Presenting the Winners of the AIA SF Awards
Ogrydziak Prillinger's Gallery House, heard but not seen. Photograph by Tim Griffith, courtesy of the architects.
On Thursday, the architecturati were at the War Memorial Performing Arts Center’s Green Room to see who won in this year’s AIA SF Awards. This year only saw 27 awards presented, half the number of last year’s 54–perhaps an indication of how hard the economic downturn has hit this area. But despite the shorter program, there was no shortage of distinctive projects.
Creating Vernacular Modern in Rural China
One of the Bay Area’s venerable firms, EHDD (founded in 1972 by Joseph Esherick, George Homsey, Peter Dodge and Chuck Davis, the last of which is still active in the office), joins the list of firms that have been working in China. However, its new project is not a speculative skyscraper in Shanghai or some other bigger-than-thou marquee building. It is an architectural triumph of another sort: a much-needed rural school that incorporates modern methodologies for sustainable design. It also manages to evoke Chinese vernacular architecture in a modest, graceful way–an aesthetic coup that seems to be a rarity in modern China. Read More
AIA SF Awards
Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects' Ford Assembly Building renovation won a merit award for historic preservation. Image © Billy Hustace.
Once again our friend Stanley Saitowitz—San Francisco architecture’s answer to Meryl Streep— took home the most honors at the AIA SF’s annual awards, held at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center last Thursday. Saitowitz took home prizes for his elegant, and relatively affordable, Tampa Museum of Art, his screen-obsessed Costa Rica house, and his effervescent Toast Restaurant in Novato, CA, which the jury described as “like walking inside a loaf of bread…..like swimming in sparkling champagne….” . Other big winners included Jensen Architects, noted for their SFMOMA rooftop garden and Walden Studios in Sonoma; EHDD, which took home awards for its UC Merced Science and Engineering Building and its Pritzker Family Children’s Zoo in Lincoln Park, IL; and Min Day, which took home prizes for its L Residence and its Community CROPS Center, both in Nebraska.
Salesmanship, Snohetta-Style
An opera house, or a site for extreme sports?
Just by looking at the mind-boggling New Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, an architectural cliff on the edge of a fjord, you might think there’d be a lot of dense archibabble floating around at the firm Snøhetta. We have been paying closer attention to them out here in San Francisco, after hearing rumors that they are in the running for the SFMOMA extension in partnership with locals EHDD. Read More
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