“The impeded stream is the one that sings.” —Wendell Berry

Now is the time to re-evaluate what we do as architects; to re-center our focus on what is truly essential. The 2010 AIA Seattle Honor Awards for Washington Architecture program provides the opportunity for our community to engage, debate and celebrate work that is visionary, measurable, economical and tectonic. These four words define this year’s submittal categories and provide elemental principles for a didactic dialogue.

The program is intended to be transparent by revealing how the jury reviews the work, inclusive by providing opportunity for diverse entrants (from individuals to large firms, sculptors to theoreticians), didactic in encouraging questions for the jurors and celebratory in honoring all who submitted work.

We invite you to submit one or many of your visionary, measurable, economical and tectonic projects for rigorous review and spirited discourse with an international jury of distinguished practitioners.

We look forward to the dialogue and the celebration!

Ray Calabro AIA & Tyler Engle AIA
Chairs, 2010 AIA Seattle Honor Awards for Washington Architecture

 
Moderator

Nathaniel Kahn
Director, My Architect

Nathaniel Kahn (b. November 9, 1962, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,) is an American filmmaker. His documentaries My Architect (2003) — about his father, the famous architect Louis Kahn — and Two Hands (2006) were nominated for Academy Awards. He is the director of the film The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan (2004). It was originally touted as a three-hour unauthorized look at M. Night Shyamalan. The film turned out to be part of the promotion for M. Night Shyamalan's film The Village. Nathaniel Kahn was Louis Kahn's son with Harriet Pattison. He is a graduate of Germantown Friends School and Yale University.

 
Jurors

Jim Jennings, AIA
Jim Jennings Architecture, San Francisco

In 2008 the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored Jim Jennings’s nearly four decades of practice with its Academy Award for Architecture. San Francisco-based Jennings is known for an unwavering sensibility; one critic described him as “the quintessential Bay Area modernist” for the coolly sensuous rigor of his work. The projects of Jim Jennings Architecture have been internationally published and widely exhibited—the portfolio is primarily residential and commercial with a major institutional project, the Cardiovascular Research Building for UC San Francisco, nearing completion. A jury recently assembled by the Wall Street Journal named Jennings’s Visiting Artists House, an artists-in-residence facility in northern California, one of the "five most influential and inspiring houses of the past decade."

Sheila O’Donnell, Hon. FAIA
O’Donnell+Tuomey Architect, Dublin

Sheila O’Donnell is a partner in O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects and a studio lecturer in UCD School of Architecture who teaches and lectures in Europe and the USA. Her watercolour studies, which explore and develop architecture concepts from landscape to material, have been widely published and exhibited.

Architects of many buildings including the Irish Film Institute, Gallery of Photography, Ranelagh School, Letterfrack Furniture College, Glucksman Gallery UCC, O’Donnell + Tuomey have won many design competitions and more than fifty national and international awards across the twenty years of their partnership, including the RIAI Gold Medal and seven AAI Downes Medals. They have represented Ireland in the Venice Architecture Biennale three times, including a solo exhibition “Transformation of an Institution” in 2004. Their current work includes Lyric Theatre in Belfast and New Students’ Centre for London School of Economics.

Gilles Saucier
Saucier+Perrotte Architectes, Montreal

Gilles Saucier received his diploma in architecture from the University of Laval (b. Arch in 1982). His commitment to design excellence is well recognized by the architectural press worldwide. Since 1990, he has been a visiting professor and an invited critic at several Canadian and American universities, including University of Montréal, McGill University, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, and Seattle University. In addition to lecturing extensively at universities in North America, Gilles has been invited as a guest speaker for AIA San Francisco and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2008 and the New Voices lecture series organized in 2001 by the New York Architectural League. He has also lectured at the power-plant series in Toronto and in “architecture rampant” at the royal Ontario museum in Toronto. Gilles was one of three Canadian architects invited to join the recent governor general team to promote Canadian culture through a series of state visits to Finland and Iceland. His work as a photographer has fine-tuned his approach to architecture and helped evolve his perspective on the world and his work.

