigo-inducing views of the Space Needle’s unaltered structural system below Connecting these top levels are all-glass stairs ringing a glass-floored oculus.
Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, Princeton, New Jersey | Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
The goal in creating the Andlinger Center was to provide for specialized research on the world’s complex energy problems. The challenge was to minimize the environmental footprint of a program that requires a lot of energy and to weave within its tight site spaces that would encourage collaboration in this demanding program. Another design objective was not just to connect to, but to enhance, Princeton University’s existing engineering quadrangle by creating outdoor spaces that would appeal to all of its students, whether or not they’re studying the sciences.
The center’s laboratories, offices, classrooms, and conference center are organized around three gardens that bring natural light into its extensive below-grade spaces. A prominent elevator-stair tower emphasizes the interconnection among the center’s parts. The exterior is clad in gray brick that relates to the engineering quad’s masonry cladding – and the campus as a whole — while expressing its own identity. In line with the activities within it, the center has met high standards for sustainable construction and has attained LEED Silver equivalency.
Marine Education Center, University of Southern Mississippi, Ocean Springs, Mississippi | Lake Flato Architects, with Unabridged Architecture
Offering education and outreach programming for the city of Ocean Springs, the facility replaces one destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And during its design and construction two other storms impacted this area of the Gulf coast.
Biologists and ecologists worked closely with the architecture team to assess flora and fauna on areas of the site and select building zones with the least sensitive ecosystems, access to open water, and a suitable elevation – in this case 18 feet above high tide. The several buildings are located within existing tree canopies of pines and live oaks, allowing them to serve as a natural wind buffer.
The center’s architecture highlights sustainable coastal building techniques. It includes outdoor spaces for laboratories, classrooms, offices, assembly, and exhibition spaces. A suspension footbridge across a ravine links the two built clusters. Construction materials were selected to support the health of the center’s occupants and avoid ocean contamination in the event of natural disaster. Yellow pine was chosen for structural framing and white oak for interior millwork and accent paneling. Since both woods are produced nearby, any needed repairs can be made quickly and easily.
Billerica Memorial High School, Billerica, Massachusetts | Perkins & Will, Architect
The town of Billerica, in the far suburbs of Boston, found that its high school, its largest civic building — built in the 1950s and expanded in the 1970s – was outdated and dysfunctional. Many spaces were undersized or underused, and doorway clearances challenged people with mobility impairments. These conditions hindered effective monitoring and prompted safety concerns.
The new school accommodates more than 1600 students, plus a pre-K program, and the district’s administrative offices. The building’s design acknowledges Billerica’s origin as a mill town in its overall configuration and its materials. Red brick walls have been given distinctive geometric corbeling, and timber framing takes on new significance in these carbon-conscious times. Natural lighting takes precedence over artificial, the total transcending academic requirements. Delving into the town’s humble origins, the team designed graphics, including typography, logos, and colors that integrate effectively with the architecture.
The Shed, New York City | Diller Scofidio + Renfro, lead architect; Rockwell Group, collaborating architect
Ready to accommodate the boldest of today’s visual and performing arts, the Shed features a retractable shell that can transform much of it within five minutes from a vast performance volume to an open space usable for outdoor programs. In either configuration The Shed is notched into the base of the 88-story 15 Hudson Yards residential tower, also designed by Diller Scofidio + Refro.
When the shell is not deployed The Shed accommodates two floors of galleries, a versatile theater, rehearsal space, a creative lab, and a skylit event space within its eight levels. Extending the shell creates the 17,000-square-foot multi-use space called McCourt. Combined seamlessly with an adjacent second-level gallery, McCourt can expand into a 30,000-square-foot space accommodating 1,200 people seated or 2,700 standing.
The Shed’s shell is composed of an exposed steel frame clad with translucent cushions of Teflon-based polymer that offers the thermal properties of insulated glass at a fraction of its weight. The entire load of the shell is supported on six wheel assemblies of hardened forged steel at plaza level, each bearing more than a million pounds on the approximate area of a pair of human hands.
In its augural season of 2019, The Shed hosted performances in its theater and in the McCourt while a variety of visual artists exhibited in the galleries. During the current pandemic, the Shed’s outdoor performance capabilities and state-of-the-art HVAC systems were crucial in supporting a safe reopening last year.
Home Building at Thaden School, Bentonville, Arkansas | EskewDumezRipple, Architect
This new high school challenges traditional educational paradigms by letting young people learn by doing. Its pedagogy is focused on three areas of study: narrative and visual communications; physics and mechanics; and a combination of biology, chemistry, and community as they relate to the growing and preparation of food.
The school’s master plan, developed by the design team, envisions makerspaces for these three areas of study, casually identified as “reels, wheels, and meals.” Conversations that took place at meetings among school leaders, community organizations, and the architects informed the design of the Home Building, where “meals” students can examine and challenge existing notions of food production and consumption. In addition to housing the teaching kitchen, the building welcomes all Thaden school’s students to its expansive dining hall for communal meals.
Taking cues from Ozark region farm structures, the Home Building is of all-wood construction, with board-and-batten façades. Like all the school’s buildings, it is closely related to a surrounding landscape of fruit and vegetable fields, orchards, planters, and a greenhouse – completing a loop wherein students can grow and harvest crops, cook and prepare them for meals, and compost the scraps to fertilize future crops.
Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, Texas | Johnston Marklee, Architect
Located on the Menil Collection’s 30-acre campus, the Drawing Institute is the country’s first freestanding building dedicated solely to the collection, study, and conservation of works on paper. The institute is defined visually by its low, elongated profile and by the white steel-plate roofs that extend into angular projections recalling – at larger scale — folded paper.
