2007 AWARD WINNERS:

Architectural

Honor Award
Collaborative Innovation Center
Client: Panther Hollow Development Corporation, Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern PA, Carnegie Mellon University, and J.J. Gumberg Company
Architect: dggp Architecture
Contractor: P.J. Dick Incorporated
Jury comments: One of the most compelling design challenges in a new building in a complex with identity & history. Collaborative Innovation Center successfully rises to the challenge with the competition of a steep site slope. The building engages the compass plan, and pathway systems, inviting the public through it as part of the promenade with “exterior” feeling elevations. It is an active participant on the campus.

Honor Award
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Service Enclosure
Client: Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Architect: EDGE studio
Contractor: Jendoco Construction Corp.
Jury comments: Such a humble piece of programming; though barely space for human habitation, the location gave it importance in relation to entrance. It is presented fastidiously. This ultimately becomes a fantasy project…the super pristine box married to a garbage compacter, successfully wed to a building of prewar traditionalism.

Honor Award
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh / Squirrel Hill Branch
Client: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Architect: Lubetz Architects
Contractor: A. Martini & Company
Jury comments: We bet this place just hops because it really strikes us as a place the community can own. It is extremely well done and not precious. The urban public library has seen some inventive transformation in the digital era. This project deserves to be better documented; it makes people re-think any preconceptions. Better documented recycling of a parking garage that looks completely integrated.

Honor Award
Mifflin School
Client: Pittsburgh Public Schools
Architect: Strada
Contractor: Yarborough Development, Inc.
Jury comments: This project is very in-control but without being overbearing. Everything is done by intention. Working with an established institution in a neighborhood context presents a challenge: to add a quite substantial new area and contend with the issue of continuity of identity of the school and issue of scale. Mifflin School controls these issues ARTFULLY. There is care in every part: massing, fenestration, spatial & circulation, connection between old & new. There are no accidents here and the whole has great consistency and character.

Certificate of Merit
Old Dairy at Homestead Preserve
Client: Celebration Associates, LLC
Architect: Urban Design Associates / Frazier Associates
Contractor: Virginia Hot Springs Building Company, LLC
Jury comments: Challenges of good stewardship often go without recognition;
ODHP shows the value in careful repositioning of an old gem. Renewal of exterior - isolating beautiful elementary forms - and insertion of new interiors is consonant in character. Even if apparently “selfless” the renewed life for this compound provides enduring value linking past to present to future.

Green Design Citation
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens Tropical Forest
Client: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
Architect: IKM Incorporated
Contractor: Turner Construction Company
Jury comments: Strength is in the green effort. It’s technically ambitious. Has an educational value.

Regional and Urban Design

Honor Award
The River’s Edge of Oakmont
Client: Brooks and Blair Waterfront Properties
Architect: Rothschild Doyno Architects
Jury Comments: This is a very nice juicy urban design task, a discreet site in a well shaped context. A planner’s tools are graphics and this plan has precise and intuitive graphics. The architect practices great restraint. This project is lucid and very well executed, integrates a great site into a larger context.

Certificate of Merit
Rediscover History! High Street District
Client: Newark Housing Authority
Architect: Rothschild Doyno Architects
Jury Comments: Newark is an American city most in need of planning and renewal, which is tough given its history. The project demonstrates a political planning process that was completed very successfully. A number of social stalemates came to an end as a result of the planning process. The graphics are lively, if not always exactly clear, and contribute to the sense that we are looking at separate interventions that are separate vignettes as opposed to an overall uniting form. The architects demonstrate a genuine interest and concern for the development of place. The project demonstrates the efficacy of political planning as an important strand within the design discipline.

Certificate of Merit
Hermitage Master Plan
Client: Mercer County Regional Planning Commission
Architect: Strada
Jury Comments: This is an important project because it takes a suburban condition that is very common and typical and greatly improves it. It is a good model of tools for analysis of prototypical conditions. The plan stands out for rigor of analysis of existing conditions. Commended for attempting to make something out of nothing….trying to create a center where there is not a center. Tough task, still ahead, is dealing with the human scale of the inordinately large horizontal difference (the street) – not convinced by the figure of the circle. Longer-term effort of the master plan continues to evolve with rigorous observation.

Interior Architecture

Honor Award
New Hazlett Theater
Client: New Hazlett Theater
Architect: EDGE studio
Contractor: Turner Construction Company
Jury Comments: This project stands alone of a piece. Interior architecture is often prone to distraction or excess. This one starts with a concept and then is very constrained in execution. The design is sponsored by the ceiling. As you move through the space you get a different experience of the ceiling. The design integrates different crafts, to its strength. The space becomes more three dimensional and more playful through the introduction of the handmade craft of the suspended lamps. There is a forcefulness of intention here and seeing it realized so well is very wonderful.

Architectural Detail/Craftmanship

Award of Excellence
Visitors Center Security Desk
Client: Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
Architect: Pfaffmann + Associates PC
Contractor: FJ Busse Company / Mock Woodworking
Jury Comments: A programmatically rich form not just a gratuitous gesture. The curved form is not just aesthetic but it satisfies multiple functional requirements: security equipment, visually isolated, adequate proximity between visitor and guard. The use of material is innovative but durable. The architect and craftsman worked closely on fabrication to achieve the geometry and precision. Took a very ordinary place and transformed it with one piece of furniture.

Open Plan

Award of Excellence
Riverview Canopy
Client: Riverview Towers Apartments, Inc.
Architect: Rothschild Doyno Architects
Contractor: Steeb Crawford
Jury Comments: Among the several reasons to admire the Pittsburgh AIA Chapter, the jury appreciated this “Open” Category to recognize good work subgenres. The Riverview Canopy seems just such a category buster. The simple task, which could be seen as an “adjustment” to a building without a weather protected entry walkway, instead took on a poetic program in an articulate form and a robust engineering aesthetic. The result provides a lovely place to wait in the rain, hearing and seeing it fall.

Award of Excellence
V 24 / 7 / 365: Strawberry Way Public Art Installation
Client: Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
Architect: studio d’ARC architects, P.C.
Jury Comments: The audial dimension of the environment is the focus of this public art work, strung across a narrow downtown street space between tall buildings. Data generated by changing overhead sky conditions are transformed algorithmically to a changing tempo of music played from mounted speakers. This is a piece I wish I’d experienced.

Columbia Gas People's Choice Award

Carrie Furnace Site Conceptual Plan
Client: Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County
Architect: MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni