Join us in exploring and celebrating the work of Washington architects!

In this era of change, how do architects remain inventive, agile and break out of professional boundaries? AIA Seattle invites the architectural and broader community to experience creative solutions and resourceful projects that celebrate design excellence in these exciting and challenging times. Join us for the 2009 AIA Seattle Honor Awards for Washington Architecture and help us explore and celebrate the work of those shaping our built environment.

AIA Seattle received over 175 submissions — both envisioned and realized — ranging from commercial to residential and beyond. Projects are reviewed by a distinguished jury. Winning projects are first announced at the live Awards presentation. All projects submitted are available to view online here.

The 2009 AIA Seattle Honor Awards presentation features a performance by composer, musician, and visual artist Paul Rucker. This performance is sponsored by SSA Acoustics.

jury

Nigel Dancey, RIBA Foster + Partners, London
November 5, 5:30-7p: "The Architecture of Integration" Lecture  @ Seattle Central Library. 1.5LU/1.5HSW/1.5HSW

Nigel Dancey joined Foster + Partners in 1990, becoming involved in numerous competitions including Jiushi Tower, Shanghai. His early built projects include Yaraicho; a pair of office buildings in Tokyo, Japan and projects for Samsung Motors in Seoul, Korea. He was subsequently project architect for the Joslyn Art Museum addition in Omaha, Nebraska – Foster + Partners’ first building in the United States. He has lately led his team on a number of competition winning schemes that are now being realized, including the Seattle Civic Centre, the Huadu Hotel competition in China and Al Faisaliah II, a new mixed-use tower in Riyadh.

He has been awarded an Honorary Senior Fellowship by the Design Futures Council and became an executive director of the practice and a member of design board in 2007, to which he brings to bear a particular expertise in the social agenda, concentrating on a broad cross-section of the practice’s work.

Mark Rios, FAIA, FASLA, Rios Clementi Hale, Los Angeles

Founding Principal, Mark has been the leader of both the design and the business direction of Rios Clementi Hale Studios since establishing the firm in 1985. He has built a practice that has an award-winning tradition across an unprecedented range of design disciplines. Mark is an Associate Professor at the USC School of Architecture and Director of the Landscape Architecture Department. His continued focus is on the quality of the design work, as the scale and complexity of the firms projects grow.

Teddy Cruz, eStudio Cruz, San Diego

Teddy Cruz’ work dwells at the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, where he has been developing a practice and pedagogy that emerge out of the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research and design production. Teddy’ Cruz has been recognized internationally in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations such as Casa Familiar for its work on housing and its relationship to an urban policy more inclusive of social and cultural programs for the city. He obtained a Masters in Design Studies from Harvard University and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. He has recently received the 2004-05 James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize and is currently an Associate Professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD in San Diego.

moderator

Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA, University of Virginia
November 6, 6:30-8p: "Sustaining Beauty" Lecture @ University of Washington, Kane 120. 1.5LU/1.5HSW/1.5SD

Elizabeth K. Meyer is one of the leading landscape architectural theorists in the United States. She has lectured at universities on four continents, and published widely on topics concerning contemporary landscape design practice and theory, such as Site Citations: Grounding the Modern Landscape in Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn’s Site Matters and The Post-Earth Day Conundrum: Translating Environmental Values into Landscape Design in Michel Conan’s Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture. Her writings provocatively question conventional norms and assumptions. In Uncertain Parks. Disturbed Sites, Citizens and a Risk Society, Meyer explores the social implications and aesthetic conundrums inherent in the making of new parks on toxic industrial sites. In Sustaining Beauty. The Performance of Appearance, she calls for the insertion of aesthetic concerns into a sustainability agenda arguing that without them sustainable design will have a limited impact on the environmental practices and ethics of the public. More on Elizabeth here.


2009 honor awards co-chairs

Shannon Nichol RLA, ASLA, LEED AP

Shannon Nichol's site-specific landscape designs can be found in cities throughout the world. Shannon's clear, distinct concepts have inspired and unified complex, interdisciplinary projects, from rooftop parks to neighborhood masterplans. Her work has been widely recognized for its fluent relationship with distinctive architectural contexts and for incorporating high intensities of use into fluidly cohesive environments.

Shannon is a founding partner of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. Recent examples of Shannon's work as Design Partner may be found in such projects as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation campus, Chicago's Lurie Garden at Millennium Park, Boston's North End Parks, and the McCaw Hall Opera House in Seattle. Shannon regularly serves on design-award juries for national and local chapters of the ASLA and AIA. She has held positions on several appointed boards, including design-advisory committees for Seattle's historic 1962 World's Fair campus (Seattle Center).

Don Miles FAIA

Don Miles is a principal and director of urban design at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects in Seattle. Don has over 35 years of experience as an architect and urban designer. He has specialized in public and commercial facilities, community development guide plans, and historic preservation. He is a frequent lecturer, has been a consultant to numerous cities and business people throughout the country, and is a published author and analyst of design issues relating buildings to their external environments. Don is a founding board member of Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit corporation based in New York. Its objective is to improve the relationship between the design of public areas and the way people use them.

many thanks to our 2009 honor awards sponsors

GOLD

SILVER
ABKJ Inc.
Affiliated Engineers NW
Arup
The Blue Book of Building and Construction
Cary Kopczynski & Company
Clothier & Head
Coffman Engineers, Inc.
Copiers Northwest, Inc.
Coughlin Porter Lundeen
Glacier Stone Supply
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd.
Imaginit Technologies
Inn at the Market
KPFF Consulting Engineers
Magnusson Klemencic Associates
McGraw - Hill
Nucor Steel
PCS Structural Solutions
Schirmer Engineering Corporation
Schultz Miller
Stantec
Turner Construction

SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS
3form/Light Art
Greater Seattle Business Association
Haakenson Group
Knoll
Meyer Wells
Sellen Construction
SSA Acoustics
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects