The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has voted for Ehrlich Architects to receive the 2015 AIA Architecture Firm Award. The firm will be honored at the 2015 AIA National Convention in Atlanta. Ehrlich Architects is renowned for fluidly melding classic California Modernist style with multicultural and vernacular design elements by including marginalized design languages and traditions.
The AIA Architecture Firm Award, given annually, is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.
The work of Ehrlich Architects covers a wide variety of program types (residential, commercial, institutional, educational) and uses a much richer palette of materials and textures than the typical California Modernist-influenced firm. However, they are most distinguished by the subtle and complex way they blend Modernist and multicultural design elements.
Before founding his Los Angeles-based firm in 1979, Steven Ehrlich, FAIA, spent time working with the Peace Corps in Africa. There Ehrlich gained an appreciation for simple, natural materials and vernacular solutions to energy, sustainability, and building performance challenges. Back in Southern California, Ehrlich found opportunities to renovate properties designed by architects high up in the California Modernist canon (like Richard Neutra, FAIA), which helped him to develop a confident, loose-limbed, but still traditional Modernist aesthetic. But his experiences in Africa, with building traditions created years before Modernism demanded a total rupture with the past, pushed him to develop an architecture that was more inclusive, responsible, and responsive than pure Modernism.
Ehrlich Architects is led by four diverse partners whose personal backgrounds and experiences result in a unique cultural sensitivity and a commitment to creating architecture that is globally relevant. They are: Steven Ehrlich, FAIA; Takashi Yanai, AIA; Patricia Rhee, AIA; and Mathew Chaney, AIA.
To fulfill these goals, Ehrlich Architects see themselves as “architectural anthropologists”—exploring ancient, developing-world building traditions and situating them in contemporary buildings to solve contemporary problems. Japanese-style courtyards, Middle Eastern lattice screens, and vernacular mud construction have all been ways they enrich contemporary architecture with age-old multicultural building elements.
“The marriage of the particular with the universal is one of the great virtues of the firm’s design approach, where connections between culture, climate, people and place are woven together in a distinct humanistic architecture shaped by circumstance,” wrote Steve Dumez, FAIA in a letter of recommendation.
A few of their most notable projects include:
- The Ahmadu Bello University Theater in Zaria, Nigeria. One of Ehrlich’s most vernacular and sustainable buildings, this 500-seat venue is composed of a ring of mud-walled pavilions, decorated with traditional bas-relief ornamentation. Local craftsmen helped with its construction, and it can be arranged in both proscenium and theater-in-the-round configurations.
- The Federal National Council Parliament Building Complex in Abu Dhabi, UAE. A symbol for a burgeoning democracy in the Middle East, it melds familiar Arabic design language with contemporary form and the latest technological advances to create meaning, maximum functionality and environmental sustainability.
- The 700 Palms Residence in Los Angeles, which uses Corten steel, copper, and stucco to create a strong, rugged approach to California Modernism, dissolving barriers between indoors and outdoors with glass, alternately boxy and brawny, light and open.
- Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Phoenix, Ariz. As the firm’s first design-build project, utilizing BIM, fast track, and integrated project delivery, the building delivered great value to the public in less than two years and was a harbinger of downtown Phoenix’s energetic redevelopment.
- The John Roll U.S. Courthouse in Yuma, Ariz., takes the symmetrical massing of a typical 19th-century courthouse and reinterprets it into a Modernist desert sandstone box, adding generous public space with a massive canopy-shaded “front porch” composed of photovoltaic panels.
Ehrlich Architects is the 52nd AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient. Previous recipients of the AIA Firm Award include, Eskew + Dumez + Ripple (2013), VJAA (2012), BNIM (2011), Pugh + Scarpa (2010), Kieran Timberlake (2008), Muphy/Jahn (2005), Polshek Partnership (1992), Venturi, Raunch, and Scott Brown (1985), I.M. Pei and Partners (1968), and SOM (1962).
Related Stories
| Feb 11, 2011
BIM-enabled Texas church complex can broadcast services in high-def
After two years of design and construction, members of the Gateway Church in Southland, Texas, were able to attend services in their new 4,000-seat facility in late 2010. Located on a 180-acre site, the 205,000-sf complex has six auditoriums, including a massive 200,000-sf Worship Center, complete with catwalks, top-end audio and video system, and high-definition broadcast capabilities. BIM played a significant role in the building’s design and construction. Balfour Beatty Construction and Beck Architecture formed the nucleus of the Building Team.
| Feb 11, 2011
Kentucky’s first green adaptive reuse project earns Platinum
(FER) studio, Inglewood, Calif., converted a 115-year-old former dry goods store in Louisville, Ky., into a 10,175-sf mixed-use commercial building earned LEED Platinum and holds the distinction of being the state’s first adaptive reuse project to earn any LEED rating. The facility, located in the East Market District, houses a gallery, event space, offices, conference space, and a restaurant. Sustainable elements that helped the building reach its top LEED rating include xeriscaping, a green roof, rainwater collection and reuse, 12 geothermal wells, 81 solar panels, a 1,100-gallon ice storage system (off-grid energy efficiency is 68%) and the reuse and recycling of construction materials. Local firm Peters Construction served as GC.
