yeah, i have a friend who worked on the house by suyama that won the honor award. he mentioned the lack of discussion.

I think it could be expected that a jury that is flown into a place to judge work in one afternoon and present would probably be making broad comments and one should expect great generlizations. Really, how much in depth discussion can you have about a suyama house?

I don't know much about snow or blumberg. Brian is local here and a pretty good architect.

see here ... Brian Healy Architects

healy won a housing competition a few years ago (chicago?). beautiful project.

julie snow has a practice in minneapolis. used to be partners with vincent james in james/snow architects. they've both done very well since the split. she's been well published for the children's museum in st paul, a series of manufacturing and office facilities, and an exquisite house in nova scotia. i recently saw a monograph of her work at the chicago architectural foundation. tough, rigorous modernist. very clean.

i know both of these more through work than words. possibly they're not talkers, just doers.

How refreshing to know of people who let their work speak rather than some drivel from their mouth. I don't think I have ever read anything about Corb desribing Ronchamp with some Archi-babble, although I know of a few who have cried once inside..... including FOG.

it's not clear to me why you thought this was a dud jury.
i actually found them one of the more outspoken and interesting juries in the past few years for the AIA seattle (jury member by telphone last year, wtf?)...
their discussion about looking at projects that served a greater public good, and their coming to the table without preconceived notions about "northwest" architecture were valid points.
quite evident when no awards went to the cutler / miller-hull / olsen sundberg group.

this was the second year in three that suyama has won the honor award. two years ago they won for this house >> fauntleroy residence

I'm originaly from Minneapolis, home of Julie Snow architects. They do some great stuff, and their firm is a coveted place to work at. Many of my professors worked for or once worked for Julie Snow. She's pretty innovative and great, I gotta tell ya.

and here is this year's winner in case you missed it in the news >> schuchart residence

shirley blumberg is a partner at the toronto based office of KPMB Architects.

for the record I think george's work is quite good. Earlier I was commenting on the idea that it is difficult to have a quality dicussion about a single family house. Missing the social, political, public issues that make other projects more interesting.

They were a dud jury because they displayed zero backbone and the projects they gave awards to were hypocritical of their opening general statements. Also they offered no discussion of the selected projects.

I think the AIA was tired of Miller Hull, Olsen Sundberg, Cutler, and Suyama getting awards every year for house projects so this year, they attempted to bias the jury by giving the awards an underlying theme of celebrating architecture for the greater good. This effectively removed residential projects from contention (about 2/3 of 170 total entries) and forced the jury to pick from some less than stellar larger projects.

The jury should be judging the projects clearly on design excellence without having to look at them through politico/socio colored glasses...

There were about a dozen residential projects that the jury could've said "Screw the 'theme', we're giving this house an award because it rocks!" But they didn't.

The jury claimed to be looking for innovation and design excellence on a national or global scale, but the projects that received awards weren't very innovative, particularly sustainable, or mind-blowing aesthetically. In fact, most of the award winners were mediocre at best.

The jury also claimed to be looking out for the small office/young architects, but gave out awards to some large firms in Seattle - NBBJ, Mithun, and Mahlum

Another juror claimed that they were looking for economy of design and restraint - then they hand out the Honor Award to one of the lushest and most expensive private residences in Seattle!

I was happy that they at least got three jurors on stage this year since Ming Fung "phoned it in" last year and Enrique Norten didn't bother to show up a couple years ago!

Take a look at all the entries at www.aiaseattle.org

thanks for the link dml955i. It is helpful to see images. I myself am tired of 'nicely composed' project winning AIA awards..there needs to be more than just composition IMO. BTW...there are a lot of nice entries in the Northwest...good work out there. You don't need some lame award to validate your work.

dml955i, I'm laughing at your post because your complaints seem to mirror Julie Snow's work. I've never found her design/concepts to be innovative or sustainable and typically are done for very elite clients.

I've been in audience a few times where Julie Snow presented her work and know several people that have worked with her. She comes across very elitist and contractors have called her a certified "man hater." Personally I think she gets a lot of publicity because she is a woman and owns her own firm whereas I personally know other women architects locally that are equally as talented. By of course AIA Seattle wouldn't invite a juror that put firm letters on her work instead of her own name.

Also Healy is a big-wig at the BSA (the Boston Society of Architects - the Boston chapter of the AIA, but it kept it's name because it predates the AIA). He has some clout about awarding grants and the such. His student at Yale (1st Year MArch1 design studio) uniformly are blase' about his comments.