It takes less than an hour to be inspired this weekend. Listen to the four jurors of the 2016 AIA Austin Design Awards narrate videos describing the work of the award-winning architectural firms and you’ll see beautiful images, and hear articulate design language, accompanied by the soothing type of background music that makes you wish this was part of a much longer movie.
Each video short describes the architectural project and provides insight into the selection process. The 2016 Austin Design Awards jurors were Carol Ross Barney, FAIA (Ross Barney Architects, Chicago, IL), Nonya Grenader, FAIA (Nonya Grenader, Architect, Houston, TX), Linda Taalman, (Taalman Architecture, Los Angeles, CA) and Angela Watson, AIA, (Shepley Bulfinch, Boston, MA).
The jurors speak to the resolution of problems the architects encountered in the process and highlight the most successful elements of the projects. They talk about how Tim Cuppett’s Associates 1 Hillside offers “ways to live inside and outside in a sustainable way,” how the Hillmont Studio by FAB Architecture is “beautifully crafted, the plan loses no square footage, anywhere”, and how, in Alterstudio Archtecture’s Cuernavaca Residence, “there is also warmth to the concrete because of the intricacy of the detailing”. For Alterstudio’s second award, for South 3rd Street Residence, the narrative claims, “detailing is where you start to see the care that goes into a project, and in this case, it was everywhere.” For Las Casitas, by Jobe Corral Architects, two tree houses are considered to be “two volumes that float in the air and speak to each other; they are really in conversation.”
Other winners of the 2016 AIA Design Awards are two restaurants, Juniper by Sanders Architecture, and E6 Restaurant by A Parallel Architecture and The South Congress Hotel, by Michael Hsu Office Architects with Dick Clark + Associates and Studio MAI, “these interiors enrich the entire project…..The South Congress Hotel is what an outsider thinks a hotel in Austin should be totally funky, totally cool”.
The Lady Bird Loo (Mell Lawrence Architects), is described as “powerful” and “should be everywhere” and the Boardwalk on Lady Bird Lake by Limbacher & Godfrey Architects as “unbelievably beautiful…introduces people to the ecology of their environment and the fabric of their city in a way they haven’t seen before.”
Page Architecture designed both award-winning projects: UT at San Antonio North Paseo Building and the UT at Rio Grande Valley Academic Performing Arts Complex.
Michael Hsu Office of Architecture designed Canopy, a mixed-use art center in East Austin, and Antenora Architects won for the design of the Cotton Gin at the CO-OP District.
Congratulations to all the winners! View videos of the winning projects here….
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