The American Architectural Foundation congratulates the winners of the 2006 AAF Keystone Award, the AIA Twenty-Five Year Award, the AIA Firm Award, and the AIA Gold Medal. These prestigious awards recognize excellence in the field of architecture and were presented at the 2006 Accent on Architecture Gala at the National Building Museum on February 10, 2006.
The recipients of the 2006 awards are:
The Pritzker Family has long been known as a leading patron of architecture. Examples of their stewardship include the development of Chicago’s Hyatt Center and the revolutionary Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park, as well as their sponsorship of The Pritzker Architecture Prize. Through their leadership, they are demonstrating the power of architectural excellence to change lives and transform communities.
Norbert Young, Jr., FAIA, Chair of the AAF Board of Regents
The 2006 American Architectural Foundation Keystone Award is presented to the philanthropic Pritzker Family of Chicago for their leadership in advancing design excellence through their patronage and the creation of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Cindy Pritzker, with her late husband Jay Pritzker, co-founded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979. Their eldest son, Thomas J. Pritzker has become president of The Hyatt Foundation, which was established to administer the prize. Its purpose was and is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
The Pritzker Prize procedures were modeled after the Nobel Prize, with the final selection being made by an international jury with all deliberations and voting in secret. Hundreds of nominees from various countries are considered each year.
As Cindy explains, “While the architecture of Chicago made our family cognizant of the art of architecture, our work with designing and building hotels made us aware of the impact architecture could have on human behavior. So in 1978, when we were approached by the late Carleton Smith with the idea of honoring living architects, we were responsive. We believed that a meaningful prize would encourage and stimulate not only a greater public awareness of buildings, but also would inspire greater creativity within the architectural profession.”
Visiting Thorncrown Chapel gives you a sacred connection between the building and its environment, a very centering experience. This is a magnificent object that has received wide acclaim and will continue to be loved and cherished by all who visit. A truly inspiring work of art and architecture!
Robert Hull, FAIA, Chair, 2006 Architecture Jury
Thorncrown Chapel, the small but soaring glass and cross-braced pine chapel, designed by the late E. Fay Jones, FAIA, the 1990 AIA Gold Medalist, nestles into an eight-acre woodland setting on a sloping hillside in the Ozark Mountains. The chapel stands 48 feet tall with 24-foot-wide by 60-foot-long dimensions for a total of 1,440 square feet. Its 425 windows, made of 6,000 square feet of glass, filter woodland light across its upward diamond-shaped pine trusses to form ever-changing patterns of light and shadow throughout the day and night.
Five million people have visited Thorncrown Chapel since it opened in 1980. Thorncrown Chapel, which received a national AIA Honor Award in 1981, is fourth on the AIA’s Top 10 list of 20th-century structures. Robert Ivy, FAIA, architecture scholar, critic, and Jones’ biographer, described Thorncrown as “arguably among the 20th century’s great works of art.”
Thorncrown was the dream of retired teacher Jim Reed, a native of Pine Bluff, Ark. In 1971 Reed purchased the land that is now the site of the chapel to build his retirement cabin. However, the many admirers of the site prompted him to consider building “a glass chapel” that would embrace the woods.
E. Fay Jones, FAIA, passed away on August 31, 2004, at his home in Fayetteville, Ark., at the age of 83, survived by his wife Gus Jones and two daughters. He will always be recognized as the man who built Thorncrown Chapel, and remembered as one of the leading architects of the 20th century.
The firm has consistently produced an outstanding body of work rooted in a deep commitment to humanistic architecture. Their work is widely admired for its spirited celebration of habitation at many scales and its respect for people, context, and place. The firm continues to evolve in response to new challenges and opportunities while remaining true to the fundamental principles of humanism.
Michael Franklin Ross, Chair, AIA Committee on Design
Moore Ruble Yudell began twenty-eight years ago in much the same way that it currently works—as a spirited collaboration among partners and associates. From the beginning, the founding partners—Charles Moore, John Ruble, and Buzz Yudell—shared a passion for an original architecture that grows out of an intense dialogue with places and people, celebrating human activity while enhancing and nurturing community. These shared passions and concerns continue in both the manner of work and the places ultimately crafted, balancing a collective commitment to humanistic architecture with the energy of individual initiatives.
Since 1985, Buzz Yudell, FAIA, and John Ruble, FAIA, have led the firm, supported and complemented by a multi-talented and collegial group of more than 60 people. As the firm has evolved into an international practice, the partners have been joined by a core group of principals and associates, many of whom have practiced together for more than a decade. The firm’s leadership includes principals Krista Becker, AIA, LEED® AP, Jeanne Chen, AIA, Michael S. Martin, AIA, Neal Matsuno, AIA, LEED® AP, James Mary O’Connor, AIA, and Mario Violich, ASLA, who each share in the design and management of the office with the partners. Tina Beebe continues her recognized leadership as a colorist, and Stanley Anderson, AIA, IIDA heads the interior design team.
Together, they have translated their deep concerns for human habitation at every scale, from single-family houses to community-based planning, to civic, cultural, educational, and mixed-use projects in a diversity of settings. While respecting the roots of place and context, Moore Ruble Yudell explores the possibilities of new technologies and new methods of creating sustainable communities. Their international work is credited with bringing to the foreground issues of sustainability, social housing, construction practices, and the need to work collaboratively with diverse civic groups, clients, and consultants throughout the lifecycle of a project.
Noted works from the firm’s diverse portfolio include Saint Matthew’s Church, Pacific Palisades; Tegel Harbor Housing, Berlin; the University of Washington, Tacoma Master Plan; Tango Bo01 Exhibition Housing, Malmö, Sweden; the United States Embassy, Berlin; and the Joseph A. Steger Student Life Center, University of Cincinnati.
Moore Ruble Yudell is widely acclaimed as a regional, national and international design leader. The firm has won major international awards and competitions and received numerous national, state, and local AIA design awards.
Arguably, more than any American architect of any time, Antoine Predock has asserted a personal and place-inspired vision of architecture with such passion and conviction that his buildings have been universally embraced. Antoine Predock designs buildings that grow out of their unique landscapes, creating, at the same time, symbols that are fearlessly expressive and sincere, simultaneously complex and guileless.
Thomas S. Howorth, FAIA, Chairman, AIA Committee on Design, Gold Medal Committee
Antoine Predock’s approach to design is born out of his geographic surroundings – the American West – an open desert full of history and expansive space. The scale of Predock’s work ranges from the famed Turtle Creek house, built in 1993 for bird enthusiasts along a prehistoric trail in Texas, to a $285 million ballpark for the San Diego Padres that reinvents the concept of a stadium as a “garden” rather than a sports complex. His influence also reaches international sites, namely the new National Palace Museum in Taiwan. Additionally, his masterful integration of contemporary work in historical context, a skill for which he is well-known, is apparent in his buildings at Stanford and Rice Universities.
Physical interaction with the land plays a vital role in his design process and he is known for making the voices of his clients ring clearly throughout the entire project. It has been said by many that Predock’s work joins the “mind” of architecture with the “body,” and embeds both with a sense of spirituality that connects the land, the space, the client, and society together seamlessly. He has won numerous national and regional awards for his unique and highly contextual works.
Predock attended architecture school at the University of New Mexico and graduated from Columbia University. He currently practices from his home base just off historic Route 66.
1799 New York Avenue NW · Washington DC 20006 · 202.626.7318 · Fax 202.626.7420 · info@archfoundation.org