AIA names 2009 small project award recipients

Washington, D.C. – May 18, 2009 – The American Institute of Architects have selected the 20 recipients of the 2009 Small Project Awards. The AIA Small Project Awards Program, now in its fifth year, was established to recognize small-project practitioners for the high quality of their work and to promote excellence in small-project design. This award program emphasizes the excellence of small-project design and strives to raise public awareness of the value and design excellence that architects bring to projects, no matter the limits of size and scope.

The jury for the Small Project Awards includes: jury moderator Louis Smith, AIA, Microtecture, PLLC; Kenneth Workman, AIA, RWA Architects, Inc.; Sanford Steinberg, AIA, Steinberg Design Collaborative, LLP; Eric McRoberts, AIA, RLPS; Katherine Austin, AIA; Sherry Ahrentzen, Assoc. AIA, Arizona State University.

Award recipients are categorized into three groups; (1) Small project objects (furniture, fixture, or fragment; up to $50,000 construction budget), (2) Small project structures (up to $500,000 construction budget) and (3) Accessible residential designs.

Accessible Residential Design

Green Lake Residence, Seattle, Washington
ZAI inc.
This three-story "urban infill" home is designed to respond to the various physiological and socioeconomic changes people may experience over the course of their lives, and is intended to demonstrate that universal design need not appear ugly or unusual. Gently sloping paths connect the main floor to the front sidewalk, and the basement to the rear alley. All doors are wide (3'-0") for enhanced maneuverability, and the house has many other universally-designed features, including level thresholds at all exterior doors, lever handles, and curb-less showers.

Luminous Bodies Residence, Evansville, Indiana
ASTIGMATIC Studio
The residence is a poetic response to the disjunction and unification represented in the literal commission: (1) to design a living space for a divorced couple that upon retirement wanted to live together. (2) to design a living space to be shared by two individuals with very different mobility needs one with cerebral palsy, one without. The residence is configured in a “V” plan in order to maximize the separation of the (2) master bedrooms while simultaneously maximizing the connection each bedroom has with the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Saratoga Pool, Santa Clara County, California
Min | Day
With wheelchair accessibility integrated graciously into the patio, the "vanishing edge" pool straddles the narrow end of the ridge on which the house rests. Completing the reconstructed landscape, the project resolves the house's geometries to complement the steeply sloping topography. Ramps subtly conform to the slope of the land and discretely form a "transfer bench" at the east side of the pool to allow for wheelchair accessibility. Wooden benches and planters define edges and eliminate the need for guardrails.

Small Project Objects

Atlas Performing Arts Center - Shadow Signage, Washington, DC
CORE architecture + design
The design of the community-based Atlas Performing Arts Center is accented with well-designed, distinctive interior and exterior signage. The exterior signage is a renewed art deco cinema marquee that reads “Atlas” in vertical brightly-lit letters. The signage on the interior of the space had to be equally appealing and bold. For the design of the signage outside of the two theatres the architect used custom-designed shadow letters.

Blatz Bottle Apertures, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Johnsen Schmaling Architects
As part of the conversion of a now defunct brewery into a mixed-use project, a series of bottle doors were designed that separate the two-story entry lobby from an adjacent public lounge area. Each aperture is 9’-6” wide and 9’ tall and consists of a welded aluminum frame and 1,590 horizontally stacked empty beer bottle. Using CNC technology, the bottles are held in place by a thin web of precision-milled neoprene rings that are suspended between the members of the aluminum frame.