Its interior spaces are organized around three courtyards soon to be shaded by ample trees flourishing in Houston’s climate. The entire interior is of intimate scale, commensurate with the scale of most works exhibited and examined there. Specific functions such as gallery, conservation lab, administration, and storage are organized like a village under the continuous roof. The central hub of the building, the living room, can accommodate casual gatherings, quiet study, receptions, lectures, or screenings.
A key aspect of the design is the careful modulation of natural light to protect the works on paper yet allow for them to be viewed with natural illumination. Those approaching the building will find refuge from the Texas sun in the shadows cast by the overhangs and trees. Inside, the public spaces receive natural light tempered by the folded roof projections. By the time visitors enter the gallery spaces more than 90 percent of the daylight has been deflected, leaving natural volumetric illumination ideal for the works on display.
Richardson Olmsted Campus, Buffalo, New York | Deborah Berke Partners, with Flynn Battaglia and Goody Clancy, Architects
The central portion of the former Buffalo Asylum for the Insane, a National Historic Landmark, has been transformed into a boutique hotel, a component of the “campus” named for the famous architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who designed the building, and the equally notable landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed its grounds.
The new glass-and-steel hotel entrance now serves as a beacon for those approaching while the illuminated towers identify the building from a distance. Inside, unobtrusive additions and subtractions allow the spaces to serve new purposes. The 191,000-square-foot interior now includes 88 hotel rooms, created by combining and reconfiguring former patient rooms. The lobby features a food service marketplace with flexible furniture configurations. A renovated grand staircase carries guests to rooms on the second floor.
As a catalyst for redevelopment of this campus, the hotel may encourage productive reuse of former asylum buildings, of which there are dozens across the United States.
Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, Atlanta | Miller Hull Partnership with Lord Aeck Sargent, Architects
Located on the Georgia Tech campus, the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design was created to foster environmental education, research, and public outreach on the subject. It was initiated with a grant from the Kendeda Fund to advance sustainability in Atlanta’s built environment. The Fund is also underwriting public programs there to engage local communities beyond the university. Georgia Tech’s mission is to maximize the impact of the building by exposing as many of its students as possible to the building and the lessons it embodies, taking what they learn with them into their careers in the STEM fields all over the globe.
The building’s design is inspired by the vernacular porch of the American South. Its modern interpretation of the porch roof provides for passive cooling, harvesting of solar energy, and rainwater capture. The photovoltaic canopy there generates more than 100 percent of the building’s energy demand (supplying the excess to the campus) and captures enough rainwater to more than meet the building’s needs. The water not processed for use in the building descends through a series of rain gardens and detention structures into the site’s soil.
In terms of construction, the building is Georgia Tech’s first wood-framed structure since the 1880s. Mass timber was selected for its significantly smaller carbon footprint than steel or concrete. For decking and cladding, 25,000 linear feet of salvaged 2-by-4 material was obtained from discarded film sets.
The true measure of the impact of the Kendeda Building, completed in 2019, will be the change it inspires in building design and construction in Atlanta and beyond.
The Owsley Brown II History Center, Louisville, Kentucky | de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop, Architect
The Filson Historical Society shares the rich history of its state and the wider Ohio River Valley through its educational programs and cultural resources. Its new headquarters contrasts with the Beaux-Arts-style mansion it previously occupied, while not entirely rejecting its sense of restraint and stability. In addition to providing more space for expanded archives, storage, and community engagement, the new building helps to dispel the notion that the society is an exclusive club.
Over the course of a year, the project team assembled documentation in support of a new building and to counter understandable opposition to such a change. As a result, it became the first large-scale project in its historic district to be approved unanimously by Louisville landmarks commission in decades.
The 21,000-square-foot building is linked to the earlier mansion by a new public plaza. Its modern structural framing supports layered cavity walls and brick veneer cladding. Its visually porous façade reveals and highlights functions within. On the inside, areas normally hidden, like archive storage, are revealed to showcase the society’s extensive holdings. Features of the mansion and its contemporaries, such as ornately decorated ceiling and hand-carved stairway balustrades are reinterpreted with abstracted motifs representing the society’s region. Working within a modest budget, the designers have relied on ordinary materials detailed in unexpected ways.
US Embassy in London, U.K, Architects: Kieran Timberlake
Representing the United States in the capital of the United Kingdom, this prominent cube within a circle of gardens is meant to symbolize the exceptional bond between our nations, as well as the transparency, equality, and security we now demand of our government buildings. It replaces an architecturally notable landmark, the London US embassy designed by the eminent Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, completed in 1960 and located amid the restrained elegance of London’s Grosvenor Square.
Early in the 2000s, studies were undertaken on whether that building could be upgraded to meet current operational, environmental, and security demands. Once it was determined that a move was necessary, the search for a new site satisfying current design guidelines led to purchase of a 4.9-acre property in a former industrial area along the south bank of the Thames then slated for redevelopment – and now transformed into a dense commercial and residential zone.
A design competition among US firms led to commissioning Kieran Timberlake. Their concept yielded the embassy’s cubic volume, with glazed walls shaded on three sides by sculptural sunshades. The surrounding gardens, designed by the distinguished landscape architecture firm OLIN, offer a public amenity while conforming to today’s heightened security requirements. The circular pond at the base of the building is a key component of the site’s storm water management.
The façades of the LEED platinum-certified structure are composed of an inner layer of laminated glazing and an outer layer of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a transparent film that minimizes solar gain and glare. Interior gardens on several floors – each with a regional theme – are linked by a path that spirals up along the building’s perimeter.