| Feb 11, 2011
Former Richardson Romanesque hotel now houses books, not beds
The Piqua (Ohio) Public Library was once a late 19th-century hotel that sat vacant and deteriorating for years before a $12.3 million adaptive reuse project revitalized the 1891 building. The design team of PSA-Dewberry, MKC Associates, and historic preservation specialist Jeff Wray Associates collaborated on the restoration of the 80,000-sf Richardson Romanesque building, once known as the Fort Piqua Hotel. The team restored a mezzanine above the lobby and repaired historic windows, skylight, massive fireplace, and other historic details. The basement, with its low ceiling and stacked stone walls, was turned into a castle-like children’s center. The Piqua Historical Museum is also located within the building.
| Feb 11, 2011
Justice center on Fall River harbor serves up daylight, sustainable elements, including eucalyptus millwork
Located on historic South Main Street in Fall River, Mass., the Fall River Justice Center opened last fall to serve as the city’s Superior and District Courts building. The $85 million facility was designed by Boston-based Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc., with Dimeo Construction as CM and Arup as MEP. The 154,000-sf courthouse contains nine courtrooms, a law library, and a detention area. Most of the floors have the same ceiling height, which will makes them easier to reconfigure in the future as space needs change. Designed to achieve LEED Silver, the facility’s elliptical design offers abundant natural daylight and views of the harbor. Renewable eucalyptus millwork is one of the sustainable features.
| Feb 11, 2011
Research facility separates but also connects lab spaces
California State University, Northridge, consolidated its graduate and undergraduate biology and mathematics programs into one 90,000-sf research facility. Architect of record Cannon Design worked on the new Chaparral Hall, creating a four-story facility with two distinct spaces that separate research and teaching areas; these are linked by faculty offices to create collaborative spaces. The building houses wet research, teaching, and computational research labs, a 5,000-sf vivarium, classrooms, and administrative offices. A four-story outdoor lobby and plaza and an outdoor staircase provide orientation. A covered walkway links the new facility with the existing science complex. Saiful/Bouquet served as structural engineer, Bard, Rao + Athanas Consulting Engineers served as MEP, and Research Facilities Design was laboratory consultant.
| Feb 11, 2011
A feast of dining options at University of Colorado community center, but hold the buffalo stew
The University of Colorado, Boulder, cooked up something different with its new $84.4 million Center for Community building, whose 900-seat foodservice area consists of 12 micro-restaurants, each with its own food options and décor. Centerbrook Architects of Connecticut collaborated with Denver’s Davis Partnership Architects and foodservice designer Baker Group of Grand Rapids, Mich., on the 323,000-sf facility, which also includes space for a career center, international education, and counseling and psychological services. Exterior walls of rough-hewn, variegated sandstone and a terra cotta roof help the new facility blend with existing campus buildings. Target: LEED Gold.
| Feb 11, 2011
Chicago high-rise mixes condos with classrooms for Art Institute students
The Legacy at Millennium Park is a 72-story, mixed-use complex that rises high above Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. The glass tower, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, is mostly residential, but also includes 41,000 sf of classroom space for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and another 7,400 sf of retail space. The building’s 355 one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom condominiums range from 875 sf to 9,300 sf, and there are seven levels of parking. Sky patios on the 15th, 42nd, and 60th floors give owners outdoor access and views of Lake Michigan.
| Feb 11, 2011
Iowa surgery center addresses both inpatient and outpatient care
The 12,000-person community of Carroll, Iowa, has a new $28 million surgery center to provide both inpatient and outpatient care. Minneapolis-based healthcare design firm Horty Elving headed up the four-story, 120,000-sf project for St. Anthony’s Regional Hospital. The center’s layout is based on a circular process flow, and includes four 800-sf operating rooms with poured rubber floors to reduce leg fatigue for surgeons and support staff, two substerile rooms between each pair of operating rooms, and two endoscopy rooms adjacent to the outpatient prep and recovery rooms. Recovery rooms are clustered in groups of four. The large family lounge (left) has expansive windows with views of the countryside, and television monitors that display coded information on patient status so loved ones can follow a patient’s progress.
| Feb 11, 2011
Grocery store anchors shopping center in Miami arts/entertainment district
18Biscayne is a 57,200-sf urban retail center being developed in downtown Miami by commercial real estate firm Stiles. Construction on the three-story center is being fast-tracked for completion in early 2012. The project is anchored by a 49,200-sf Publix market with bakery, pharmacy, and café with outdoor seating. An additional 8,000 sf of retail space will front Biscayne Boulevard. The complex is in close proximity to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the downtown Miami entertainment district, and the Omni neighborhood, one of the city’s fast-growing residential areas.
| Feb 11, 2011
Chicago architecture firm planning one of China’s tallest towers
Chicago-based Goettsch Partners was commissioned by developer Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. Ltd. to design a new 294,570-sm mixed-use tower in Tianjin, China. The Tianjin R&F Guangdong Tower will be located within the city’s newly planned business district, and at 439 meters it will be one of China’s tallest buildings. The massive complex will feature 134,900 sm of Class A office space, a 400-key, five-star hotel, 55 condominiums, and 8,550 sm of retail space. The architects are designing the tower with multi-story atriums and a high-performance curtain wall to bring daylight deep into the building, thereby creating deeper lease spans. The project is currently finishing design.
