January 17, 2018

Seattle architects win AIA awards

Photo by Lara Swimmer [enlarge]

Mercer Island Fire Station 92

Four projects by Seattle architects won 2018 Honor Awards of the American Institute of Architects, which recognize excellence in architecture, interior architecture and regional and urban design.

The 17 winners are located throughout the world and will be honored at the AIA Conference on Architecture 2018 in New York City. There were roughly 500 submissions.

For all the winners, go to http://tiny.cc/2i26py/.

Here are the winning projects by Seattle architects in each category:

Architecture

Mercer Island Fire Station 92 on Mercer Island

Architect: The Miller Hull Partnership

The 8,000-square-foot replacement for Fire Station 92, built in 1962, embraces the designers' attraction with the firefighters, firetrucks and equipment in these civic landmarks. It does so by providing views into the apparatus bay from the main pedestrian and vehicular thoroughfare, promoting a connection to the people the fire station serves, which the architect said results in increased awareness and advocacy for these services. Sustainable features include a thermally efficient envelope and fast-acting bi-fold doors in the vehicle bays that reduce the time the doors are opened following an emergency response.

Photo by Kevin Scott [enlarge]

Washington Fruit & Produce Co. Headquarters in Yakima

Washington Fruit & Produce Co. Headquarters in Yakima

Architect: Graham Baba Architects

The company's leaders wanted a new office/headquarters that would be a refuge from the industrial agribusiness landscape that surrounds them. They asked for warmer materials, little-to-no concrete, non-boxlike forms, protection from the freeway and a spare office aesthetic that minimized visible equipment or devices. The designers made the 16,500-square-foot space inwardly focused. The building is light, from the delicate, expressive structural beams to the daylight throughout, and tucks into the natural environment.

Gohar Khatoon Girls' School in Mazar-i-Sharif,

Afghanistan

Architect: Robert Hull

(now deceased) of The

Miller Hull Partnership

and the University of

Washington, Department of

Architecture

The Balkh Province Ministry of Education in partnership with a U.S.-based non-profit commissioned the school, which is in Afghanistan's fourth largest city. Several thousand girls each day are educated at the school, which is integrated into the national education system expanding Afghanistan's push toward the development of women and girls and their contribution and inclusion within Afghan society. Gohar Khatoon supports this by promoting stability, comfort and community engagement. It has become a model for other girls' schools in the country.

Interior Architecture

Sound Transit University

of Washington Station in Seattle

Architect: LMN Architects

The station is at one of Seattle's busiest intersections and provides a unique gateway to the UW campus through its above- and below-grade experiences. For the 156,000-square-foot station, LMN Architects and artist Leo Saul Berk collaborated to create architecture that merges with Berk's artwork, Subterraneum. Backlit perforated metal panels clad the chamber walls, forming patterns of light that express the geological layers of earth, and suffuse the space with ambient light. The station opened as the second of two stops on the University Link in 2016.