The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected the ten recipients of the 2014 Small Project Awards. The AIA Small Project Awards Program, now in its 11th 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.
Award recipients are categorized into three groups:
Category 1: A small project construction, object, work of environmental art or architectural design element up to $150,000 in construction cost.
Category 2: A small project construction, up to $1,500,000 in construction cost.
Category 3: A small project construction, object, work of environmental art, or architectural design less than 5,000-square-foot constructed by the architect.
Check out the winning projects (all images and descriptions courtesy AIA):
Category 1
Fashion[ING] Objects; Austin, Texas
Matt Fajkus Architecture, LLC
This architectural design for a fashion show runway backdrop incorporates rigid and fluid layers, establishing a tension between a grid system and an amorphous organic form. The architect began with the idea of the backdrop as a tool for pattern, light, and shadow. Looking to everyday objects, paper-covered wire hangers, a surrogate for the shoulder, associated with the clothing and thus the human body; these objects, although simple, can be extraordinary when arrayed by the thousands. The object itself falls away in favor of an ethereal collective whole.
Head in the Clouds Pavilion; New York City
StudioKCA
Photo credit: Chuck Choi/courtesy of AIA
Head in the Clouds Pavilion on New York's Governors Island comes out of the desire to create a 'place to dream in the city of dreams'. Made from 53,780 recycled plastic bottles - the amount, thrown away in New York City in 1 hour - it is a space where visitors can enter into and contemplate the light and color filtering through the 'cloud' from the inside, out. Used empties were repurposed, with gallon jug 'pillows' forming the exterior, while water bottles filled with water line the interior so that no foundation was needed.
Pure Tension Pavilion; Milan, Italy
Synthesis Design + Architecture
Photo Credit: Fabric Images/Volvo Italy/courtesy of AIA
The Pure Tension Pavilion is a lightweight, rapidly deployable, tensioned membrane structure and portable charging station commissioned to showcase the Volvo V60 hybrid/electric car. The entire structure flat-packs to fit in the trunk of the car, assembles in 45 minutes, and charges a fully depleted V60 in 12 hours.
This experimental structure was developed through a process of rigorous research and development that investigated methods of associative modeling, dynamic mesh relaxation, geometric rationalization, solar incidence analysis, and material performance. The pavilion is an experimental structure that, similar to a concept car, is a working prototype that speculates on the future of personal mobility and alternative energy sources. The pavilion pushes boundaries at all levels, from structural performance to sustainability and portability.
Starlight; New York City
Cooper Joseph Studio
Photo Credit: RUSH Design/Eduard Hueber/ArchPhoto Inc./courtesy of AIA
This site-specific light sculpture marks a new era for the Museum of the City of New York, igniting the majestic circular stair at the heart of the museum’s historic interior. Conceived as a perfect circle in elevation, the sculpture is in dialogue with stair so that old and new are joined in one experience. As visitors move up and down between floors, a dynamic array of radiating patterns of light points is generated by the optical effects inherent in the geometry of a uniform spatial grid.
Category Two
Ground, Yale University; New Haven, CT
Bentel and Bentel Architects
Photo Credit: Daniel Stark/courtesy of AIA
The new Ground café at Yale's Marcel Breuer-designed Becton School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) serves not only to create social cohesion among faculty and students of the engineering school, but also to encourage interaction between and among members of other departments in the university.
In the design, the firm engaged the unadorned poured-concrete volume of this former seminar room by layering a palette of walnut planks, perforated aluminum, and cleft bluestone over the walls, floor, and ceiling of the space. The original concrete surfaces are intentionally visible through, and are highlighted by, the veils of the material intervention out of respect for Breuer's unique exploration in his design of the textural possibilities of a single material.
Redaction House; Delafield, Wisconsin
Johnsen Schmaling Architects
Photo Credit: Johnsen Schmaling Architects/courtesy of AIA
A compact home that occupies a suburban infill site widely considered too small and too confined to accommodate a house for a family of five and provide acceptable levels of privacy and views. A series of spatial voids within the building volume organize the program, starting with a linear entry courtyard along a brick wall whose decreasing perforation begins the process of visual redaction and leads to the transparent front door.
Inside, floor-to-ceiling apertures alternate with solid walls, taking advantage of sightlines that are desirable and screen those that are not. The rooms are grouped around a two-story living hall, where the apertures are stacked vertically to frame views of the sky and the bluff’s deciduous foliage.
Small House in an Olive Grove; Geyserville, CA
Cooper Joseph Studio
Photo Credit: Elliott Kaufman Photography/courtesy of AIA
The owners of this one bedroom house, located on an agricultural property wanted an energy-efficient building that utilized views of the surrounding valley and integrated with the rustic countryside. At a mere 850-square feet, the house is anchored into the steep hillside with a series of concrete retaining walls.
The site strategy incorporates cascading decks embracing the slope, relating the inside and outside at every level. Zinc with redwood screens, form a warm gray palette that works with the northern California seasonal foliage. The same soft tones bathe the interior spaces with limestone floors and stained oak cabinetry.
