by Stephanie Stubbs, Assoc. AIA
Managing Editor

Summary: More than 1,000 architects and their architecture-loving friends joined the American Architectural Foundation, in partnership with the AIA, for the 18th annual Accent on Architecture gala on February 9 in the Great Hall of the historic National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. As in years past, the gala offered a glorious opportunity to honor America’s architectural best. Heightening the significance of this year’s event is concurrent celebration of the AIA’s 150th anniversary.

AAF President and CEO Ronald E. Bogle, Hon. AIA, and AAF Board of Regents Chair Eric Cantor warmly welcomed the guests and acknowledged this year’s sponsors. AIA President RK Stewart, FAIA; AIA Executive Vice President and CEO Christine McEntee; and Norbert A. Young, FAIA, past chair of the Board of Regents and president of McGraw Hill Construction, the principal benefactor of Accent on Architecture for the past 10 years, offered their welcomes as well. Bogle then presented an overview of the “State of the Art of the Art of the Foundation,” including its Great Schools by Design program, the Mayors Institute on City Design, scholarship programs, oversight of the preservation of the Octagon, and the newly formed A+DEN, a partnership of the AAF and the Chicago Architecture Foundation committed to offering innovative design education for K-12 grade students. “The future of the AAF looks bullish,” Bogle concluded.

Rich Varda, FAIA, vice president of store design for Target, was on hand to announce “Redesign Your School,” a new contest to be sponsored by Target, the AAF, and Great Schools by Design, in which 9th-12th graders will be invited to design the school of their dreams. Entries are due June 30; submission guidelines will be posted toward the beginning of March on www.redesignyourschool.org.

Highlighting the evening were presentations of this year’s awards.

AAF Keystone Award: Save America’s Treasures
Each year, the AAF presents the Keystone Award to an organization or individual from outside the architecture profession in recognition of exemplary leadership in the field of architecture and design. The 2007 Keystone Award was presented to Save America’s Treasure, a public-private partnership that includes the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences. The projects include preservation of America’s icons from objects—the Star Spangled Banner, the Founding Father’s papers, and the World Trade Center Model—as well as buildings, including Taliesin, the Acoma Pueblo, and AAF’s historic Octagon. Bogle and Cantor presented the award to Adair Margo, chair, President's Committee on Arts and Humanities, and Richard Moe, president, National Trust for Historic Preservation who represented all partners who joined them on stage. Also on stage was Congressman Norman Dicks, Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee which funds Save America’s Treasurers.

Save America’s Treasures also received special congratulations from two of its chairwomen. First Lady Laura Bush sent her congratulations in the form of a letter (read by AAF board member Diane Hoskins, AIA), which says, in part: “This excellent program is making great strides in encouraging the preservation and use of our nation’s irreplaceable heritage treasures. I particularly admire the educational resources that Save America’s Treasures is creating for widespread use.” Founding chair, US Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton sent her congratulations in the form of a video, in which she said, in part, “The Keystone Award is fitting recognition for this valuable public/private partnership.” Clinton named the World Trade Center model and the Octagon among the program’s worthy recipients: “I salute you for saving these treasures.”

AIA Twenty-five Year Award: Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Commentator Vincent J. Scully Jr., Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Miami, presented poetical tribute and description of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial so moving it left many members of the audience with tears in their eyes. He described how for so long Vietnam veterans were at best ignored and at worst scorned until “the memorial opened America’s heart for the dead and the survivors.” Beloved by the public, Scully said, the memorial “achieves a reconnection of the living and the dead.” Calling it a “consummate work of Modern art … the wall is everything,” he said.

Maya Lin, principal, Maya Lin Studios, designer of the wall, was joined for the award’s acceptance by Kent Cooper, FAIA, and William P. Lecky, FAIA, principals of Cooper-Lecky Architects, Washington, D.C., who served as architect of record for the project; John Parsons, associate regional director for lands, resources, and planning for the National Park Service, sponsors of the project; and Jan Scruggs, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Lin thanked Cooper and Lecky for “making the memorial a reality”; and the AIA for “standing by the memorial.” She also thanked Scully for his class that inspired her design and for taking part in the awards ceremony: “It means so much to me,” she said simply.

