AIArchitect This Week | 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award Goes to Pugh + Scarpa

Summary: The American Institute of Architects’ Board of Directors awarded Pugh + Scarpa the 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award on December 3, based on the firm’s 18 years of consistently excellent and innovative work, including its leadership in sustainable and socially progressive design. The firm is known for an established culture of ingenuity and exploration that maintains a fresh approach, through which every project is a continuation of the firm's ongoing collective inquiry.

Solar Umbrella, Venice, Calif., entry view from the garden. Inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House of 1953, the Solar Umbrella provides a contemporary reinvention of the solar canopy—a strategy that provides thermal protection in climates with intense exposures. Passive and active solar design strategies render the residence energy neutral.

AIA President Marvin Malecha, FAIA, notified firm principal Lawrence Scarpa, AIA, by telephone immediately after the Board made its decision. “We’re thrilled,” he said. “It was a surprise just to be nominated. It’s just stunning to win.”

The AIA Architecture Firm Award, given annually, is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.

Founding partners Gwynne Pugh, AIA, and Lawrence Scarpa, AIA, and Angela Brooks, AIA, who became a partner in 2001, are known for forging a broad, inclusive, experimental approach to socially and environmentally sensitive urban planning and design.

Marlene Imirzian, AIA, nominated Pugh + Scarpa on behalf of the AIA Committee on Design. The submission highlighted the firm’s “ongoing research in materials and technologies as well as constant re-examination of known conditions, accepted norms, and established methods, which lead to innovative solutions and stimulating new ways of approaching design. This is true regardless of the scale—big or small, whether for public or private use, for rich or for poor. This is an approach that has often led [Pugh + Scarpa] to reinvent established building and design methodologies.”

A working studio: at home with the arts
The Pugh + Scarpa office is located in Bergamot Station, a former water-heater factory and cultural landmark the firm master planned and converted into 46 art galleries, shops, lofts, and creative offices. In the studio, the fusion between industrial and artistic motifs is easily seen; the relationship between fine arts and architecture is everywhere. Each principal is intimately involved with every project, thus staff designers and draftspersons are directly engaged with projects and firm principals. The firm’s modest size and collaborative atmosphere mean that employees of every rank and experience level can have a significant impact on the ultimate result. The office has had employees from more than 25 countries worldwide and makes a concerted effort to teach students with constant internship offerings.

COoP Editorial, Santa Monica, Calif., view of lobby from entry. This remodel of an early commercial structure by Frank Gehry is a continuation of research into materials and technologies. Without predefining architecture, the architects responded directly and intuitively to the material qualities of place, examining the tension between materials, form, and experience.

“Pugh + Scarpa’s practice is known for both design and its commitment to running a socially and environmentally responsive practice,” writes Thom Mayne, FAIA, in support of the nomination. “Comfortable with aesthetic, practical, political, and functional issues, they have mapped an architectural path that is as didactic as it is successful.”

Innovation and design process: A culture of collaboration and experimentation
Pugh + Scarpa’s design innovation is a direct product of its process, which is the result of a carefully developed commitment to designing without expectations or preconceived notions. The process is exploratory and involves the client and, whenever possible, the builder and fabricator. This dialogue creates an expeditious project with few errors and fosters a culture of collaboration, exciting the imagination and exceeding the expectations of both architect and client. “Pugh + Scarpa’s work is consistently explorative and significant to our evolving profession,” writes Tom Kundig, FAIA, principal of 2009 Firm Award recipient Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. “What’s remarkable is that they bring this exploration—this ability to push the boundaries—to projects of all scales and types.”

Colorado Court, Santa Monica, Calif., entry view. Unlike most conventionally developed projects, this project incorporates energy efficient measures that exceed standard practice, optimize building performance, and ensure reduced energy use during all phases of construction and occupancy. The photovoltaic system delivers electricity to the grid during the daytime and retrieves from the grid at night as needed.

Sustainability as a catalyst for better communities
The firm has been recognized repeatedly by the AIA and other organizations as a leader in sustainable design. For the firm, sustainability is not a design option that can be tacked on or value-engineered out. It is a comprehensive, intrinsic root value of design competence. “This firm has tirelessly focused on our environment and their community,” writes Calvin Lewis, FAIA, in support. “They have engaged innumerable opportunities to help educate students and government officials, as well as peer practitioners and fellow citizens. Their efforts would be commendable if only being judged on the educational benefits they have shared, but their most profound impact is in their actual built work,” writes the principal of the 2001 Firm Award recipient Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture.

