by Zach Mortice
Associate Editor

Summary: A crowd of architects, patrons, clients, and guests paid tribute to the profession’s luminaries at the 19th annual Accent on Architecture gala, sponsored by the AIA and the AAF, on February 22 in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. New York City’s Museum of Modern Art was honored with the AAF Keystone Award, while Richard Meier, FAIA, received the AIA Twenty-five Year Award for his Atheneum in New Harmony, Ind. Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake accepted the AIA Firm Award, and Renzo Piano, Hon. FAIA, received the AIA Gold Medal.

Once again, the AIA and American Architectural Foundation (AAF) leaders welcomed AIA members and guests to a crisply decorated National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., for the 19th Annual Accent on Architecture Gala. Opening greetings by AAF President and CEO Ronald Bogle, Hon. AIA; AIA Executive Vice President/CEO Christine McEntee; and McGraw-Hill Construction President and past AAF Chair Norbert Young, FAIA, filled the hall, but the first design-award recipient to address the crowd was East Haven High School student Oscar Lucero, East Haven, Conn., a winner of the Target/AAF’s Redesign Your School competition. This contest was announced at last year’s gala. Lucero’s Kahn-influenced and nature-integrated Ocho Olas School won him a $5,000 scholarship.

AAF Keystone Award: The MoMA, Now and Forever
This year’s winner of the AAF Keystone Award is completely emblematic of this award’s mission. Each year, the AAF gives the award to an organization or individual from outside of the architecture profession in recognition of exemplary leadership in the field of architecture and design. The Museum of Modern Art received the award this year for its presence as a steadfast fixture in the world of Modern architecture. Eric Cantor, chair of the AAF Board of Regents, called the MoMA “one of our nation’s most beloved cultural and educational institutions.”

For 75 years, the MoMA has been Modernisms’ best advocate, ally, showcase, and salon. Few people could speak to this tradition as well as award presenter and Wall Street Journal architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, Hon AIA. Unable to attend, Huxtable sent a video message to be played at the gala. She praised the MoMA’s ability to “stay ahead of the curve for almost a century,” even though “revolutions grow old.”

Huxtable, a long-time critic for the New York Times and perhaps the writer most associated with emerging Modernism in America, also traced her own personal history with the MoMA. “I don’t think I would exist without [its] department of Architecture and Design,” she said.

“The revolution is dead,” Huxtable said. “Long live the revolution. Modernism is a crusade for a better world, and the Museum of Modern Art and its department of Architecture and Design will continue to show us the way. I hope to follow [MoMA curator] Barry [Bergdoll] and the department into the next revolution.”

Bergdoll, MoMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, accepted the award and spoke of the storied institution’s history. He recalled the landmark 1932 “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition” exhibit that established International Style Modernism as the design vanguard of the age. “The exhibition is to this day renowned for its role in transforming American tastes and promoting its design,” he said. Bergdoll also reminded the audience of Modernism’s “too often forgotten” populist “public agenda.”

“I promise you we will strive to continue to excel in our dedication to the development of contemporary architecture and design for years to come,” said Bergdoll.

AIA Twenty-five Year Award: Meier’s Atheneum Looks Forward and Backward
Prior to introducing the presenter of the Twenty-five Year Award, AIA President Marshall Purnell, FAIA, spoke about his duties as president and previewed the inclusiveness-themed AIA Convention. “The theme for the AIA Convention this year is ‘We the People,’” he said. “Those three words baptized us as a nation. If you start with those three words, then almost anything is possible.”

Purnell also congratulated Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, the winner of the Topaz Medallion, who could not be present at the gala. The Topaz Medallion honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions to architecture education for at least 10 years.

Robert Ivy, FAIA, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record and editorial director of McGraw-Hill Construction, began his presentation of the Twenty-five Year Award by explaining the very rare achievement of 2008 winner Richard Meier, FAIA. Meier is one of only four architects (including Mies, Wright, and Kahn) to ever be honored by this award more than once. In 2000, Meier received the Twenty-five Year Award for his Smith House in Darien, Conn., and this year the Institute honors his Atheneum in New Harmony, Ind. The Twenty-five Year Award is given each year to a building that has grown in stature and meaning after 25 years.