AIA Architecture Firm Award: Leers Weinzapfel Associates
The AIA Architecture Firm Award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm. Commentator Robert A. Ivy, FAIA, editor in chief of Architectural Record, and vice president and editorial director, McGraw-Hill Construction, noted this year’s award was a special milestone: “This is the first time a woman or a woman-owned firm has its name on the granite wall,” the black granite in the AIA headquarters building on which the names of Gold Medal and Architecture Firm Award recipients are carved every year. Ivy lauded this year’s recipient, Leers Weinzapfel Associates, Boston, for “tackling the most difficult type of project—intertwining their architecture with the infrastructure of their environment.” Their beautiful work, Ivy noted, “reflects their collaborative spirit and their quiet persistence to achieve excellence.”

Founding principals Andrea Leers, FAIA, and Jane Weinzapfel, FAIA, received the award with the firm’s two other principals, Joe Pryse, AIA, and Josiah Stevenson, AIA. Leers noted that when she and Weinzapfel set out to form their firm in 1982, they had two goals: “To create a bold, refined architecture in the public realm and to establish a collaborative office … We share this awarded with all the people we work with, as well as our friends, suppliers, and families … and our moms,” Weinzapfel added.

AIA Gold Medal: Edward Larrabee Barnes, FAIA
The crown jewel in the Accent on Architecture gala always is the awarding of the AIA Gold Medal, made even more special this year because it is the 100th anniversary of the award first given to Sir Aston Webb in 1907. The 2007 AIA Gold Medal recipient is noted American architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Posthumously, Barnes becomes the 63rd recipient of the AIA Gold Medal. Henry Cobb, FAIA, founding partner, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, who also nominated Barnes for the award, took the audience for a visual tour across the vast breadth and depth of Barnes’ most well-known work, including the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine; Crowne Center in Kansas City; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which Cobb described as “a profound meditation on the interface between art and architecture.” Perhaps most of all, Cobb posited, it was Barnes’ “ethical commitment to architecture” that so appeals—especially to young architects.

Toshiko Mori, FAIA, chair, Department of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, related her experiences of working in Ed and Mary Barnes’ office, which she characterized as a familylike atmosphere. As for the man himself, “with his Jimmy Stewart-like ‘aw, shucks’ mentality,“ everybody loved him, Mori said. He loved simplicity and frugality. “What I learned most was how to be an architect,” she said, “…from the man who embodied the nobility of this profession.” She characterized his works as “timeless, yet fresh.”

Barnes' widow, Mary Barnes, and his son John, both architects, accepted the Gold Medal from President Stewart and AIA Executive Vice President and CEO McEntee. John Barnes offered further tribute to his father and noted his mother’s lifelong contributions to their practice. He declared how proud and thankful his father would have been for the award, and how grateful he was, in his day-to-day life, to the more than 500 people who had worked with him in his practice. “I just want to emphasize how much my father loved this profession,” he said.

Latrobe Prize Awarded
New to this year’s program was the announcement of the Latrobe Prize, a biannual $100,000 award from the AIA College of Fellows to support a two-year program of research selected by jury review for its promise to advance professional knowledge in architecture. The 2007 Latrobe Prize is awarded to Guy Nordenson, with Stan Allan, Catherine Seavitt, and James Smith, Princeton University; Michael Tantala, Tantala Associates; and Adam Yarinsky and Stephen Cassell, Architecture Research Office. Accepting the award from College of Fellows Chancellor Frank Lucas, FAIA, for the "On the Water, a Model for the Future: a Study of New York and Jersey Upper Bay" project was principal investigator Guy Nordenson.