NEW YORK, NY.- The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected the 2011 recipients of the Institute Honor Awards, the profession’s highest recognition of works that exemplify excellence in architecture, interior architecture and urban design. Selected from over 700 total submissions, 27 recipients located throughout the world will be honored at the AIA 2011 National Convention and Design Exposition in New Orleans.

2011 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture

The jury for the 2011 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture includes: David Miller, FAIA, (chair) The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP; Ashley Clark, Assoc. AIA, LandDesign Inc.; Curtis Fentress, FAIA, Fentress Architects; T. Gunny Harboe, FAIA, Harboe Architect, PC; David Neuman, FAIA, University of Virginia; Louis Pounders, FAIA, ANF Architects; Sarah Snodgrass, AIAS Representative, University of Nevada- Las Vegas; Allison Williams, FAIA, Perkins & Will and Jennifer Yoos, AIA, VJAA.

AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre; Dallas, Texas
Design Architect: REX|OMA, Associate Architect: Kendall/Heaton Associates

By positioning back-of-house and front-of-house facilities above and beneath the auditorium instead of encircling it, the 80,300-square-foot, 575-seat “theater machine” extends the technologies of the fly tower and stage into the auditorium to provide an almost infinite variety of stage-audience configurations; liberates the performance hall's perimeter to allow fantasy and reality to mix when and where desired; and allows for greater interaction between artistic and administrative staff, fostering new internal collaborations.

Barnard College Diana Center; New York City
WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism

The 98,000-square-foot multi-use building establishes an innovative nexus for artistic, social, and intellectual life at the college. The facility brings together spaces for art, architecture, theater, and art history, as well as faculty offices, a dining room, and a café.

Rethinking the mixed-use building type, the Diana Center brings together the college’s previously dispersed programs and constituencies by setting up visual juxtapositions that invite collaboration between disciplines.

Horizontal Skyscraper / Vanke Center; Shenzhen, China
Steven Holl Architects

The building hovers above the landscape, freeing it for public use and for a unique scheme of ecosystem restoration. By lifting the building off the ground, the project is both a building and a landscape, a delicate intertwining of sophisticated engineering and the natural environment. The landscape scheme works to minimize run-off, erosion, and other types of environmental damage associated with development. Additionally, the project employs some of the most forward-thinking sustainable design strategies.

New Acropolis Museum; Athens, Greece
Bernard Tschumi Architects Associate Architect: Michael Photiadis

The base of the museum floats on pilotis over the existing archeological excavations, protecting the site with a network of columns. A glass ramp overlooking the archeological excavations leads to the galleries in the middle, in the form of a spectacular double-height room supported by tall columns. The top, made up of the rectangular Parthenon Gallery arranged around an indoor court, rotates to orient the Frieze exactly as it was on the Parthenon centuries ago.

North Carolina Museum of Art; Raleigh, North Carolina
Thomas Phifer and Partners

The museum is, in essence, a single 65,000-square-foot room, separated by partial height walls into galleries, none a discrete, fully enclosed room. Overhead, hundreds of elliptical occuli bathe the interior in even, full-spectrum daylight, modulated to filter out damaging rays. In this gently luminous setting, the artwork takes on heightened vividness. Outside, matte anodized aluminum panels that enclose the building continue the discourse with the landscape. From oblique vantage points on the exterior, underlying strips of polished stainless steel capture unexpected and scintillating reflections.

One Jackson Square; New York City
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, PC

This 35-unit luxury residential building, located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village is home to the highest concentration of early architecture in New York City. The building volume steps down from 11 stories to seven stories, from north to south, accommodating the zoning laws and mediating the varied scales of the surrounding neighborhood. Undulating bands of glass identify individual floors, creating a ribbon-like series of convexities and concavities along the street wall.

The Ford Assembly Building; Richmond, California
Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects

The project converted a crumbling historic icon into a model of urban revitalization and sustainability. Now, Albert Kahn’s 1931 car factory for Henry Ford houses an acre-sized public event venue, restaurant/retail, and tenants including SunPower and Mountain Hardwear. The 500,000-squre-foot waterfront building was awe-inspiring even as a quake-ravaged, brick, steel and concrete ruin. Hence, the project design objective to reflect our current century led to the integration of modern architectural elements for today’s diverse building program while complementing and enhancing the edifice’s powerful forms.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Rooftop Garden; San Francisco, California
Jensen Architects / Jensen & Macy Architects

The SFMOMA’s rooftop garden is an open-air gallery defined by the intersection of sculpture, space and light. The entire back wall of the museum’s top floor is removed, allowing a seamless connection from gallery to garden. A large panoramic window at this new opening offers an elevated view to the garden, presenting it like a landscape painting inside the gallery. A glazed long-span bridge links the museum to a garden pavilion that in turn opens out to the garden through large sliding glass panels.

U.S. Land Port of Entry; Warroad, Minnesota
Julie Snow Architects, Inc.