Ivy drew parallels between the Classical ideals of this village visitor center and the aspirations of the 19th century utopians who founded the town. He also compared it to Modern masterpieces like Corbusier’s Villa Savoy, as the buildings share a singular purity of form.

“The Atheneum creates its own hermetic form of urbanism, in which the individual components of a single structure are knit together into a unity,” Ivy said. “Rather than the doctrinaire Modernism, which once, watered down, flooded this country, and radically different from the passive, aesthetically driven Post Modernism, which would follow, Meier’s work at the Atheneum looks back at the roots of the International Style, then beyond, to something new—a new era, honoring the capacity of its inhabitants and visitors to look, to wander, and to change.”

Though Meier was not able to attend the gala, Connie Weinzapfel, the director of historic New Harmony, addressed the crowd and accepted the award. She too talked of the Atheneum’s ability to look into the past while simultaneously exploring the future. “The Atheneum serves those seeking knowledge from the past and answers for the future,” she said. “It responds to the historic community and it is the perfect continuum of the ideals of the New Harmony founders who sought perfect unity with all mankind.”

Weinzapfel also shared a short message from Meier: “For me, the right job is one in which you can balance the givens with the hope of doing something more. In the case of the Atheneum, the givens exceeded any reasonable expectation for a young architect.”

AIA Architecture Firm Award: KieranTimberlake as a “wonderful society”
This year’s presenter of the AIA Firm Award, the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm, was a man most associated with a singularly talented architect not typically known as a creative collaborator. The son of Louis Kahn, Philadelphia-based filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn readily admitted that the first time he heard of the Firm Award, he was skeptical. “I grew up with the vision of architect as king,” he said, “one man designing everything while others helped out.”

While working on his film My Architect, which explored his ambiguous relationship with his father through the late master’s work, Kahn said that he rediscovered the collaborative nature of architecture. This year’s Firm Award recipient, KieranTimberlake of Philadelphia, helped him to realize architecture in this light as well. “A firm—you bet,” Kahn said of KieranTimberlake, “—but what an insufficient word to describe the wonderful society that is created by the making of architecture.

“This is thoughtful architecture made by thoughtful people. It is not cynical or capricious. It does not scream ‘Look at me!’ It is not unified by a signature style, but rather by an intensity of inquiry into the program, the materials, and the process of building itself.”

Founding principals James Timberlake, FAIA, and Stephen Kieran, FAIA, joined Kahn and accepted the award with several KieranTimberlake architects. Timberlake's humble and populist pose graced his acceptance speech. “We can no longer be content with creating simple shelter or thrilling form,” he said. “It is our ethical obligation to transform this confluence of challenges from one that confounds to one that succeeds. It is our responsibility to fight for those that live in substandard conditions, in failing and nonexistent infrastructure, and to confront the tremendous impact that architecture makes on the carbon footprint of the world.”

AIA Gold Medal: Renzo the Maestro
The highest honor the AIA awards to an architect, the 64th Gold Medal, was placed on the shoulders of the internationally eminent Renzo Piano, Hon. FAIA. Months ago, Piano’s first Manhattan high-rise opened, and his client there, New York Times Chief Information Officer David Thurm, spoke of his experience with Piano and the new Times headquarters building Piano designed. Calling him the “consummate maestro,” Thurm praised the Italian architect for his ability to reinvent and reinvigorate the same forms again and again. “A lesser light would have found a niche, edgy at first, but then comfortably branded and repetitious—but not Renzo,” he said. “His designs are fresh, innovative, and energizing.”

After working with the Gold Medal winner for several years on the Times building, Thurm said that Piano’s secret to such success has been the simple, relaxed joy he gets from creating. “No wonder his buildings are so exceptional,” said Thurm.

Such easy, effusive joy was apparent when Piano took the stage. “I love you,” he said. “I love this job.”

Piano spoke about watching his father, a builder, usher forms from design to reality. This led him to the power of raw, miraculous creation inherent in architecture.

“Architecture is magic,” he said. “Architecture is adventure,”—an everyday adventure to overcome the challenges of context and use, but also a personal, humanistic adventure. “It’s also an adventure of spirit. It’s an adventure of spirit because architecture is a very complicated matter. It’s the frontier between art and science.”