Winners of the 2014 Religious Art & Architecture Awards

The Faith & Form/IFRAA Awards recently announced the much anticipated winners of its 2014 edition. Jurors were especially impressed by the range and the level of quality of this year's submitted projects in the primary categories Religious Architecture, Liturgical/Interior Design, Sacred Landscpe, and Religious Arts.

The jury, composed of Terry Byrd Eason (liturgical designer, jury chair); Michael Berkowicz (artist); Craig Rafferty (architect); Doug Johnston (architect); and Rev. Robb Webb (clergy), gave out 32 awards in total and selected 5 projects to receive the highest level of recognition, the Honor Award.

Scroll down to see a selection of winners and the Awards intro by Michael J. Crosbie, Ph.D., FAIA, Editor-in-Chief of Faith & Form, the award program's co-sponsor.

"Nothing impressed the 2014 awards jury as much as the sheer diversity of the submissions across the categories, and the overall high quality of work of those submissions. The outstanding excellence of those projects put forward for awards made the jury’s work challenging.

To what did the jury attribute the superb level of submissions this year? Jury members agreed that religious art and architecture is flourishing throughout the world, and that artists, architects, liturgical designers, students, and others are exploring ways to balance tradition with new demands of religious practice. The landscape of sacred space is changing, along with the dramatic shifts in organized religion. And while those seismic events are greatest among the world’s more traditional and established religions, the jury noted that the award winners, and many who made submission to the awards program, have chosen not to be identified just by their traditions—a trait that the jury celebrated as courageous, creative, and vital, if traditional faith communities are to survive.

“They are willing to explore other avenues in those traditions,” one juror commented, “to reinvent them, to start new traditions, perhaps.”"

"Another aspect of this year’s submissions that impressed the jury was the level of sophistication at radical extremes of size and scale. The jury found brilliant work at polar extremes, in small places and as well as large, from as a humble building in rural Thailand designed and built for about a dozen kids, and in a gargantuan megachurch for thousands of worshippers in a Texas suburb.

Jury members agreed that great art and excellent design always have the potential to serve very small and very large constituencies in the wealth of the world’s faith traditions. They were struck by the juxtaposition of modesty and luxury, shoestring budgets compared to expensive projects, a spectrum across which distinction is attained.

“From tiny to large projects,” one juror commented, “people are achieving excellence.” And they are achieving it around the globe.

The 2015 awards program opens for submissions (at faithandformawards.com) on April 1, 2015."

Find a few more awarded projects in the image gallery below.

All images courtesy of 2014 Faith & Form Awards/IFRAA Program.