Architectural Record Editor in Chief Robert Ivy FAIA (see editorial journal from his Seattle visit) addressed a festive assembly at the University of Washington Faculty Club, bringing honor and recognizing distinguished contributions to the advancement of the design professions, quality in the built environment, and community service. The statements below summarize notable achievements of 2001 honorees.

AIA Seattle Medal 2001:
CAROLYN D. GEISE FAIA

2001 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education:
Lee G. Copeland FAIA

2001 Seattle electee to AIA College of Fellows:
Peter C. Pran FAIA

AIA Seattle Honorary Members 2001:
Marcia Gamble Hadley
Hugh Hochberg
Tom Kinsman

Twenty-five Year Award:
Weyerhaeuser Company Headquarters

Allied Organization Award 2001:
Plymouth Housing Group

Community Service Award 2001:
AIA Seattle Disaster Preparedness & Response Team

AIA Seattle Medal 2001:
Carolyn D. Geise FAIA
The Medal, the highest award that AIA Seattle can confer on a Member, recognizes distinguished lifetime achievement and service to the profession, the community, education, and the arts.

In a career combining special achievements as an architect, as a developer, and as a community organizer, Carolyn Geise has exemplified ideals of ethical practice and service to society. A professional activist since her architecture student days, when she staffed the AIA booth at Seattle's World's Fair in 1962, Carolyn Geise has served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Washington Board of Registration for Architects and as a member of the AIA's national Ethics Council. Of special note, she has devoted the last decade to the design and re-creation of a unique human and natural community environment in Seattle's Belltown, the much-admired Growing Vine Street project. Her advancement to the AIA College of Fellows - as the only woman architect to achieve this honor in 1989 - recognized her public service, her service to the profession, and the inspiration her professional achievement continues to provide to the ever-increasing number of women aspiring to success in the design professions.

AIA/ACSA 2001 Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education:
Lee G. Copeland FAIA
In a career of unusual breadth and achievement, Lee Copeland has managed that rare balance of mutually reinforcing roles in education and practice. He has had the major role in shaping both the urban form and the "urban formers," having taught, mentored, or collaborated with virtually every urban designer in the Northwest and beyond. Lee has explored and advanced the discipline both in private practice and in teaching and administration, as Dean of both the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts and as a member and President of the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). The projects of his practice over three decades, many now in maturity, have significantly influenced the urban form of the greater Puget Sound region as well as major institutions such as the University of Washington and other urban campuses across the US.

2001 Seattle electee to AIA College of Fellows:
Peter Pran FAIA
This distinction, accorded to 72 architects in the nation this year, recognizes outstanding achievements to advance the profession.

This latest of many honors to Peter Pran, Design Principal of NBBJ, cites the "intellectual courage, professional vitality, and moral leadership" [which] have won him international recognition, profoundly transformed the architecture practices whose design efforts he has directed, and extended his powerful influence throughout the architectural community worldwide."

A native of Norway and a 1969 recipient of the MArch from Illinois Institute of Technology, Peter Pran joined NBBJ in 1996. Peter Pran formerly helped shape the design culture of Ellerbe Becket (1986-96) and at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (1966-69). Over the course of his brilliant career, he has created an extraordinarily innovative body of work, distinguished by its energy, fluidity, and complexity, that has influenced the present condition and altered the future course of architecture worldwide. An avowed modernist, Pran has simultaneously acknowledged his debt to his mentor, Mies van der Rohe, and deliberately freed himself from explicit discipleship. Steadfastly resisting the pull of the past - including his own - he seeks to free modernism from rigid dogma and equally rigid forms and to reach a deeper understanding of its foundational principles. Passionate in his devotion to architecture, Pran produces work that is informed as much by social conscience as by vision, by sensibility and logic and morality.

Pran's influence extends well beyond his own work and his firm's practice, to the countless students he has taught in the US, Japan, Italy, and Denmark. He has made it his mission to persuade young seekers to think broadly, to design with integrity, and to embrace not only the aesthetic delights but also the social and moral responsibilities of architecture. He shares his insights generously and widely, as jury member and critic, guest lecturer, and participant in national and international symposia.

