Toshiko Mori to receive Architecture Sarasota's first-ever Philip Hanson Hiss Award

Toshiko Mori has been announced as the inaugural winner of Architecture Sarasota’s new Philip Hanson Hiss Award.

The award is named for a leading figure in the Sarasota School movement, which sought to connect ecological sensibilities with the local context of Florida’s Gulf Coast at mid-century. 

As part of the award, Mori will be included in a discussion with Morris Hylton III to be held after the non-profit’s annual benefit gala tomorrow, March 11th, in the Sainer Auditorium at the New College of Florida. Mori will likely discuss her education projects, such as the 2019 Fass School and Teachers’ Residences in Senegal, in addition to her work with a 1957 residential design from Paul Rudolph in Casey Key. 

In a press release, the organization said: “Having described herself as being engaged in a game of chess with the great names of American Modernism, including members of the Sarasota School, she has upheld the intellectual underpinnings of the movement. This is exemplified in the restoration projects in her portfolio, notably including the addition of two pavilions to the Rudolph-designed Burkhardt-Cohen House property, just outside of Sarasota, which will [also] be discussed during the conversation between Mori and Hylton.”

“It’s not that they ‘endure,’ it’s that they’re the future. No one [in the 1940s and ’50s] had air conditioning, but with passive design, you didn’t need it," Mori said of the Sarasota School's legacy in a recent interview. "Everyone built on fragile land in a fairly delicate way, but the sites are built well. [The Sarasota School] was very advanced. If you ask architects today, they might say it’s common sense, but humans do a lot of things that are not common sense."

More information about Architecture Sarasota and the Hiss Award can be found here.