Here are the 2024 AIA California Design Awards winners

The AIA California Design Awards program just unveiled this year's winning projects. Five Honors recipients are joined by twenty-six Merit and Citation winners located across the Golden State as well as beyond California's boundaries. 

"This outstanding year of awarded projects delivers the positive impact and influence that architects have on daily lives, whether a building’s users are at work or play, rest or learning," 2024 AIA California President Winston Thorne commented on the selected designs.

The jury comprised Jim Burnett, Michael Hsu, Alison Mears, Margaret Montgomery, and Jim Zack.

HONORS RECIPIENTS

(Cover image) Kresge College Expansion at the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, California), Studio Gang (Design Architect and Architect of Record) with TEF Design (Associate Architect) 

Jury comment: "This is a spectacular project. The buildings were surgically inserted to let nature prevail. A sensitive architectural response to the site, with buildings carefully nestled into the redwood forest, and bridging between the buildings, that elevates students above the forest floor."

Blue Oak Landing (Vallejo, California), David Baker Architects 

Jury comment: "Offering 75-units of supportive housing, this is an exemplary project that satisfied every requirement the jury can think of for a project of this type and quality of design. The creative use of prefabrication units is amazing. It considers the needs of previously homeless families as well as the environmental challenges of the site. Coherent and powerful design."

Building 12 (San Francisco, California), Perkins&Will 

Jury comment: "Exceptional adaptive reuse of a building: the use of the structure, the beautiful execution, the interior spaces. The jury admires the elevation of an old industrial building with new uses that are really very beautiful. The tactic for this architect, which is an appropriate one, was to do no harm to what you find."

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, William and Linda Frost Center for Research and Innovation (San Luis Obispo, California), ZGF 

Jury comment: "The very large, complicated program feels humane--an incredible solution.  The simplicity of the exterior is a balancing point for the geometry of the massing, and it provides for a richness of interior space."

Rose Apartments (Venice, California), Brooks + Scarpa 

Jury comment: "An innovative evolution of a courtyard typology, this project creates exceptional spaces that support informal interaction for residents. The jury admires the scale, and the desire to be innovative and still meet incredible performance standards. The scale shift at the front facade is contextual and breaks the massing to accommodate density that otherwise wouldn't have been had on this site."

MERIT RECIPIENTS

Aro Homes (Mountain View, California), Olson Kundig

Brunson Terrace (Santa Monica, California), Brooks + Scarpa

Girl Scout Camp Lakota (Frazier Park, California), Perkins&Will

International Arrivals Facility at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Seattle, Washington), Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)

Intuit Bayshore Building (MTV-22)(Mountain View, California), Designed by WRNS Studio (Site Planning + Architecture), and Clive Wilkinson Architects (Interior Design)

La Fénix at 1950 (San Francisco, California), David Baker Architects

Pleasant Hill Library (Pleasant Hill, California), Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Rice University Ralph S O’Connor Building for Science and Engineering (Houston, Texas), Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)

San Francisco Conservatory of Music - Ute & William Bowes Jr. Center for Performing Arts (San Francisco, California), Mark Cavagnero Associates Architects

Steeplechase House (Hillsborough, North Carolina), Brooks + Scarpa

Student Success District, University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona), The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP in collaboration with Poster Mirto McDonald

West Edge (Los Angeles, California), Gensler

CITATION RECIPIENTS

• AIA San Francisco and Center for Architecture + Design Headquarters (San Francisco, California), Aidlin Darling Design
• Big Sur Cabin (Big Sur, California), Studio Schicketanz, Inc.
• Fire Country Lookout (Healdsburg, California), Studio VARA
• Boulder Creek Library (Boulder Creek, California), Jayson Architecture
• Casa Azul (Santa Cruz, California), Workbench
• Charles Gaines "Moving Chains" in collaboration with TOLO Architecture (Governors Island, New York), TOLO Architecture
• DRIFT Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, California), Anacapa Architecture & Interior Design
• Larrabee (West Hollywood, California), Patrick Tighe Architecture
• Mingei International Museum Transformation (San Diego, California), LUCE et studio architects inc
• Red Rock (Summerlin, Nevada), Faulkner Architects
• Stanford University School of Medicine Center for Academic Medicine (Palo Alto, California), HOK
• The Caffè by Mr. Espresso (Oakland, California), jones | haydu
• Watts Works (Los Angeles, California), Studio One Eleven
• Youth Sports Field House at Centennial Park (Pompano Beach, Florida), Brooks + Scarpa