Books documenting his projects and thinking include the 1998 NA Monograph Peter Pran -- An Architecture of Poetic Movement: Altered Perceptions, with supporting essays by Christian Norberg-Schulz, Kenneth Frampton, Fumihiko Maki, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Daniel Libeskind. Over the last ten years, he has won 15 international architecture competitions, and his work has been recognized with numerous design awards, including two national from Progressive Architecture, three national from the AIA, 12 from AIA New York, and two from AIA Chicago. A book of his work entitled Peter Pran - Recent Works in the Academy Editions series on the world's leading architects, was a #1 bestseller among professional publications in the US for four months. Peter Pran worked with Mies van der Rohe as Project Designer on the Berlin National Gallery in Germany, the Chicago Federal Center, and the Toronto Dominion Center; and with SOM as Project Designer on the Sears Tower (in schematic design), and on the Jeddah International Airport in Saudi Arabia.

Selected recent projects include the Deloitte and Touche Headquarters, Wilton, Connecticut; Telenor Headquarters; Oslo; Paul Allen Vulcan Headquarters, Seattle; Seoul Dome, Kwun Tong Town Centre; Hong Kong; New York Psychiatric Institute, Manhattan; and Manggarai Integrated Transportation Terminal, Jakarta.

AIA Seattle Honorary Members 2001:
Marcia Gamble Hadley
Decades of advocacy and action in the area of urban housing distinguish the career of Marcia Gamble Hadley. In public and private practice as a housing developer, she has helped shape policy and to expand public and professional perception of housing design possibilities. Her landmark work on Seattle's Pine Street Cottages influenced designers and decision-makers while it helped develop the public taste for alternative residential forms. With Threshold Housing Corporation and now in a private development practice, she "preaches the gospel" and also "walks the talk" of socially responsible and economically viable housing development.

Hugh Hochberg
"A brilliant scholar of design management," Hugh Hochberg has made a lifetime study of effective practices. He has worked with many of the most successful firms in the Northwest, in the nation, and worldwide, to understand and improve their service delivery processes. He has played a most significant role in the advancement of Northwest design and the accomplishment of design and business objectives, and by this achievement has earned the respect and admiration of his colleagues in architecture and throughout the design professions.

Tom Kinsman
As a code official with the Seattle Department of Design, Construction and Land Use, Tom Kinsman developed a legacy of fair-minded, creative, and ethical administration of standards. Design professionals have appreciated his understanding of the risks and rewards of design innovation, and relied on his logical and rational approach to the codes application process. His recent retirement reminds us of the value of knowledgeable allies in public positions.

AIA Twenty-five Year Award 2001:
The Weyerhaeuser Headquarters
This national award recognizes a building project 25 to 35 years since its completion, that exemplifies design of enduring significance.
George Weyerhaeuser Jr. will comment on the award given to this influential building, manifesting the expression of a unique corporate culture as well as design ideals. The San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) and the landscape architect Peter Walker collaborated on the project, completed in 1971.

Allied Organization Award 2001:
Plymouth Housing Group
... an organization which has notably contributed to the goals of AIA Seattle ...
Plymouth Housing Group, founded and unfailingly supported by Plymouth Congregational Church, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. From its earliest days involved in urban rehabilitation to achieve SRO Housing PHG has recently expanded its scope to include new construction and infill projects. PHG has since grown to become one of the largest providers of very-low-income housing in downtown Seattle, with more than 660 rental units and 17 retail tenants in 10 buildings. The Group's work has placed a value on good design, effectively utilizing design services to create places that contributed to the vitality of Seattle's downtown neighborhood while serving a very needy population segment. Plymouth Housing Group has earned the respect of public and private entities engaged in housing development, as well as the admiration of the design community involved with and influenced by their projects.

Community Service Award 2001:
AIA Seattle Disaster & Preparedness Team
This award, given this year for the first time, recognizes an individual or group, including an AIA or Assoc. AIA Member of AIA Seattle, for the achievement of significant community service objectives and for exemplifying the application of architectural skills, values, and dedication to the advancement of community goals.

In the days and weeks following the 6.8 earthquake that rocked Western Washington on February 28, 2001, the AIA Seattle DP&R Team sprang into action immediately to provide information and assistance to their fellow citizens. The years of persistence in training and preparation for such an event paid off in the mobilization of resources and experience that helped their fellow professionals, public officials, media sources, and citizens near and far to understand and respond to the immediate and potential results of the quake. We acknowledge the wisdom, dedication, and spirit of these individuals and their shared commitment to community service.