U.S. Land Port of Entry supports the mission-driven demands of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), responsible for securing the nation’s borders and promoting legal trade and travel. This 43,000-square-foot facility is composed of three separate enclosed areas linked together with a continuous canopy. The main building houses the officer work area and holding cells, the secondary building houses the vehicular inspection garages, laboratory space and firing range, and the commercial building is used for unloading and inspecting commercial vehicles.

University of Michigan Museum of Art; Ann Arbor, Michigan
Allied Works Architecture

The recent expansion and renovation of the 1908 beaux-arts building opens the museum to the campus and regional community by lightening the building envelope and permitting greater public access to common areas. The addition is organized as three gallery wings formed by concrete, limestone, steel and glass that radiate from a central atrium and define corresponding exterior rooms. These new landscapes engage the site and become the spaces of mediation with the surrounding context.

2011 Institute Honor Awards for Interior Architecture
The jury for the 2011 Institute Honor Awards for Interior Architecture includes: John Ronan, AIA, (chair), John Ronan Architects; Jaime Canaves, FAIA, Florida International University; Margaret Kittinger, AIA, Beyer Blinder Belle Architects; Bryan Lewis, The Capital Group Companies and Brian Malarkey, AIA, Kirksey.

The Academy of Music; Philadelphia
KlingStubbins

The beaux arts style opera house owned by The Philadelphia Orchestra is landmarked and historic, but history had not, in fact, treated its ballroom kindly. 151 years of continuous use had taken a heavy toll on the details. Meticulous research and design has restored the original context and spatial qualities to the room. Windows and doors were uncovered and restored, grisaille painting of the trompe l’oeil patterning reintroduced, original crystal and bronze chandeliers faithfully reproduced all towards recreating the original sentiments of its opening day.

Alchemist; Miami Beach
Rene Gonzalez Architect

The project, a floating glass box inserted into the fifth floor of a parking structure and open to the Miami Beach sky, is calmly perched 60 feet in the air like a floating cloud. Inside reflective materials capture the colors and energy of the surrounding environment and make the space a radiant jewel that can be seen from many vantage points throughout Miami Beach.

Armstrong Oil and Gas; Denver Colorado
Lake|Flato Architects

The adaptive re-use of a 1900’s machine shop celebrates the spirit, craft and materiality of its original program. The transformed spaces are organized around a new landscaped courtyard created by stripping away the center section of the existing roof to bring in natural light and ventilation to the interior spaces. A gated entry court on the street front acts as a threshold to the courtyard framed by two brick volumes containing the building’s public spaces on one side and office spaces on the other.

Conga Room; Los Angeles, California
Belzberg Architects

In an effort to meet the clients aesthetic desires for a ceiling that reflected the vibrancy and dynamism of the Latin culture, a pattern was developed made of diamonds from the rumba dance step. The ceiling also boasts a state of the art LED lighting system, which required lighting analysis and optimization, using various building performance software. Patrons ascend the staircase wrapped around this glowing spectacle. Its pattern morphs into the pedals and flowers, and responds to the varying conditions of program and space.

FIDM San Diego Campus; San Diego
Clive Wilkinson Architects

While efficiency required the grouping of the various program areas, the architect’s focus was on creating interaction between the spaces. A looped circulation path encircles the floor plan; generous public areas and hallway lounge settings create opportunities for spontaneous interaction. A color palette drawn from the areas native vegetation appears throughout the space, and a comprehensive graphic program connotes the function of spaces and leads users through the floor.

John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes; Eugene, Oregon
ZGF Architects LLP

The Jaqua Center explores the limits of transparency and connectivity to provide student-athletes a place to gather as a community focused on study and learning. The building incorporates a range of learning environments, from small spaces for individual tutorials to a large 150-seat auditorium. The challenge of creating a tranquil environment where students feel connected to natural landscape elements and daylight was heightened by the chosen location: a busy intersection between campus and the city of Eugene, on the site of a former parking lot at one of the major campus entrances.

Moving Picture Company; Santa Monica, California
Patrick Tighe Architecture

The forms and patterns developed are produced using studies of light. Light is analyzed and modeled three dimensionally. Frames from the animation are chosen and layered to organize spatial qualities and movement throughout the office environment. Grading rooms, edit bays, conference rooms, open and closed offices, client areas, production spaces, entertaining areas, tape vaults, mechanical rooms, machine rooms, exterior terraces and support spaces make up the program of the facility.

The Power House, Restoration/Renovation; St. Louis
Cannon Design

Built in 1928 and in disuse for almost three decades, the historic structure had confounded developers over the years who struggled with its tall volume but relatively small footprint. Crisp, modern workspace is juxtaposed against rusted columns and glazed brick. The new floors are held away from the north and east elevations, which contain dramatic Romanesque windows facing out to the city. The windows afford a significant amount of daylight and views to the surrounding neighborhood.

