2014 Honor Awards
SEATTLE, November 4, 2014 – The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Seattle chapter hosted the annual Honor Awards for Washington Architecture to celebrate excellence in design. Award-winning projects, announced at a packed event at Benaroya Hall, served as powerful demonstrations of the outstanding caliber of design that is consistently produced by Washington-based architects and designers.
The three-person distinguished jury included David Adjaye (Adjaye Associates, London), David J. Lewis (LTL Architects, New York City) and Catie Newell (Alibi Studio, Detroit). The event was moderated by Rob Corser AIA, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington. Co-Chairs for the 2014 AIA Seattle Honor Awards were Mona Zellers, Associate AIA, of LMN Architects and Brendan Connolly, AIA, of Mithun.
From over 150 submittals, the jury chose award winners from two categories – built and conceptual. Across the spectrum of project types, the jury applauded the winners for projects that were modest in scale but spoke volumes in ambition; sensitive to context, material and the environment; inspirational in their aims; playful in their means; and capable of reinventing space in a way that expressed an architectural relationship to the past and inspired social transformation.
AWARD OF HONOR
Oregon State Hospital Memorial Columbarium by Lead Pencil Studio was unanimously well-received by the jurors as an “elegant masterpiece” in which the architect was privileged to play the role of “crafter, inventor, activist and advocate” to push forward something that they strongly believed in, and an immediate corrective gesture to bring dignity to the dead. A small 1896 building, once the crematorium, was used as a backdrop to memorialize 3,500 unclaimed urns that contained flooded ashes of patients at Oregon State Hospital whose families were unknown at the time of death. The result is the transformational role of the architect which “asks architecture to be better than itself”.
Stevens Addition by Architecture for Everyone is a sensitive addition to a single family home that understands the occupant’s basic physical, neural and psychological needs as someone who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The addition fits the wooded site and respects the existing modern northwest style house that was originally designed by Jane Hastings, FAIA. The design keeps the home as homelike as possible which includes a lot of “familiarity and sensitivity to the landscape and respecting time as an experiential condition”. The jurors were emotionally moved by how the home is “not asking for attention, but asking to be lived in.”
AWARD OF MERIT
Muckleshoot Smokehouse by Mahlum
University of Washington Bothell Discovery Hall by THA Architecture
Federal Way 320th Library by SRG Partnership
Helen Street by MW | Works Architecture + Design
HONORABLE MENTION
Seattle Demo Project by Seattle Demo Project, a collective
King Street Station by ZGF Architects
Seattle City Light Denny Substation by NBBJ
Wover by the 2014 Seattle Design Festival Rumble Team Material
Wilkes Elementary School by Mahlum
Belltown Modular by Bushnaq Studio Architecture + Design
Tsing Tao Pearl Visitor Center by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
To view all of the 2014 submissions, visit the Online Gallery.
The program was sponsored by: Schuchart, schuchart/dow, Swenson Say Fagét, Lane Powell, DCI Engineers, Cochran, Goldfinch Brothers, Turner, PCS Structural Solutions, Coffman Engineers Inc., WSP, Berntson Porter & Company PLLC, Affiliated Engineers, Schultz|Miller, Windfall Lumber, Howard S. Wright, Mortenson Construction, Thomas Fragnoli Construction, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Shannon & Wilson Inc., PCL, Malsam Tsang Engineering, KPFF Consulting Engineers, and Coughlin Porter Lundeen.
In-kind contributors: Inform Interiors LLC, Inn at the Market, and Magnusson Klemencic Associates.
