Snow Kreilich Architects wins 2018 AIA Architecture Firm Award

Minneapolis-based practice Snow Kreilich Architects has today been selected as recipient of the AIA's coveted Architecture Firm Award. 

Bestowed annually as the Institute's highest accolade given to an architecture firm, the award distinguishes a practice for consistently producing outstanding work for at least 10 years.

Recipients of the Architecture Firm Award in recent years included Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects, LMN Architects, Ehrlich Architects, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

The firm was founded by Julie Snow, FAIA, in Minneapolis in 1995, and partner Matt Kreilich, AIA, joined later as design principal. Besides Snow Kreilich Architects' work, the award recognizes the firm's diverse demographic (50 percent of the staff consists of women and minorities) and its holistic, collaborative culture.

"This is an architecture of use and convenience, permanence, and beauty, deeply rooted to its place, and constructed of materials choreographed in an emotive way, with poetic qualities that move us deeply," Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, wrote in a letter supporting Snow Kreilich Architects’ nomination for the Architecture Firm Award.

“Their body of work is distinguished by a restrained formal elegance and a refined minimal tectonic sensibility while avoiding the nostalgic and technological excesses of our discipline. Indeed, they see architecture as a material practice and a cultural act born of a sensual pragmatism."

Snow Kreilich Architects will be presented with the award at the AIA Conference on Architecture 2018 in New York City.

Also announced today was the 2018 AIA Gold Medal going to architect James Stewart Polshek, partner emeritus of Ennead Architects.