AIA announces 2022 Architecture Awards winners

Project excerpt: "The new center is bound on two sides by a masonry wall originally designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1911. Now covered in ivy, the wall spurred the concept of entering a garden, and the center interweaves a series of pathways, courtyards, and three three-story buildings into the landscape. The overall design allows the center to encompass a large and sensitive program while still respecting the existing campus vernacular."

Billerica Memorial High School, Billerica, MA
Perkins & Will

Project excerpt: "A new brand and visual identity for Billerica are encapsulated in the concept, 'Reflection with Direction: Honoring the Past, Aiming for the Future.' Delving into the town’s humble roots, the team designed logos, colors, typography, and graphics that seamlessly integrate into the architecture. The concepts can be easily replicated in signage, print, and digital media, as well as clothing and uniforms, allowing the town to represent itself confidently in nearly any setting."

Home Building at Thaden School, Bentonville, AR
EskewDumezRipple

Project excerpt: "The master plan envisioned a series of makerspaces that correspond with the school’s three distinct programs, charmingly named reels, wheels, and meals. The design process included gathering more than 30 school leaders, the team, and a dozen community organizations. The conversations that flowed from those meetings informed the Home Building, which allows the meals program to subvert existing notions of food consumption and production in its contemporary teaching kitchen."

Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, Atlanta, GA
Miller Hull Partnership

Project excerpt: "The building’s overarching design hinges on a tight envelope and a modern reinterpretation of the porch vernacular that supports passive cooling, solar harvesting, and rainwater capture. The team began its efforts by optimizing the program and efficiently using the space, including placing outdoor classrooms on the building’s regenerative porch and an outdoor lab on its roof. Combined, they offer more than 21,000 square feet of space for learning and socialization. After one year of operation, the building and the school have realized immense savings as the building’s net-positive systems generate no energy or water bills."

Marine Education Center at the University of Southern Mississippi, Ocean Springs, MS
Lake|Flato Architects in collaboration with Unabridged Architecture

Project excerpt: "The center supports a career-based working environment that relies on a blend of formal, informal, and free-choice thinking and higher education strategies that focus on the north-central Gulf of Mexico’s coastal ecosystems. Promoting careers in marine sciences and fostering community involvement, the center’s campus is a place to study and research environmental education and coastal resilience. The center’s Citizens Science Library is open to the public, and it also serves as a venue for community organizations with parallel missions."

Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX
Johnston Marklee

Project excerpt: "The institute is defined by a series of volumes and courtyards that are unified by a white steel-plate roof that hovers above the landscape, much like a folded sheet of paper. Two entry courtyards await visitors and act as thresholds between the institute’s indoor and outdoor spaces. Within these courtyards, the roof’s folds embrace the tree canopy to support a shaded and contemplative air that permeates the institute. Additionally, the roof acts as a reflective surface for the trees’ shadows, contrasting with the cladding’s grey cedar planks."

Richardson Olmsted Campus, Buffalo, NY
Deborah Berke Partners, with Flynn Battaglia, Goody Clancy

Project excerpt: "The campus is one of the most important buildings and landscapes in Buffalo, a city that boasts a rich architectural heritage. Its abandonment, which lasted decades, ran parallel to the city’s decline due to deindustrialization and population loss. The foreboding state of the derelict building also had the unfortunate side effect of reflecting the stigma of mental health facilities. Now, a new glass and steel entrance serves as a beacon, establishing new connections between the building, the landscape, and a discreet parking area. At night, the new addition glows like a lantern, while the illuminated towers support the building’s stature from a distance. The new entry pavilion relies on light and transparency to demonstrate its contemporary contrast to Richardson’s original masonry building."

The Owsley Brown II History Center, Louisville, KY
de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop

Project excerpt: "The 21,000-square-foot center has an open and delicate masonry structure supported by modern construction techniques that rely on brick veneers and layered cavity walls. The center remains connected to the Ferguson Mansion through a new public plaza, and its visually porous facade reveals and highlights its programmatic functions. Inside, the team’s strategy of layering materials continues with an inner lining of wood slat paneling. Areas that are normally hidden, like archival storage, are instead revealed to showcase the society’s extensive assets. Throughout the building, glass-walled passages and informal exhibition spaces provide opportunities to explore and discover, seamlessly melding the boundaries between the center’s public and private spaces."

The Century Project at the Space Needle, Seattle, WA
Olson Kundig

Project excerpt: "The renovation, which is certified LEED Gold for Commercial Interiors, builds on the central premise that informed the Space Needle: a new way of seeing. The project includes the world’s first rotating glass floor on the restaurant level just below the observation deck. Above, floor-to-ceiling glass barriers with integral glass benches await visitors on the observation deck. Connecting all three levels, which feature revised interiors, is a steel and glass stair with a glass-floored oculus. This enlivened sense of transparency emphasizes the visitor experience and provides unrivaled views of Seattle."

The Shed, New York, NY
Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group

Project excerpt: "The 200,000-square-foot building comprises two floors of gallery space, a versatile theater, rehearsal space, a creative lab, and skylit event space across its eight levels. Nestled alongside the city’s celebrated High Line elevated park, The Shed was inspired by its neighborhood’s industrial past and the city's West Side Rail Yard. Much like the gantry cranes found in shipping ports and railway systems across the country, The Shed’s outer shell rides along a series of bogie wheels guided by a pair of 273-foot rails."

US Embassy in London, London, UK
KieranTimberlake

Project excerpt: "The new LEED Platinum-certified embassy embodies the country’s relationship with the United Kingdom and the central tenets of democracy. The building itself is a transparent crystalline cube that sits atop a two-story colonnade, positioning it as a beacon at the heart of Nine Elms. Its form evokes the strength of both countries, and its high-performing facade speaks to transparency and light. The facade is composed of an inner envelope of laminated glazing and an outer envelope of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene that provides ample access to daylight and sweeping views of London. The facade’s geometry and materials work in concert as receptors for light, which dances across it in shifting patterns and colors throughout the day."