2014 Webby Award Nomination for AIA Voice of the Architect

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) was selected as a Nominee for The 18th Annual Webby Awards. As a Nominee, our program was selected as one of the five best in the world in the Mobile & Apps category for Guides/Ratings/Reviews, and competed for the Internet industry's two most coveted awards: The Webby Award and The Webby People's Voice Award.

The nomination recognized the AIA’s first-of-its-kind program to bring expert architectural commentary, in the form of geo-tagged audio recordings from AIA architect members, to the public through the Field Trip location-aware mobile app from Niantic Labs at Google. This program is the result of multi-year collaboration between AIA National, AIA Components in Colorado, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC, AIA member architects and Niantic Labs at Google.

About the App

Field Trip runs in the background on your smartphone. When you get close to an architectural point of interest, Field Trip pops-up a card, with a written description and an audio interview with an AIA architect about that point of interest. Using this app, listeners get an inside look from the architect’s perspective of the built environment around them in Denver, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC.

Listeners get design commentary and the history of some of the most celebrated and significant architectural landmarks in the United States, including Fentress Architects’ Denver International Airport, Studio Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the Denver Art Museum, William Thornton and Benjamin Latrobe’s United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., and Edward Durrell Stone’s Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

This program combines the convenience and immediacy of a location-aware mobile app with an authentic and engaging form of storytelling to bring the public and the enthusiast closer to the underlying reasons that shaped a project, voicing the architect's insights into its ultimate look and feel. And hearing from the actual designer not only provides unique historical context to projects, but also helps bring buildings and spaces to life.