Here are the winners of the 2021 AIA Architecture Awards

Ten projects from across the United States, Canada, and Senegal have been distinguished with the AIA's 2021 Architecture Awards for design achievement in contemporary architecture. Today's announcement follows the unveiling of the Regional & Urban Design Awards, Interior Architecture Awards, and COTE Top Ten Awards in recent weeks.

Payette (Boston), LMN Architects (Seattle), Marlon Blackwell Architects (Fayetteville), HGA (Minneapolis), and Beyer Blinder Belle (New York & D.C.) managed to pick up top honors in several of the recent award programs.

The award jury this year included Kim Yao, AIA, Chair, Architecture Research Office (ARO); York Phillip Bernstein, FAIA, Yale Architecture School; Melissa Daniel, Assoc. AIA, Amentum; Magdalena Glen-Schieneman, AIA, MGS Architecture; Jim McDonald, FAIA, A&E Architects; Marianne McKenna, KPMB Architects; Connor Merritt, AIAS, Washington University in St. Louis; Keith Lashley, AIA, HKS; and JoAnn Wilcox, AIA, Mithun.

Fass School and Teachers' Residences, Fass, Senegal
Toshiko Mori Architect

Project excerpt: "Inspired by the rural American one-room schoolhouse where Josef Albers once taught, this new school in a remote region of Senegal is the first there to offer secular education in tandem with Quranic teaching. The school serves about 300 students ranging in age from 5 to 10 in a co-educational environment that slips easily into the cultural fabric of the surrounding communities. The project is a collaboration between the architect, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and the nonprofit Le Korsa, which provides grants for work in Senegal that increases access to medical care, education, or the arts. The idea for the school arose in 2012 following a similar collaboration between the architect and Le Korsa elsewhere in Senegal." ~ Read more about this project here.

The Lamplighter School Innovation Lab, Dallas, TX
Marlon Blackwell Architects

Project excerpt: "The Lamplighter School’s Innovation Lab, the conceptual and physical center of a master plan initiated in 2014, presents a new and distinct identity on the village-like campus in Dallas. O'Neil Ford originally designed the campus in the late 1960s, working closely with administrators to support their learning movement with open learning spaces and a deep connection to nature. The new architecture bolsters the school's innovative pedagogy and its focus on exploration and discovery while complementing other additions made in the 1980s and ’90s." ~ Read more about this project here.

Loghaven Artist Residency, Knoxville, TN
Sanders Pace Architecture

Project excerpt: "In the heart of Knoxville's Battlefield Loop, a historic 600-acre woodland that overlooks the Tennessee River, this project has rehabilitated six log cabins dating to the 1930s. The cabins are now better suited as residences for visiting artists, and the campus is supported by a new Gateway Building and two purpose-built studio spaces for visual and performing artists. This project is also the first critical step of a plan to protect the region's most important but threatened historical, cultural, and natural assets." ~ Read more about this project here.

Martin's Lane Winery, Kelowna, BC
Olson Kundig

Project excerpt: "A direct response to both program and site, this winery on the shores of British Columbia’s Okanagan Lake leverages its relationship to the land for two distinct but complementary functions. The third in a series of projects for the client, the winery represents the client’s decades-long commitment to the Okanagan Valley and its importance on the world’s vinicultural map. The design team was tasked with creating a winery to produce the highest quality pinot noir possible. It is perched on a rocky hillside above the lake, split into two interconnected volumes. The rugged structure features a palette of raw, unfinished materials and neutral tones, and the expected weathering of the exterior’s Corten steel will help it blend into the hillside while minimizing maintenance." ~ Read more about this project here.

Northeastern University Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, Boston, MA
Payette

Project excerpt: "Flow and movement are the defining features of this new academic precinct straddling Boston’s Roxbury and Fenway neighborhoods. This cutting-edge hub for the sciences has helped position Northeastern University as a premier destination for research, but it also serves as a vital social space for students. Built on a brownfield, this new academic building, referred to as ISEC, and its accompanying pedestrian bridge, is the first major project informed by the university’s institutional master plan. The complex sits south of one of the city’s primary rail corridors, serving as a literal bridge between two diverse neighborhoods and a symbol of the school’s desire to strengthen the communities surrounding it." ~ Read more about this project here.

The Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver, BC
Patkau Architects

Project excerpt: "This project is the rebirth of an independent photography and media institution that has served North Vancouver's creative community for nearly 40 years. Built on a former brownfield, it heralds the renewal of the city's urban waterfront where infrastructure is reimagined and culture emerges from an industrial history. [...] The new gallery's central mass floats above the ground plane, providing access to a new public space and a sweeping view of Vancouver's skyline across the inlet. It is marked with an iconic sawtooth profile clad in mirrored stainless steel sitting beneath expanded aluminum decking. The facade's materials play off one another, lending a sense of mass and depth that shifts with differing sunlight conditions and the evening atmosphere." ~ Read more about this project here.

Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Justice Center, Scottsdale, AZ
Gould Evans

Project excerpt: "This tribal community-use facility in the heart of an ancestral home responds to an increased demand for space dedicated to the judicial process. Its accomplishment involved a non-tribal design team working with the Pima and Maricopa people to establish cross-cultural relationships and develop a deeper understanding of history, place, and justice in an evolving community. The people of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian community have long called the Sonoran Desert and its Salt and Verde rivers home. Existing long before the state of Arizona and the sprawling Phoenix metropolis, this once solitary tribe is often regarded as an urban one. The border that now separates sovereign land from Phoenix is one of material and cultural divisions, providing the design team with an opportunity to forge new cross-cultural ties." ~ Read more about this project here.

Sound Transit University of Washington Station, Seattle, WA
LMN Architects

Project excerpt: "At one of the busiest intersections of transportation modalities in Seattle, the Sound Transit University of Washington Station creates a new unified urban space that untangles a morass of fragmented systems. As the city aims to cut greenhouse emissions by 62% by 2030 and works toward a more ambitious carbon neutrality goal, the station makes environmentally-friendly travel easy and accessible for all users. The station is embedded in a complex of uses comprising the University of Washington's Husky Stadium and Alaska Airlines Arena, the university’s historic Rainier Vista campus entrance, and a medical center. It is surrounded by a bicycle and pedestrian trail, 15 bus lines, and a nearby freeway that generates significant traffic flow." ~ Read more about this project here.

TWA Hotel, New York, NY
Beyer Blinder Belle

Project excerpt: "The TWA Hotel imbues Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, one of the grandest examples of Mid-century Modern architecture, with new life. While its expressive form has long evoked the act of flying, its renovation and addition of more than 250,000 square feet allow it to serve as its own destination in the heart of one of the world's busiest airports. [...] The transformation of the center into a hotel was completed in two phases, with the first restoring the center's core interior spaces. The second, undertaken by a hotel developer, completed the project. The historic center now boasts six restaurants, a fitness center, several shops, and a 250-person ballroom where passengers once retrieved their baggage. As the airport's only on-site hotel, it greets more than 160,000 passengers who travel through the hub daily." ~ Read more about this project here.

Walker Art Center Expansion, Minneapolis, MN
HGA

Project excerpt: "This expansion for Minneapolis' Walker Art Center, one of the most important venues for contemporary art in the country, unifies a previously disjointed site. The expansion of the Walker campus, which features two iconic buildings designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1971 and Herzog & de Meuron in 2005, also provides a bold new identity for the institution's future. This project corrects some of the missteps of an earlier expansion, which, while successful in many ways, shifted the center's main entry away from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, a city-owned park that highlights works from the Walker's sculpture collection." ~ Read more about this project here.