by Vernon Mays
Editor, Inform, Virginia Society of the AIA

Sixteen projects by architects across the region were honored with Awards for Excellence in Architecture presented by the Virginia Society AIA. Selected from a field of 148 submissions, the award winners varied widely from a low-budget rehabilitation of a former meat-packing plant into a community center for inner-city youth to an exquisitely detailed boarding/breeding complex for thoroughbreds in Albemarle County. Evidence of an increasing global reach for the region’s architects is demonstrated by a new research center in Spain, plans for a visitors center in France, a resettlement community for refugees in India, and an American embassy in Kenya. A panel of three Chicago architects chaired by Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, judged the submissions. She was joined on the jury by Andrew Metter, FAIA, and David Woodhouse, FAIA.

Honor Awards

7 New York, Teen Outreach Center, Washington, D.C., by Lawrence Cook Associates and Michael Cook Studio
This branch of Covenant House in inner-city Washington contains a community outreach center for teens on its first floor. Originally a meat-packing plant, the concrete structure has been outfitted with translucent polycarbonate panels, steel tubing, and homasote surfaces to create a contemporary, appealing space. The kitchen, library, and computer room appear as architectural objects floating in space, which contributes to an airy and comfortable atmosphere. Lighting for the center employs inexpensive fixtures—and lots of them. Jurors praised the spirit of the design, which was accomplished on a small budget. “It’s a very clever use of ordinary materials to allow light to penetrate the interior and produce a very clean, crisp environment,” the jury said. “It’s fresh and useful without being patronizing.”
Photo © Joshua White.

Burning Daylight Stables, Albemarle County, by VMDO Architects
This stable complex in Virginia horse country serves as home to more than 25 thoroughbreds. The 26,000-square-foot building combines an administrative center and boarding/breeding facilities arranged around a central courtyard. Fieldstone walls form the base of the building and reappear as site and retaining walls. The lofty interior encourages natural ventilation. Its clear-span roof trusses were fabricated on site from Douglas fir timbers, galvanized steel plates, and tension rods. The initial selection of oak for the interior was based on its “horse friendly” characteristics: It is denser than most species and does not splinter as readily. The jury praised the power and simplicity of the forms, and the thoughtfulness of the details. “There are extraordinarily elegant details on the suspended stair,” jurors said. “They are daring, they are subtle—all at once.”
Photo © Prakash Patel.

Millbrook Guest House, Millbrook, N.Y., by Meditch Murphey Architects
The aesthetic of this guesthouse reflects the simple grace found in the contours of the surrounding Taconic ridges in New York State. Overlooking 100 acres of grass, this two-bedroom house has exterior spaces that are scaled to the residence. Grass steps cascade downhill to the east and a bluestone terrace is tucked beneath a sweeping cantilevered roof. The living room is designed as a kind of proscenium, or stage for living, thrust into a natural 360-degree theater. “It’s serene and crisply detailed,” the jury said. “And it’s a nice mixture of vernacular, country architecture with Modernist detailing. It lets the landscape dominate, rather than the structures.”
Photo © Maxwell MacKenzie.

Repsol YPF Technology Center, Madrid, by Leo A Daly
The architect designed this state-of-the-art facility for petrochemical research to inspire the company’s researchers with its angular, contemporary design and light-filled spaces. The building, located near Madrid, Spain, is composed of three laboratory wings connected to the central administration building. It contains office space for 400 scientists and staff, with amenities that include a 200-seat auditorium, library, exercise facilities, and cafeteria. Seen from the adjacent national highway, the building appears as a long row of laboratories, emphasized by the horizontal lines of a glass-and-limestone curtain wall. The jury praised the architect’s skill at giving a very large building a gracefulness and human scale. “It has nice materials,” they observed. “And the proportions and elevations are very elegant. The function and crisp detailing go together.”
Photo © Eduardo Sanchez Lopez.

St. Francis of Assisi Parish Hall, Staunton, Va., by
Bruce R. Wardell, Architect
The addition to this Catholic church creates new places for parishioners to gather and share in fellowship. To one side of the original church a new parish hall was built, connecting the 1908 parish hall to the ministry building. The three joined buildings create the edge of a new cloistered garden. The pictoral quality of the new parish hall is created by the edges of the existing buildings, the courtyard, and the church beyond. On the north side, a Gothic-influenced lattice allows the church façade to be the dominant force in the room. “It is very holistic,” the jury said. “In one move, they used the existing buildings to create space. They created a courtyard. And they connected the two existing parish buildings. They made sense of a disparate group of buildings with one simple move.”
Photo © Charles Shoffner.