Materials investigation: making the ordinary extraordinary
Pugh + Scarpa is continuously experimenting with the built form, researching, designing, mocking up, and testing to improvise new ways of thinking about common materials—such as oriented strand board—or incorporating materials that have rarely seen application in buildings. In the early 1990s, a used shipping container became a conference room for a film production company, paper cups from the convenience store become luminaries, pingpong balls are set between glass to send warm, diffuse light into private offices. This is not mere novelty; collectively these works demonstrate new value for ordinary items and elevate the profession’s dialogue about materials choice to consider a far wider range of solutions than before.

Reactor Films, Santa Monica, Calif., waiting area. The client’s required move-in to a completed space in less than 14 weeks from the beginning of design. To meet this demand, design decisions were made in close association with the contractor and various fabricators. Construction commenced the first week of design , the city issued permits by the beginning of the second. All drawings generated for the project served as both client presentation and construction document.

Good design is for everyone: social justice in architecture
Pugh + Scarpa has always acted on its philosophy that good design is for everyone, no matter what their income level. The same level of commitment, design creativity, materials research and problem-solving alacrity is delivered to nonprofit and affordable housing developers and to the wealthiest clients alike. In several cases, the firm has participated in grant writing and fundraising efforts to supply affordable-housing agencies with energy-saving technologies. Pugh + Scarpa co-founded Livable Places, a nonprofit developer and policy organization for affordable and mixed-use urban dwelling, and advanced the dialogue on livability in California. This multi-faceted approach has led to a wide variety of awards as well, including the Committee on Architecture for Education Merit Award and Youg Architect awards in 2009. As David Miller, FAIA, partner of 2003 AIA Firm Award recipient Miller|Hull Partnership, points out, “they are the only firm in the history of the AIA to win a national AIA Design Award, AIA COTE Top 10 Green Building Award, and national AIA special interest award for a single project. They have done this twice with Colorado Court and the Solar Umbrella.”

Community contributions: shaping communities through education and dialogue
Pugh + Scarpa’s “social and environmental commitments go beyond individual projects to a profound belief in leadership and participation in their own communities,” lauds Buzz Yudell, FAIA, principal of 2006 AIA Firm Award honoree Moore Ruble Yudell. The firm’s principals see continuity between practice, research and writing, teaching and mentoring, and community service. In addition to co-founding Livable Places, they have co-founded the A+D Museum in Los Angeles; served on the Santa Monica Planning Commission and Solar Santa Monica; and served as board members for the AIA, Woodbury University, GSA Peer Professional, Brunner Loeb Forum, and Mayors Institute on City Design. Firm members have presented seminars at numerous AIA, and USGBC national conventions and countless state and local AIA conventions; served as AIA Awards jurors over 25 times; and taught at the university level for three decades.

A wide span of firm recognition
Over the past 10 years, the firm has won 13 national AIA awards, including:

Jigsaw, Los Angeles, Floating edit studios with ping-pong-ball walls. The film editing profession requires small, dark environments free from distraction and light reflection—in essence, hermetically sealed boxes. Yet, at the same time, a film editing company, if it is to be competitive, must exist in a stimulating, socially interactive workspace alive to workers and clients alike—a place where people will want to be.

The firm has more than 40 state and local AIA awards. In 2008, Pugh + Scarpa received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Interior Design.

Other awards include; Record Houses, Record Interiors, The Rudy Brunner Prize, Emerging Voice in Architecture presented by the Architectural League of New York, The Collaborative Practice Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, The AIA Henry Adams Medal and The Leadership Award for Sustainable Design presented by the California Legislature Assembly. In 2003, Pugh + Scarpa was also selected as a finalist for the World Habitat Award presented by The United Nations and Building & Housing Social Foundation. The firm’s work has been featured in over 400 publications worldwide. Some of those publications includes; Newsweek, Architectural Graphic Standards, U.S. Department of Energy case studies, AIA Forward, and The Oprah Winfrey TV Show.

The award will be presented June 12 at the 2010 AIA National Convention in Miami. Previous recipients include Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen (2009), KieranTimberlake (2008) Murphy/Jahn (2005), and Lake/Flato Architects (2004).