November 7, 2024

AIA Seattle recognizes 18 projects at 2024 Honor Awards

Photo by Kevin Scott [enlarge]

Porchlight Men’s Shelter by Block Architects. This shelter in Eastgate won both an Honor Award and the Young Voices Selection.

On Monday, the American Institute of Architects Seattle hosted its 75th annual Honor Awards for Washington Architecture to celebrate excellence in design.

From 118 submissions, 18 projects were recognized this year. The awards jury chose 17 award winners from three categories — Built, Conceptual and Research and Innovation.

Across those categories, five projects took home an Honor Award, the top award of the program. Merit Awards and Honorable Mentions were also given.

One project took home an Energy in Design Award. Now in its ninth year, this honor commends projects that have made quantifiably significant strides in energy reduction while also maintaining the highest qualitative design caliber.

In addition to the main juried awards, this was the seventh year of the Young Voices Selection (YVS), which aims to engage and elevate the voices of young designers. Three young architects selected one Built project as the Young Voices Selection award winner.

The 2024 winners are as follows:

AWARD OF HONOR

Photo by Lara Swimmer [enlarge]

Park Home in Ravenna designed by Kejia Zhang & Xiaoxi Jiao.

Park Home in Ravenna designed by Kejia Zhang & Xiaoxi Jiao. This project revitalized a historic home on one of the most festive streets of Seattle, Candy Cane Lane, to accommodate multi-generational living while maintaining its connection to the community and the nearby Ravenna Park and Park Home Circle.

Porchlight Men's Shelter by Block Architects. This shelter in Eastgate is the first emergency shelter for men on the Eastside. It can accommodate 100 beds for those living unhoused. The shelter is a welcoming and bright space and has outdoor green spaces, thoughtful details, warm textures, public art, and several places to gather.

Matt's Place 2.0 by The Miller Hull Partnership. Matt's Place 2.0 is a prefabricated, modular, mass timber, single-family home prototype, designed to meet the unique needs of patients and families navigating the challenges of an Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis. The home is divided into separate zones for patients and their family members or caretakers. This separation allows the ALS patient to stay with their families while ensuring their dignity by providing their own space.

Photo by Patrick Martinez [enlarge]

Matt’s Place 2.0 by Miller Hull.

New U.S. Embassy, Guatemala City, Guatemala by The Miller Hull Partnership. This new embassy emphasizes the important diplomatic relationship between the United States and Guatemala and provides the first impression for all Guatemalans planning to visit the country. The building's design dually represents both countries, as it emerges from the ground plane as two complementary bars – a stone base and a glass tower, an homage to Mayan architecture and the optimistic, diplomatic relationship between Guatemala and the United States.

Photo by Gabe Border [enlarge]

New U.S. Embassy, Guatemala City, Guatemala by Miller Hull.

Longbranch by mwworks. This project transformed a previously logged and altered property on Key Peninsula into a family home that celebrates its natural surroundings. Designed to blend with the landscape, the home features rustic materials and an innovative structure that allows a forest and meadow to coexist, providing a serene environment for the family and their foster dogs.

Photo by Andrew Pogue [enlarge]

Longbranch by mwworks.

ENERGY IN DESIGN AWARD

Founders Hall, Foster School of Business by LMN Architects. Designed for an expanding undergraduate business program, the highly sustainable Founders Hall at the University of Washington offers many social spaces designed to enhance the academic experience and foster networking opportunities with alumni and industry leaders. Founders Hall is the first mast timber building at the university. It was designed to integrate into the campus landscape and strengthen the connection to the historic heart of the university, Denny Yard.

AWARD OF MERIT

• Leach Botanical Garden – Upper Garden by Olson Kundig

• Corvidae Co-Op by Allied8

• University of California, San Diego, Franklin Antonio Hall by Perkins&Will

• Peperzak Middle School by Integrus

• Trestle Cabin by The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP

• Stanford University School of Medicine Center for Academic Medicine by HOK

HONORABLE MENTION

• Betula by Hybrid Architecture: Robert Humble

• Liberty Park Library by Integrus

• Connection + Craft by Weber Thompson

• Heartwood by atelierjones

• The Shop by LMN Architects (Research & Innovation)

YOUNG VOICES SELECTION

Porchlight Men's Shelter by Block Architects

The 2024 jury members were Brian Philips of Interface Studio Architects, Kim Yao of Architecture Research Office and Maurice D. Cox of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Ayad Rahmani of Washington State University moderated.

The jury said it was impressed with the Seattle design community's wide range of project typologies “that are beautifully crafted but that also show a clear commitment to civic action and working towards an affordable and just city and region.” They found the craft and restraint anchoring all typologies refreshing and appreciated the profound sense of place, with projects engaging their sites in a beautifully responsible way.

The three YVS panelists were Fiki Falola of Olson Kundig, Xio Alvarez of LMN Architects, and Ye Sun of SchemataWorkshop.