Four faculty from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design won a total of six 2009 Design Awards from the St. Louis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
The annual awards honor architects, designers and crafts persons for their contributions to excellence in the built environment. In all, 22 design awards were given in four categories: architecture, interiors, drawings and unbuilt.
In addition, the Wainwright Building Complex received the chapter’s Twenty-Five Year Award.
Patricia Heyda, lecturer in urban design and architecture, received an honor award in the drawing category for “Drawing as a Practice of Analysis.”
Centering on Ceske Budejovice, a well-preserved medieval town in the Czech Republic, the project consists of a series of postcards representing different historical periods, all plotted against a socio-political timeline yet anchored by the Black Tower, the town’s pre-eminent architectural icon.
“The intent of the graphic is to move the practice of drawing away from literal representations of environments and toward tools for critical analysis, where greater depth of environments is revealed,” Heyda said. “This depth represents social, political and economic spaces in addition to the visual formal scheme that we identify with a place.”
Heyda also received an award of distinction in the unbuilt category for “Urban Voids: Harvest Sites for Energy.” Co-designed with Jen Lee, the project would give new life to abandoned building shells throughout the city of Philadelphia by converting them into collection devices for solar power and water.
John Hoal, associate professor and chair of the Master of Urban Design Program, also received two awards. His firm, H3 Studio, received a merit award in the unbuilt category for their proposed Taylor Playground in St. Louis. Located just north of Lindell Boulevard on Taylor Avenue, this multiuse urban space would invert traditional concepts of playground, in which play equipment rests passively within a site, by allowing the playscape — and adjacent space for adult social interaction — to actively shape the landscape of the surrounding park.
In addition, Hoal and the Sam Fox School’s Urban Studio won an unbuilt honor award for “FORM(ing) the INFORMAL,” which investigated environmental, political and socio-economic conditions in the Tijuana River watershed, where security fences separate the first and third worlds. The jury praised the studio as “a layered and fascinating investigation,” adding that “this integrated approach is a model for urban and environmental planning — and it reminded us of the importance of inclusive research and interdisciplinary planning as the precedent to development and design.”
Gia Daskalakis, associate professor of architecture and principal of DAS: 20 Architectural Studio, won an unbuilt merit award for her Sutton Street Urban Fruit Garden. The result of a design competition sponsored by the Maplewood Community Betterment Foundation, this publically owned garden would explore the interface between agriculture and ecology, incorporating traditional cultivation methods alongside hydroponics and systems for retaining rainwater and filtering runoff. “The plan contrasts open planted areas with contemporary interpretations of pergolas and growing devices,” the jury wrote, “making a garden that is interesting to look at year-round.”
Philip Holden, senior lecturer in architecture, received an interiors merit award for the offices of Virtual Reality Enterprises in Clayton. The jury praised the design as “unfussy and well executed,” adding that “this small office hangs together as a coherent whole by reducing its palette of materials, offering light and views as way-finding devices.”
The design awards committee was chaired by David Polzin of Cannon Design and included Sam Fox School adjunct lecturers Ian Caine and John Guenther as well as Brok Howard of Arcturis. Buzz Spector, dean of the College and Graduate School of Art, served as chair for the drawing awards. Ann Beha of Ann Beha Architects served as chair for the unbuilt, interiors and architecture awards.