Topo House; Blue Mounds, Wisconsin
Johnsen Schmaling Architects
Echoing the dramatic surface deformations that occur when wind blows over the crops and grasses of the surrounding prairie, the building skin, a high-performance ventilated rainscreen system with concrete fiber panels, is organized by 190 individually shaped, black-anodized aluminum fins of interrelated contracting and expanding shapes. Depending on the time of the day and the angle from which they are viewed, the fins create a constantly changing veil whose shifting geometry subverts the volumetric simplicity of the house itself.
Category Three
Fall House; Big Sur, California
Fougeron Architecture
Photo Credit: Joe Fletcher Photography/courtesy of AIA
This three-bedroom vacation home, on Big Sur’s spectacular south coast, is anchored in the natural beauty and power of this California landscape. The design strategy embeds the building within the land, creating a structure inseparable from its context. The site offers dramatic views: a 250-foot drop to the Pacific Ocean both along the bluff and the western exposure. Yet it demands a form more complex than a giant picture window.
Drought resistant and native vegetation is specifically intended reduce soil erosion and facilitates new habitats for local wildlife. A vegetated roof reduces the aerial visual footprint of the building and provides added thermal mass / insulation for the occupied space below.
Flip House; San Francisco, California
Fougeron Architecture
Photo Credit: Joe Fletcher Photography/courtesy of AIA
The architects were challenged with reconnecting an San Francisco home to its striking landscape, light, and views and transform its confusing program with a new modernist aesthetic. The solution consisted of a design that completely flipped the home’s façade and interior spaces, reinventing its typology and capturing all advantages of its natural and urban site.
Like many San Francisco homes, this one poorly integrated its many levels with each other and with its sloping topography and solar orientation. Reversing its reading, the award recipient recast the back of the house as its primary façade with a faceted, custom-built glass wall.
The jury for the Small Project Awards includes: Linda Reeder, AIA (Chair), Linda Reeder Architecture; Rene Gonzalez, AIA, Rene Gonzalez Architect; Craig Scott, AIA, IwamotoScott Architecture; Deb Silber, Fine Homebuilding Magazine and Lisa Tilder, AIA, Ohio State University.
For more, visit AIA's Small Project Awards landing page.
Related Stories
Energy-Efficient Design | Apr 19, 2022
A prefab second skin can make old apartments net zero
A German startup is offering a new way for old buildings to potentially reach net-zero status: adding a prefabricated second skin.
Concrete Technology | Apr 19, 2022
SGH’s Applied Science & Research Center achieves ISO 17025 accreditation for concrete testing procedures
Simpson Gumpertz & Heger’s (SGH) Applied Science & Research Center recently received ISO/IEC17025 accreditation from the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) for several concrete testing methods.
Senior Living Design | Apr 19, 2022
Affordable housing for L.A. veterans and low-income seniors built on former parking lot site
The Howard and Irene Levine Senior Community, designed by KFA Architecture for Mercy Housing of California, provides badly needed housing for Los Angeles veterans and low-income seniors
Sponsored | BD+C University Course | Apr 19, 2022
Multi-story building systems and selection criteria
This course outlines the attributes, functions, benefits, limits, and acoustic qualities of composite deck slabs. It reviews the three primary types of composite systems that represent the full range of long-span composite floor systems and examines the criteria for their selection, design, and engineering.
Building Team | Apr 18, 2022
Shive-Hattery Acquires WSM Architects
Shive-Hattery announces that it has acquired WSM Architects, Inc., a 13-person architecture firm in Tucson, Arizona.
University Buildings | Apr 18, 2022
SmithGroup to design new Univ. of Colorado Denver engineering, design, computing building
The University of Colorado Denver selected SmithGroup to design a new engineering, design, and computing building that will serve as anchor of new downtown innovation district.
Building Team | Apr 15, 2022
Frank Gehry to design his largest building yet for his hometown of Toronto
Famed architect Frank Gehry will design his largest building to date for his hometown of Toronto, Canada.
Healthcare Facilities | Apr 14, 2022
Healthcare construction veteran creates next-level IPD process for hospital projects
Can integrated project delivery work without incentives for building team members? Denton Wilson thinks so.
Industrial Facilities | Apr 14, 2022
JLL's take on the race for industrial space
In the previous decade, the inventory of industrial space couldn’t keep up with demand that was driven by the dual surges of the coronavirus and online shopping. Vacancies declined and rents rose. JLL has just published a research report on this sector called “The Race for Industrial Space.” Mehtab Randhawa, JLL’s Americas Head of Industrial Research, shares the highlights of a new report on the industrial sector's growth.
High-rise Construction | Apr 14, 2022
Seattle’s high-rise convention center nears completion
The new Washington State Convention Center Summit Building—billed as the first high-rise convention center in North America—is on track to complete most of its construction later this year.