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AIA/CT 2002 Architecture Design Awards
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Business New Haven
1/7/2002
By: BNH
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The American Institute of Architects Connecticut has announced the results of its annual Design Awards program. This year, AIA Connecticut recognized 16 outstanding projects.
Jurors who reviewed 180 submissions were: Carol Burns, AIA of Taylor & Burns Architects, Boston; Robert Campbell, FAIA, Architecture Critic, The Boston Globe, Boston; and Scott Simpson, FAIA, The Stubbins Associates, Boston.
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The following list of winning projects excerpts the architects' descriptions of their entries. The jurors' comments are taken from their evaluations of the winning projects.
The Seashore Residence in Branford received a residential award. Designed by Johnson & Michalsen Architects of Branford, the site faces south and includes a rocky point jutting out into Long Island Sound. To maximize access to the water views, the house is mostly one room deep. The house includes a semi-circular exterior balcony and two towers. Inside the front foyer, the stairway curves up and around to flow into a double-curved balcony.
JURY COMMENTS: A playful mix of styles, brought together in a controlled manner, and the best of neo-traditional entries. The traditional motifs are handled as deliberate quotations in a deft, assured manner. Nice use of material and detail, just short of over the top. It would be a fun place to live.
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The Kemp Residence in Greenwich received a residential award. Designed by Kaehler Moore Architects LLC of Greenwich, the project examines the relationship between interior and exterior in a suburban single-family residence in a modestly populated neighborhood.
JURY COMMENT: A well-conceived, well-crafted plan and nice, simple use of material. Good strong modernism stands out in a superbly detailed residential project, especially in the windows in the exterior wall. The sites are traditional and transparent with a lovely parti.
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The Malloy House in Westport received a residential award. Designed by Culpen & Woods Architects of Stamford, the main body of the house was designed in 1953 by an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, Aaron I. Resnick, who managed and designed many of Wright's houses in the area. The house is closer in style to Wright's "Prairie" type, but its use of simple, common materials such as concrete block and clapboard siding is a legacy of the Usonian model. The two-story addition includes a library and a guest bedroom. The house was extensively renovated with great respect for the original.
JURY COMMENT: This is a good site and addition that are sensitive to climate and use, with a feeling for the landscape and the life to be lived there. There is a strong Wright influence, but it is handled with freshness. A good match for the original, the addition extends the aesthetics nicely.
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The Resnick Residence in Rye, New York received a residential award. Designed by Kaehler Moore Architects of Greenwich. Designed by Becker and Becker Associates, Inc. of New Canaan, this project was a small-scale intervention into an existing 60's one-story modern ranch style residence on a private 12-acre modern and contemporary sculpture park.
JURY COMMENT: With its woodsy style and great attention to celebrating the details where materials come together, this low slung modern addition compliments the outside, in keeping with the owner's sculpture collection. The Bainbridge Island style addition is well-crafted and well-detailed, giving the house new and unique personality.
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The Crescent Building in New Canaan received a preservation award. Designed by Becker and Becker Associates Inc. of New Canaan, the Crescent is the adaptive reuse of a brick three-story structure, constructed as upscale rowhouses in 1889, into 38 units of supportive housing developed by the Central Connecticut Coast YMCA. A major objective of the project was to give dignity to the lives of its residents who include a mix of formerly homeless and working poor individuals.
JURY COMMENTS: Both the building and the new social program are in a special class. It is difficult to pull off both the social program and financing. This is a beautiful structure, a wonderful building brought back to life for a good purpose. Congratulations!
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SAND Elementary School in Hartford received an architecture in the community award. Designed by Tai Soo Kim Partners of Hartford, the new K-5 SAND School reverses the original design concept for the school - integrating community services into the building, including a children's health clinic and a welcoming branch of the public library. The library features an intimate reading area and service area for the public, with stacks arranged to create a subtle transition from adult's to children's areas.
JURY COMMENTS: A school of which the community will be proud, having a very strong organization of the site with a public face of a double-height, colonnaded library and a safe haven of the children's court inside. A very skillful blend of programs, the library and the school is held together by an open, friendly interior court. The simple parti gets much accomplished. The library is well placed as a public community element.
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Merry-Go-Round and Pavilion, located at Bear Mountain State Park at Bear Mountain, New York received an architecture-in-the-community award. Designed by Roger Bartels Architects LLC of South Norwalk, the 7,500 square foot building houses a painted merry-go-round carved in wood by Carousel Works. The exterior of the building, which is located in a 65-year- old park, is a playful reinterpretation of the rustic style of the 1915 Ban Mountain Inn. The building's interior is conceived as two pavilions joined by a skylight. A circular pavilion housing the carousel is lit by a cupola supported by curved steel trusses that reflect the carnival light strands of the merry-go-round itself.
JURY COMMENTS: A project in a category of its own with an ebullient crafting of geometry, form and space. An unforgettable image -fun, theatrical and an amazing blend of Louis Kahn plan with Park Service imagery. Wonderful, wacky, playful and evocative of the Adirondack style of architecture - one of the most unique things we've seen.