Submittal Categories

The Honor Awards program seeks submissions in the following four categories that successfully articulate the challenges presented; explain the ideas that guide responses; and show how the project is shaped. Submissions should demonstrate clarity of idea, process and execution. Projects should respond, but not be limited by, place, history, ecology, purpose, society, the 2030 Challenge®, and the AIA’s 10 Principles for Livable Communities.

visionary

“Dreams are today’s solutions to tomorrow’s problems” —E. Cayce

The Visionary category recognizes unbuilt projects that embody innovative explorations, concepts, and potential within the field of architecture.

 ELIGIBILITY

● Open to all firms and individuals including but not limited to architects, designers, artists, researchers, scientists, students – working within the state of Washington.

● Submissions may be commissioned or self‐generated, research‐based or speculative. Projects may include those intended to be built as well as those that might never be built.

measurable

“A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable“
 —Louis Kahn

The Measurable category recognizes built work, the act of design, and the challenges inherent in realizing an architectural idea.

ELIGIBILITY

● Projects must have been constructed after November 2005.

● There are no geographical restrictions on the projects eligible for submission. Projects built in any location may be submitted by firms with an office within the state of Washington wherein the primary design phases were performed by the Washington branch.

● Projects built within the state of Washington may be submitted by project teams located outside the state of Washington if the project team includes a Washington‐licensed architect.

● Built works may be submitted in only one category—either Measurable or Economical.
 

economical

“Less is more; essentially the greatest effect for the least means” —Mies van der Rohe

The Economical category recognizes built projects that embody the spirit of our time by utilizing limited resources in an innovative and succinct way.

ELIGIBILITY

● Projects must be built works undertaken for a client completed since November 2005.

● There are no geographical restrictions on the projects eligible for submission. Projects built in any location may be submitted by firms with an office within the state of Washington wherein the primary design phases were performed by the Washington branch.

● Projects built within the state of Washington may be submitted by project teams located outside the state of Washington if the project team includes a Washington‐licensed architect.

● Project construction costs shall be under $300 per square foot and the total construction cost shall not exceed $450,000. Total construction costs shall not include taxes, architectural or permitting fees, landscape or FF&E costs. Note: AIA Seattle reserves the right to disqualify a project that has been submitted if the project appears to be in excess of the construction cost limitations described above.

● Built works may be submitted in only one category—either Measurable or Economical.
 

tectonic

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
 —Charles Eames

The Tectonic category recognizes architectural details that embody the sublime craft of executing building elements.

ELIGIBILITY

● Open to all firms and individuals working within the state of Washington including but not limited to architects, designers, artists, researchers, scientists and students.

● Submissions may be commissioned, self‐generated or research‐based. Submissions may be a part or component of a submission in another category.

● Submissions in this category can be any detail or building element including but not limited to building hardware, custom furniture, cabinetry, stairs, custom doors or windows or other building envelope innovation.

Questions?

Program Karoline Vass, kvass@aiaseattle.org, 206.448.4938 x101
Submittal Danielle Henderson, danielleh@aiaseattle.org, 206.448.4938 x100
Support is available during business hours: Tuesday—Friday 10am-5pm
Sponsorship Stephanie Pure, stephaniep@aiaseattle.org, 206.448.4938 x103

 
Many Thanks to Our Sponsors

Charter Construction ● Clothier & Head ● Coffman Engineers● Hoffman Construction ● Inn at the Market ● KPFF Consulting Engineers Magnusson Klemencic Associates ● McGraw-Hill Construction ● McKinstry ● PCS Structural Solutions ● Schultz Miller Stantec ● SvR Design Company ● Swenson Say Fagét ● TRUEbenefits ● Turner Construction ● WSP Flack + Kurtz ● Washington Archives Management

In-Kind Contributors: studio/216 ● ZGF ● NBBJ ● Yuki Kinoshita ● Inform Interiors