by Zach Mortice
Associate Editor

Summary: The American Institute of Architects’ Board of Directors awarded the AIA Gold Medal to Peter Bohlin, FAIA, on December 3. The Pennsylvania-based architect and founder of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson is renowned for his versatile, contextual use of materials. The AIA Gold Medal is the highest honor the AIA confers, and acknowledges an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Bohlin will be honored at the 2010 AIA National Convention in Miami.

Peter Bohlin’s Forest House in Connecticut. Photo courtesy of Michael Thomas.

AIA President Marvin Malecha, FAIA, notified Bohlin by telephone immediately after the Board made its decision. “I’m so pleased and I’m surprised,” Bohlin said. “We all believe in architecture. It is our life to a great extent. Like athletes, we all know that it’s hard work to make it look easy, and we’re all constantly striving to do that.”

The material language of place
Over the course of his long career, Bohlin has designed superlative rural houses and nature centers. He’s also designed excellent urban buildings. The key to success for both building types is their contextual use of materials. He’s equally adept with natural palettes of stone and timber on rural sites, like his Ledge House in Maryland, as he is with steel and glass in urban places, like his Seattle City Hall. From this common approach, Bohlin has derived a variety of styles and aesthetics that consistently use their materials to express the essence of their place. Whether it be city skylines or mountain ranges, Bohlin’s deft use of glass and transparency means that his projects feature perfectly executed views out to awe-inspiring vistas. “He moves from the log cabin to the glass box with the same unassailable ethic that has for hundreds of years defined and shaped an architectural tradition rooted in the exercise of knowledge and made unique only by the personal will, character, and imagination of its creator,” wrote Mack Scogin, FAIA, of Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, in a recommendation letter.

The Pocono Environmental Education Center, designed by Peter Bohlin. Photo courtesy of Nic Lehoux Photography Ltd. and Christopher Barone Architectural Photography.

Since he founded Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in 1965, Bohlin has evolved a warm, even woodsy Modernism that sits apart from its rigid social-reformer history. Perhaps his most accurate historical parallel is the Modernist formal language developed by Frank Lloyd Wright meant to integrate buildings with uniquely American landscapes. Bohlin’s closest communion with this legacy came with the renovation of a 19th century barn into a conference center adjacent to Wright’s Fallingwater at Bear Run. Paul Goldberger, Hon. AIA, the New Yorker’s architecture critic, has called Bohlin a “romantic Modernist, determined to use the form of Modernism to achieve the emotional impact of traditionalism.”

“His architecture clearly communicates that buildings are not just placed on the landscape, but are part of the landscape and indeed enhance the experience of nature,” wrote Ed Feiner, FAIA, former General Services Administration chief architect, in a letter of recommendation.

Bohlin’s Ballard Library and Neighborhood Center in Seattle. Photo courtesy of Nic Lehoux Photography Ltd. and Seattle Public Library.

Bohlin’s rural work communicates the rough-hewn yet stately bravery of the American frontier, rediscovered and reappreciated by the postcard views of nature they frame. His Grand Teton National Park Visitors Center in Wyoming features jagged wood roof peaks and canted planes that mirror the Teton Mountains beyond, and enclose a hearth-like glowing heart walled in glass. Throughout Bohlin’s body of work, sustainability is a consistent emphasis, though his projects are never overwhelmed by superfluous sustainable gadgetry. Alan Balfour, dean of the Georgia Tech College of Architecture, wrote in a recommendation letter that Bohlin’s work embodies “a metaphysical relationship with nature that is an elusive, yet profound part of the cultural imagination of this nation.”

Humility and human aspiration
Examples of Bohlin’s work includes:

The 5th Ave. Apple Store in Manhattan. Photo courtesy Apple Inc. and Peter Aaron/Esto.

• The Ledge House, which builds a serene, natural light-bathed retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain region Ridge Mountains by arranging a series of timber and stone pavilions in a horseshoe pattern.
• The William J. Nealon Federal Building and US Courthouse in Scranton, Pa., which subtly integrates a new courthouse building into the original 19th century Neo-Classical facility with a multi-story, sky-lit atrium.
• The Apple Store 5th Ave. in New York City, a pure, pristine glass cube absent any structural steel that takes visitors below ground, away from its busy urban milieu, and into one of Apple’s flagship retail destinations.
• The Pocono Environmental Education Center in Dingmans Ferry, Pa., which distills Bohlin’s approach to nature center design to its essence with basic shed massing, a broad, overhanging roof, natural materials, and a luminous, lantern-like glow from within.
• Seattle City Hall; its varied curtain wall facades of steel and glass uniquely reflect the solar orientation and urban fabric of each face.

The Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center at Grand Teton National Park. Photo courtesy Nic Lehoux Photography Ltd. and Edward Riddell.

Bohlin and his 200-person practice, which has offices in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Francisco, firm have shown a deference to site context and a tendency for design humility that is becoming rarer and rarer among the top tier of practitioners. Again and again, his work demonstrates that great cities, towns, and buildings are created by designers looking to further the story of their place in a collaborative and contextual way, not by singular architecture that calls for heedless and self-serving attention. Awarding the Gold Medal to Bohlin, wrote Scogin in his recommendation letter, would communicate that “architects can in fact address all the complexities of our present day world with the grace and humility that privileges the best of human aspiration.”

Bohlin’s projects have earned 14 national AIA awards, including 9 Institute Honor Awards, COTE Top Ten Green Project Awards, AIA Committee on Education Awards, and AIA Housing Awards. His firm received the 1994 AIA Architecture Firm Award. Bohlin is the 66th AIA Gold Medalist. He joins the ranks of such visionaries as Thomas Jefferson (1993), Frank Lloyd Wright (1949), Louis Sullivan (1944), LeCorbusier (1961), Louis Kahn (1971), I.M. Pei (1979), Frank Gehry (1999), and Renzo Piano (2008). In recognition of his legacy to architecture, his name will be chiseled into the granite Wall of Honor in the lobby of the AIA headquarters in Washington, D.C.