AIA Selects Recipients for Top Awards

by Jonathan McGaha | December 9, 2014 12:00 am

the American Institute of Architects (AIA) selected the recipients for the following awards. To learn more, click on the links below.

2015 AIA Gold Medal Awarded to Moshe Safdie, FAIA

The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted today to award the 2015 AIA Gold Medal to Moshe Safdie, FAIA, whose comprehensive and humane approach to designing public and cultural spaces across the world has touched millions of people and influenced generations of younger architects.

The AIA Gold Medal, voted on annually, is considered to be the profession’s highest honor that an individual can receive. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Safdie will be honored at the 2015 AIA National Convention in Atlanta.

http://www.aia.org/press/releases/AIAB104976[1]

 

Ehrlich Architects Receives 2015 AIA Architecture Firm Award

The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted today for Ehrlich Architects[2] to receive the 2015 AIA Architecture Firm Award. The firm will be honored at the 2015 AIA National Convention in Atlanta. Ehrlich Architects is renowned for fluidly melding classic California Modernist style with multicultural and vernacular design elements by including marginalized design languages and traditions.

The AIA Architecture Firm Award, given annually, is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.

The work of Ehrlich Architects covers a wide variety of program types (residential, commercial, institutional, educational) and uses a much richer palette of materials and textures than the typical California Modernist-influenced firm. However, they are most distinguished by the subtle and complex way they blend Modernist and multicultural design elements.

http://www.aia.org/press/releases/AIAB104980[3]

Peter Eisenman, FAIA, Awarded 2015 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion

The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) named Peter Eisenman, FAIA, the 2015 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion recipient. Throughout his career, Eisenman has been celebrated for his writings, research, and scholarship as well as his commitment to teaching. He is primarily known for his long associations with Princeton, Harvard, Cooper Union, and Yale[4], where he’s been a full-time professor since 2005. The AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion honors an individual who has been intensely involved in architecture education for more than a decade and whose teaching has influenced a broad range of students.

Eisenman has been a visiting critic or professor at nearly a dozen schools across the nation, and he has lectured at countless more. “There are probably very few schools of architecture where Peter is yet to have lectured,” wrote Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, in a recommendation letter. After 60 years of teaching, the shadow cast by his tenure looms over generations of architects: Tod Williams, FAIA; Daniel Libeskind, AIA; Shigeru Ban, Hon. FAIA; and another Topaz recipient, Harrison Fraker, Assoc. AIA[5], all studied under him.

http://www.aia.org/press/AIAB104977[6]

 

Rural Studio Honored with the 2015 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award

The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) selected Rural Studio to receive the 2015 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. The award was granted in recognition of the student-led design/build projects that Rural Studio established to address the dire needs of one of the South’s poorest and most underserved regions.

Students of this Newbern, Ala.-based design/build program within Auburn’s architecture school, founded in 1993 by D.K. Ruth and Samuel Mockbee, FAIA, build homes and community buildings for the residents of western Alabama, where nearly 40 percent of residents subsist below the poverty line. As students spend semester after semester there, they engage racial, economic, cultural, and vernacular issues at a pace and depth unrivaled by any other program. Rural Studio’s projects prove that an authentic conversation with the residents, no matter how unconventional the client, can yield ambitious architecture.

http://www.aia.org/press/AIAB104981[7]

Edward Mazria, AIA, Honored with 2015 Kemper Award

The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) bestowed the Edward C. Kemper Award on Edward Mazria, AIA, for catalyzing the architecture community to combat climate change through the design of energy efficient buildings. Named in honor of the AIA’s first executive director, the award is given annually to an architect who has contributed significantly to the profession through service to the AIA.

Mazria has been at the center of the sustainable design or green building movement, pushing a grassroots revolution to get architects, public officials, developers, and decision-makers to see how buildings affect the environment, why architecture matters, and what role architects can play in driving positive change. Through research, compelling imagery, and tireless public presentations, he made it clear that architecture is the gateway to true long-term global sustainability. Mazria founded Architecture 2030[8] in 2006 and issued The 2030 Challenge[9]: To incrementally reduce fossil fuel usage in new buildings by the year 2030, by which time all new buildings should be completely carbon neutral.

The 2030 Challenge was immediately endorsed by the AIA, which used it as an impetus to create new task forces and continuing-education requirements. In 2009, the AIA issued the complementary 2030 Commitment[10], which helps firms track their progress towards meeting the challenge and offers tools for developing sustainability actions plans for firms’ internal operations.

http://www.aia.org/press/AIAB104982[11]

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