Tibetan Resettlement Community, Derahdun, India, by MTFA Architecture Inc.
This community provides dignified housing for Tibetans who are living in desperate conditions as refugees in India. Although built for permanence, the community is expressed as a tent city that symbolizes hope. The master plan calls for indoor plumbing, electricity, a place of worship, dispensary, crafts building, and school. Each 324-square-foot dwelling has a sloped roof that sheds the monsoon rain and draws the hot summer air out through a cupola. The high roof also allows room for a sleeping loft. Jurors praised the clever pinwheel plan, which is efficient while also giving occupants a unique orientation and protecting their individuality. “It takes advantage of primitive technologies and organizes them,” said the jury. “And it recognizes that people need housing that is more inspirational than a shack.”
Photo © MTFA Architecture, Inc.

Merit Awards

Renovation at 1666 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., by
George Gordon Architects
Owned by a nonprofit foundation in Washington’s Dupont Circle area, this office building was renovated to maximize rental income and refresh a dated design. The architect developed a scheme that would reveal the space to the sidewalk. They constructed a glass-and-stainless steel trellis that incorporates new signage and lighting. Lobby renovations include a new steel canopy that shelters the entrance and creates a fitting place for the building address. Materials in the renovated lobby recall the period of the original building. The jury complimented the designer for making the original building better. “We’re glad to see that someone is taking the time and effort to take these buildings seriously—to recycle them and not discard them.”
Photo © Mark Delsasso/Visus Ltd.

George Peabody Library, Baltimore, by Quinn Evans Architects
Built in 1878, the Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University holds a collection of more than 300,000 volumes. The fireproof iron structure was innovative for its day, incorporating gas lighting and an electric elevator. The goal of this project was to address overdue repairs and maintenance, while reinvigorating an institution. Here the architects created more workable interior space, modernized the heating and cooling system, and restored original architectural features. The reading room was brightened by restoring glass panes below the skylight. “It is certainly a gorgeous building,” jurors said. “Yet, from our experience, we know the pitfalls of doing something like this—retrofitting the HVAC, changing proportions, and updating the fire code. They salvaged all the good aspects of the original building. And that’s difficult to achieve.”
Photo © Michael Dersin Photography.

The Kessler House, by Robert M. Gurney, FAIA
A Modern house in a traditional neighborhood—this was the desire of a married couple who wanted a home to accommodate their informal lifestyle. Generous spaces, wide halls, an elevator, accessible bathrooms, and an exercise pool all address the physical limitations of one of the children. The main spaces in the 3,800-square-foot house open to a 75-foot lap pool. Seen from the street, a two-story wing with a steep roof makes the transition between the old neighborhood and the Modern house. Familiar elements such as columns, clapboard siding, a metal roof, and bluestone porch are interpreted in a way that preserves the domestic scale of the street. “There’s an interesting discussion that can happen here about what is contextual architecture. Is it simply detail? Or is it scale or material?” the jury wondered. “This house would be a good place to start, because it has suggestions of each one. And each of the pieces is skillful.”
Photo © Maxwell MacKenzie.

Normandy American Cemetery Visitors Center, Normandy, France, by SmithGroup
Given the importance of the revered site, the architects for this as-yet-unbuilt interpretive center designed a building of quiet dignity. It blends with the site and provides spaces that orchestrate views of the cemetery, landscape, sky, and ocean. Materials reflect the cut stone and aged wood aesthetic of local buildings in Normandy, which is contrasted artfully with polished stone, crisp metal edges, and glass panels. Inside, visitors descend through a long gallery that tells of the courageous military campaign. The experience ends in a cube-shaped meditation chamber. Jurors applauded the separation between the shoreline and the interpretive activity. “When you are there, you want to be alone to remember what happened,” they said. “And the architectural devices they have used to get you there are great.”
Photo courtesy of SmithGroup.