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Greenfield Partners of Norwalk received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by Beinfield Wagner Architects of Norwalk, the 10,000 square foot offices for Greenfield Partners are located in a former lock factory that has been revitalized as a mixed-use project. The industrial nature of the existing boiler room and adjacent foundry were celebrated in the office conversion. The rusted steel fireplace and the cold rolled steel enclosure around the kitchen recall the space's mythological industrial past. The company boardroom is located in the former boiler room, where pre-existing catwalks and one of the original boilers are preserved.
JURY COMMENTS: This is the best project in the interior category. They had a fantastic old building and they knew what to do with it. The project takes great advantage and reinforces the beautiful existing former factory site. In the renovation, neither the office nor the old factory seem out of place - a very well-balanced revival.
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Wilbur Snow Elementary School in Middletown received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by Jeter Cook and Jepson Architects of Hartford, the school has been designed to integrate indoor and outdoor learning environments. The original school was an eight building campus that allowed children close contact with the beautiful site, but resulted in lost instructional time in bad weather. A single structure now connects the existing gymnasium, auditorium and a reprogrammed classroom building while maintaining a connection to the woodland.
JURY COMMENTS: A wonderful transformation through a strong reconfiguration of the site plan, with clear, well executed concepts of connecting inside and outdoors. The shed roof corridor of wood and steel is very strong feature, a metaphor for the woodsy landscape. The new addition with its camp like atmosphere completely transforms the existing school, making it open, airy, light, inviting and a good place for learning.
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University of Connecticut Visitors Center at Storrs received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by Flad & Associates of Stamford, thanks to a generous donation, the University of Connecticut now has a warm, approachable "front door" for visitors and students. The bi-axially, symmetrical facade makes it easily recognizable from any direction and its slate, brick and copper materials, consistent with its campus context, represent the timelessness of this academic institution.
JURY COMMENTS: A beautifully presented project that employs traditional motifs associated with American colleges, but blown up into a bold iconic symbol. Well-composed and well-mannered, this visitors center does an excellent job of extending a welcome to newcomers on campus.
Samuel Freeman Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by James Childress, FAIA, Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Centerbrook, the building provides offices and support space for the research of computational neuroscience. The building blends to the contour of a steep hill, wraps around a large oak tree and helps enclose a new enclave of campus buildings. Interiors were kept simple. The exterior uses stained concrete and wood siding in random widths.
JURY COMMENTS: Impressively understated, well-developed in exterior detailing, modest and thoughtful, this research center nestles comfortably into its site. With controlled, elegant simplicity and memorable images this small institution is well sited and connected to its landscape.
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Trumbull Regional Agriscience Technology Center in Trumbull received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by Wiles & Associates Architects, Bridgeport, the intent of the design was to create a place of carefully arranged building forms that respond to the functional typology of the barn. The front entrance is announced by a stainless steel, shingle-clad silo, a post-and-beam timber frame entrance and a brick, quilt walk that recalls random barn-building techniques.
JURY COMMENTS: The architecture expresses the experimental program of the building with zest. Fun and syncopated, this is a good update of traditional agrarian architecture. Vernacular farm types are brought together in an unabashed assembly and convey the spirit of research and discovery suggested by the program.
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The Harry A. Conte West School in New Haven received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by Herbert S. Newman & Partners of New Haven, the design brings the front door of the school forward to the street line with an addition of classrooms and offices. This addition utilizes the same ideas of structure and curtain wall as the original school, but in a new way, and increases the scale of the school at the street by surrounding the front door with the mass and simple bearing of its Italianate neighbors. The roofs of the new additions have wide caves, but they are flat like those of the original school.
JURY COMMENTS: A few deft moves were all that was required to breathe new life into this urban school. The new entry piece is an elegant assemblage of architectural elements, a kind of bricolage. This is a strong reworking of an existing building that draws from the entire square as its context. It has good composition and use of materials and nice interiors.
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Projects designed by out-of-state architects earning honors included The Trading Floor Ceiling, UBS/Warburg Center in Stamford. Designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP, New York, New York, it received an award for architecture: the encompassing act.
JURY COMMENTS: A reinterpretation in modern materials of truss structure with even but not monotonous light. The beautiful, powerful combination of structure and light incorporates air handling into the handsome ceiling as well. This clever, visually interesting solution gives light and character to the space but without being overly imposing.
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Summit Residences, Trinity College in Hartford received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by William Rawn & Associates Architects, of Boston, the complex includes a dining facility/lecture hall, faculty offices, seminar rooms and faculty apartments.
JURY COMMENTS: This is a thoughtful campus design and a sculpturally inventive insertion. The layers added to the lower two or three floor are eclectic stylistically. This playful, residential dormitory complex provides a lively engaging place for students to interact.
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Linsly Chittenden Hall at Yale University in New Haven received a commercial, institutional or multi-family award. Designed by Goody, Chancy & Associates of Boston, the project involved replacing or restoring windows in two of Yale's buildings and adding shed dormers to create new offices in the former attic space. In addition, a new entry was created.
JURY COMMENTS: A well-designed revival of a traditional academic building with good use of color and material. An important and historic building has been reborn with careful reworking.
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