Registrar Recorder County Clerk Elections Operations Center; Santa Fe Springs, California
Lehrer Architects

The design work is to transform the huge, drab new warehouse into a place of delight. Given its scale, economy and impact were critical. Color was used strategically—with paint and megabanner technology--in space, on select vertical (walls and banners) and horizontal (floors) surfaces, using paint and fabric. Bright colors and imagery energize the entire warehouse and increase productivity.

Vancouver Convention Centre West; Vancouver, British Columbia
Design Architect: LMN Architects, Prime Architects: DA/MCM

As the world's first LEED Platinum convention center, this project is designed to bring together the complex ecology, vibrant local culture and urban environment, embellishing their inter-relationships through architectural form and materiality. The design knits the convention center experience into the urban fabric of the downtown core, using the building to frame public open space and extend the city’s pedestrian activity to the waterfront.

Washington Square Park Dental; San Francisco
Montalba Architects, Inc.

Spatial layout and design decisions were made with the intent of maximizing and filtering natural light through the operatories, an element too often overlooked in dental offices. The long, interior entry ramp is framed by a linear garden which serves as a calming visual counterpoint to the more industrial materials of steel and acrylic. Throughout the space, unexpected views, sculpted with material properties and light, continually shift patients’ perceptions of what is public and what is private.

2011 Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design

The jury for the 2011 Institute Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design includes: Daniel Williams, FAIA, (chair), Daniel Williams Architect; C.R. George Dove, FAIA, WDG Architecture, PLLC; Vivien Li, Boston Harbor Association; Claire Weisz, AIA, Weisz + Yoes Architecture and Bernard Zyscovich, FAIA, Zyscovich, Inc.

Beijing CBD East Expansion; Beijing, China
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Located in the heart of Beijing, the Central Business District (CBD) has emerged over the past decade as China's primary global business address and is now poised for an eastward expansion that will almost double its size. Winner of an invited international design competition, the CBD Eastern Expansion Plan defines opportunities for the growth of commerce, industry, culture and the arts by establishing a flexible framework for growth and an environmentally sustainable approach to 21st Century city design.

Chicago Central Area DeCarbonization Plan; Chicago
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

The project team developed a database (energy use, size, age, use, and estimated carbon footprint) of more than 550 buildings. The team used that database, tied to a 3-D model, to develop the DeCarbonization Plan, which interweaves energy engineering, architecture and urban design. In the DeCarbonization Plan's synergistic approach, eight key strategies work together with a parametric model.

Community | City: Between Building and Landscape. Affordable Sustainable Infill for Smoketown; Louisville, Kentucky
Marilys R. Nepomechie, FAIA; Marilys R. Nepomechie Architect + Florida International University and Marta Canavés, ASLA, IIDA; Marta Canavés Design + Florida International University

This project remediates existing brownfields and re-activates a long-neglected connection among an African American residential neighborhood, an historic Olmsted park, and the Ohio Riverfront. By introducing a range of housing typologies, social service spaces, and new collective green spaces, it fills gaps in an existing 19th century neighborhood fabric, increasing density while sensitively reinforcing its historic urban structure. The project re-activates long-neglected interstitial neighborhood spaces to produce a newly robust public realm.

Gowanus Canal Sponge Park™; New York City
dlandstudio llc

The Gowanus Canal Sponge Park™ is a public open space system that slows, absorbs and filters surface water runoff with the goal of remediating contaminated water, activating the private canal waterfront, and revitalizing the neighborhood. The total proposed area for the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park™ system is 11.4 acres: 7.9 acres of esplanade and recreational open spaces, and 3.5 acres of remediation wetland basins. The most unique feature of the park is its character as a working landscape: its ability to improve the environment of the canal over time while simultaneously supporting public engagement with the canal ecosystem.

Low Impact Development: a design manual for urban areas
University of Arkansas Community Design Center

The 230-page publication, “Low Impact Development: a design manual for urban areas” is designed for use by those involved in urban development, from homeowners, to institutions, developers, designers, cities, and regional authorities. Low Impact Development (LID) is an ecologically-based stormwater management approach favoring soft engineering to manage rainfall on site through a vegetated treatment network. The objective is to sustain a site’s pre-development hydrological regime by using techniques that infiltrate, filter, store, and evaporate stormwater runoff close to its source.

Townscaping an Automobile-Oriented Fabric; Farmington, Arkansas
University of Arkansas Community Design Center

Once a vibrant farming community, central to one of the nation’s largest strawberry and apple-producing regions in the early 1900s, Farmington is now a bedroom community. Unlike the totalizing pattern of a master plan, townscaping employs a serial organization of nodes to create a walkable urban environment within an automobile-oriented fabric. The townscape plan for Farmington integrates multiple placemaking strategies in: 1) context-sensitive highway design, 2) public art planning, and 3) agricultural urbanism. Placemaking in the townscape vocabulary offers a strategic pedestrianization of automobile-oriented patterns without denying the automobile’s fundamental role in servicing contemporary development.