NuSonian House, by Studio27 Architecture
This unbuilt series of prefabricated, single-family residences is an exercise in prototyping. The architect’s research sought to overcome current limitations of the housing market and common business practices. In developing the models, the architects worked to minimize the highest cost in residential construction: site labor. Thus a bias is given to existing prefabrication assembly systems. Characteristics such as energy, service, function, and performance were linked in a computer program to aid the design process. “This study is about selling better environments to people. It says there’s an alternative to going out to the suburbs and buying the ‘Williamsburg,’ the ‘Georgian,’ or the ‘Washingtonian,’” the jurors observed. “This is essentially about how you produce a house, which is an area for immense improvement.”
Photo courtesy of Studio27 Architecture.

The Peabody Institute, Baltimore, by Quinn Evans Architects
Over the years, The Peabody Institute, founded in 1857 as America’s first music conservatory, had restricted access to its resources. Visitors were required to enter through a guard shack, and patrons wandered through underground corridors to reach the box office. The architects transformed the campus by restoring the original entrance and renewing the South Terrace, opening the building to the adjacent neighborhood. The new arcade creates a central circulation path and allows a place for students, patrons, and faculty to gather. Jurors praised the way the building reconnects to the city and makes the institute accessible again. “We like the urban gestures—opening it up to the community again and exploiting what had been the wasted, ignored spaces between buildings,” they said.
Photo © Quinn Evans Architects.

Poor Potter Archaeological Site, Yorktown, Va., by Carlton Abbott & Partners
To preserve the remains of a kiln and other colonial artifacts at the Poor Potter site, in 1975 the National Park Service covered it with a metal hut. Over time, however, the simple shelter failed to do its job. To reverse problems such as erosion and infiltration of ground water, the architect designed a simple wood frame and timber-truss roof—and wrapped the structure with solid walls in the manner of a simple farm building. This design respects the landscape and provides vastly improved interpretive opportunities for visitors. “It fits well into its environment, and it will help create the atmosphere they want to have at this museum,” the jury noted. “What attracted us is the very modest character of it, which goes along with a shed to protect the archaeological dig. There are no pretensions about its function.”
Photo © Carlton S. Abbott.

Regenerative Rowhouse, by Studio27 Architecture
The architect’s goal for this rowhouse prototype is to reconnect the cycles of man and nature. With electricity-generating panels and gardens on the roof, the three-story design both collects energy and replenishes green space in an urban environment. Daylighting strategies, rainwater and gray-water recycling, and the use of local, recycled, and sustainably harvested materials provide a model that surpasses mere efficiency—it creates new energy. Jurors complimented the study for its emphasis on the greening of the city. “This project worries about the machinery, the science of a house. And we as architects are going to have to do that,” the jury said. “We can’t fixate on material or detail.”
Photo courtesy of Studio27 Architecture.

U.S. State Department New Office Building, Nairobi, Kenya, by Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum
The design of this U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, met the challenge of blending highly secure, traditional architecture with local building materials and a welcoming façade. To accomplish this, the architects created a distinctively American porch shielded by an intricately stitched louver screen, a colonnade, and an expansive lawn. The central building’s L-shape wraps around a courtyard, while other elements of the landscape function as outdoor rooms. “We’re giving this a prize with the hope that the Department of State continues to commission good architecture that’s responsive to history, and context, and technology—and that they don’t default to just doing one cookie-cutter embassy after another,” the jury said. “This embassy is important because of its history. And it’s nice that is has a delicate screen surrounding it and a defined entryway that welcomes people.”
Photo © Elizabeth Gill Lui.

Woolen Mills House, Charlottesville, Va., by Christopher Hays Design Studio
Located on the outskirts of Charlottesville, this house is conceived as a place between the urban and the pastoral. Its organization of space is based on the Eastern concepts of ma, or the space between, and hashi, which is the bridging of two edges. The two rectangular components of the house are connected by a second-floor bridge in a composition that creates a series of spaces bathed in sunlight. Local and sustainable materials, along with a passive solar design, also make this residence very friendly to the environment. “It’s like a classical country house in a temperate climate,” the jury observed. “And we like the way the different woods are handled—the clapboard, panels, louvers, and the textures made by the sun. It’s very elegant the way it is closed toward the street and opens up toward the landscape.”
Photo © Prakash Patel.

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