Seven Honor Awards, six Merit Awards, and twelve Citation Awards were announced late last fall for the AIA New England 2017 Regional Design Awards for Excellence in Architecture hosted by AIA New Hampshire in Portsmouth.

Joel Page, AIAVT’s then secretary, represented the AIAVT Board of Directors at the event. “If you’ve never had the opportunity to go to Portsmouth, it’s worth a visit any time of year. It’s a small, walkable city, rich in New England history and architecture, and filled with great places to eat, drink and shop. It was a great city for holding the Design Awards event,” he said.

Awards were chosen from 275 entries from New England firms for projects located anywhere in the world, and from firms outside New England for buildings located in the region. Among the New England states, firms from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont were winners. 

The jury consisted of chair, Sameer Kumar, AIA, LEED AP, Director of Enclosure Design at SHoP, New York; Rashida Ng, Chair, Architecture Department and Assoc. Professor at Temple University; and, Mark Sanderson, AIA, Principal, DIGSAU, Philadelphia. The jury specifically considered: does a project demonstrate its sense of purpose, does it read at a depth of scales, and does it show restraint?  Another major determining factor was how clear entrants were about the problem and how well they articulated the solution. 

The “STAR Outdoor Classroom” built in Northfield, Vermont, a project led by Mathew Lutz, AIA, as part of his Norwich University 802 Lab, received a Citation Award. The jury said, “We commend this project based on the exemplary fact that it brought together three generations of architects: past students (professionals), current students and future students. We appreciate that this project proposes an innovative model for engaging with the emerging architectural community.”

Birdseye Design, Richmond, Vermont, received a Citation Award for “Woodshed,” a residence in Pomfret, Vermont that had garnered an AIAVT award the previous year. The AIANE jury said, “We really liked how this house is sited sideways along the hill. It may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but it really works well in this case.  The interior shots were the most unexpected…playful and a contrast to the relatively austere exterior.  A well assembled set of ideas!”

McLeod Kredell Architects, Middlebury, Vermont was the third winner from our membership. The firm received a Merit Award for the collective body of work over the past five years of its community design-build program, “Island Design Assembly.” The pro bono program delivers projects for island communities in Maine through intensive eight-day sessions. The jury said, the “project had a strong sense of community development and collaboration. This is a project that unfolded over five years, a collaboration between a firm, students and different communities working together.  We recognize it for both its process working within some serious constraints on remote island sites and the inventive forms that were its results.”

Note: Island Design Assembly was also one of sixteen international case studies featured in the book The Design-Build Studio: Crafting Meaningful Work in Architecture Education, edited by AIAVT member Tolya Stonorov and published in November by Routledge Press.

Photos and more information about all of the award winners are on the AIA New England website: www.aianewengland.org