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The AIA has chosen
five outstanding young architects, defined as professionals who have been
licensed 10 years or fewer regardless of their age, to receive the 2004
Young Architects Award. The award honors individuals who have shown exceptional
leadership and made significant contributions to the profession early
in their careers.
John
Burse, AIA, Mackey Mitchell Associates, St. Louis, a community
activist architect, “has provided vision and creativity toward realizing
Old North St. Louis, a seriously deteriorated area now poised to break
ground for new housing,” writes nominator and boss Eugene J. Mackey,
FAIA. Burse joined Mackey Mitchell in 1997 and became an associate in
2001. A 1994 graduate of Syracuse University with a BArch cum laude, he
received the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Thesis after travel to
Florence to study Italian city architecture and language and Greece to
study Greek classical and vernacular architecture. His expertise in urban
design has made him a frequent participant in public discussions and panels.
In 2002, he participated in “Urban Infill Housing Design,”
a panel discussion at the Saint Louis University School of Law.
A
skilled designer and master planner, Burse has worked on a master plan
for Concordia Seminary’s campus, on the renovation of Brookings
Hall at Washington University, and on the site planning and design for
a new Central Institute for the Deaf campus and buildings. He was lead
planner for the Ladue School District’s facilities master planning
project, a district-wide program to improve early-childhood to senior-high-school
campuses. A member of AIA St. Louis, Burse serves on the Young Architects
Forum and the AIA Missouri Board. He serves his community as a commissioner
of the City of St. Louis Preservation Board, a Landmarks Association counselor,
and an activist through whose leadership the Old North St. Louis Restoration
Group developed a comprehensive plan to guide restoration and development.
David
Y. Jameson, AIA, David Jameson Architect Inc, Alexandria, Va.,
“merits recognition for his outstanding accomplishments in design,”
writes AIA Northern Virginia Executive Director Deborah S. Burns on behalf
of the chapter’s nomination. “In the eight years that he has
practiced as an architect, David’s exceptional designs have been
acknowledged by the accumulation of over 35 local, state, and national
awards.” In the five years that Jameson has been a member of the
Northern Virginia Chapter, he has won seven of the chapter’s design
awards. He has also received awards from the AIA Virginia, AIA Maryland,
the AIA Washington, D.C. Chapter, AIA Baltimore, and AIA Chesapeake Bay.
Fairfax (Va.) County presented Jameson with its Exceptional Design Award,
the International Masonry Institute has recognized his work twice, and
he has won seven Renaissance Design Awards.
A
Virginia Tech graduate who received his BArch in 1990, Jameson worked
for the prestigious Washington firms of Hugh Newell Jacobsen FAIA, and
Cooper Lecky Architects PC, before hanging out his own shingle in 1997.
He finds time to volunteer with the AIA Northern Virginia Chapter, currently
serving on its board of directors. He is an active member of the Virginia
Society Design Committee. He also promotes design in his community by
volunteering in local elementary schools in the “Architecture in
Our Schools” program and presenting AIA Northern Virginia’s
“How to Work With an Architect” workshop to the community.
Jameson serves as a visiting critic to Virginia Tech’s Washington
Alexandria Center for Architecture.
Donna
Kacmar, AIA, Architect Works Inc., Houston, has had a career to
date that “demonstrates a balanced approach to architecture, embracing
design, management, teaching, and professional services,” according
to Chris A. Hudson, AIA, her nominator. “Her accomplishments are
solid, distinguished, and passionately delivered, showing a commitment
to excellence. Kacmar was graduated from Texas A&M University with
a bachelor of environmental design in 1988 and an MArch in 1992. In the
intervening years, she worked as an intern for a design-build firm, renovating
houses in the Washington, D.C., area, and taught several design studios.
After graduate school, Kacmar moved to Houston and joined the firm of
Natalye Appel Architects. In 1999, she started her own firm, Architect
Works Inc, “dedicated to developing solutions for residential and
small-scale commercial projects that are straightforward, cost-effective,
and environmentally responsible.”
Kacmar
has won numerous design awards, including the 2000 William W. Caudill
Award from the Texas Society of Architects, which also gave her firm a
2003 Design Award for the Round Valley Texas Office Building + Garage.
Kacmar has also found the time to combine teaching with practice; she
has taught at the University of Houston’s Summer Discovery program
for high school students for eight years. Currently, she is an assistant
professor at the University of Houston’s College of Architecture.
She serves as a Level I coordinator preparing for the school’s NAAB
visit. And Kacmar devotes time to her community through active participation
in the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture as well as on the board
of Houston’s Avenue Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit
low-income housing development corporation.
Janis
LaDouceur, AIA, Barbour/LaDouceur Architects PA, Minneapolis, is
“a designer who dreams hand-in-hand with her clients to shape spaces
that capture the essence of her client’s identity,” writes
nominator and AIA Minnesota President David Dimond, AIA. “Janis’
thoughtful storytelling is consistently reflected in her work, especially
with regard to how her architecture reveals a passion for serving small
and underserved clients in intense, artful, and meaningful ways.”
LaDouceur followed a BA in political science from UCLA with an MArch from
the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee. She worked for a number of prestigious
architecture firms in Chicago and as an adjunct assistant professor at
the University of Minnesota College of Architecture before founding her
own firm with a partner 10 years ago.
“Our
special focus began as interpretive museums. We have grown to see all
of our work as story telling, and focus on small buildings,” LaDouceur
writes of her firm. “We practice architecture, landscape architecture,
interior design, furniture design, graphic design, civil engineering,
planning, and visioning. We have grown to 15 multi-disciplined professionals.
I oversee all aspects of design.” LaDouceur’s projects include
Ghost Dance Dakota Cultural Center, Badlands S.D.; Battle Point Ojibwe
Cultural Center, Leech Lake, Minn.; Dodge Nature Preschool, West St. Paul,
Minn.; and the “Science House” Environmental Experiment Center,
Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul.
Kevin
G. Sneed, AIA, Brennan Beer Gorman Monk Architects/Interiors, Washington,
D.C., “consistently exhibits a fierceness of will to ensure that
whatever project he takes on—on behalf of the chapter and his colleagues—is
done exceptionally well and does us all proud,” writes AIA Northern
Virginia Past President Daniel J. Feil, FAIA, in Sneed’s nomination
by the chapter. “I think that his crowning achievement for the chapter
is his rethinking, reformatting, and elevating our Design Awards program
into a singular event that consistently attracts more and more entries
of growing quality.” Sneed, a 1987 University of Texas/Arlington
graduate, headed for the Washington, D.C., area shortly thereafter and
has been an active participant in the community and AIA Northern Virginia
ever since. He was one of the founding members of the chapter’s
Associate/Young Architects Program and has worked diligently to make it
one of the most admired in the country and one used as a model by the
AIA national component. He served as AIA Northern Virginia president in
2003.
Sneed
also donated his time to the community on the Board of Architectural Review
for the City of Alexandria, Va., by working with the chapter’s “Architecture
in Schools” program and serving as the Young Architects Forum regional
liaison for The Virginias to AIA national. He has served AIA national
as a member of the Diversity Committee and currently serves on the AIA
national Interiors Committee. Sneed also finds equal time to devote to
his job as senior project architect/quality control manager for Brennan
Beer Gorman Monk Architects/Interiors, where he is responsible for numerous
architecture and interiors projects from Rhode Island to Virginia.
Copyright 2004 The American Institute of Architects.
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