Awards honor architecture projects

The 2008 AIA Design Awards, presented by the Springfield chapter of the American Institute of Architects, honored 11 projects from eight architecture firms.

Dake|Wells Architecture and Hufft Projects LLC stood out from the pack as each firm collected multiple awards. Click here for details and photos of each honoree.

AIA Springfield has been giving out awards to the architecture community since the mid-1980s, according to AIA Springfield Awards Chairman Josh Harrold, who said the chapter gives out the awards every other year.

Choosing the winners

The competition is open to architecture firms that completed work in the AIA-Springfield coverage area, though firms do not have to be based in southwest Missouri. Beyond that, projects must be committed for construction but do not have to be completed.

This year, 15 firms submitted 30 projects for judging, and the selection of the 2008 honorees fell to two groups: a professional jury and public jury.

Both juries were given complete control over which awards to give and how many projects to honor. The professional jury chose to judge all the entries in one group, while the public jury separated projects by use.

The three members of this year’s professional jury were Seattle-area architects selected by AIA Springfield to ensure a fair selection process.

“If we have a jury chair who’s from a small firm that does residential projects, we try to have them choose someone to serve on the jury with them that is from a large office and does commercial work,” said Harrold, an architect with Dake|Wells Architecture. “That way we have a balanced viewpoint and it’s in no way biased toward any type of work.”

Drury University architecture pro-fessor Michael Buono, director of the Hammons School of Architecture, acted as liaison for AIA Springfield, taking the entries to the jury in Seattle.

Jury chairman Eric Cobb of Seattle-based E. Cobb Architects, said he was impressed by the variety of projects submitted.

“We saw entries tackling a broad range of programs and budgets,” he said. “I particularly appreciated the efforts for more modest budgets. There were a handful of particularly strong projects – as strong as we see anywhere around the country.”

The public jury was made up of five Springfield-area community representatives outside the architecture field, including real estate developer Nancy Brown Dornan, who was president of the Springfield Landmarks Preservation Trust 1993–2007.

“We were looking for user-friendly designs that were creative, dramatic and affordable within the framework of the organization,” she said. “For example, in the case of a school district, it had to fit within a specific budget but still be extremely user-friendly and inviting.”

Top brass

The most-honored firm for 2008 was Dake|Wells Architecture, which won awards for three projects: expansions at Joel E. Barber Elementary School in Lebanon and Stoutland School and an interior remodel for The System – A Paul Mitchell Partner School in Springfield.

Barber Elementary was recognized by both juries; it received the Honor Award, the highest accolade from the professional jury, and the public jury’s award for best small school.

The $950,000 project added a new cafeteria/multipurpose space and kitchen for the school, which serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, as well as a new building entrance and minor renovations to the existing building.

“It would have been easy to take this little school cafeteria and not give it the kind of attention that we gave it,” Dake|Wells Principal Andrew Wells said. “I think that may be what the two juries saw, that it was unexpected and gave back to that community in its own way.”

On the home front

The other multiple-award-winning firm this year was Kansas City-based Hufft Projects LLC.

The professional jury honored Hufft with a Merit Award for the firm’s design of a private home called The Residence, in Southern Hills.

Firm principal Matthew Hufft said The Residence, owned by Robert Lowe and Sharon Benton, is intended to be an oasis. It is built to focus on the nearby lake, while blocking out neighboring lots for a secluded feeling.

“It’s like a horse wearing blinders to keep focus,” Hufft said. “This house has blinders on three sides, and then the side facing the lake is all glass.”

The Residence is located at 2860 Southern Hills Blvd, and has an estimated construction cost of $750,000, according to a building permit on file with the city of Springfield.

The public jury honored Hufft with the award for Best Private Residence for the firm’s work on Line House, a private home east of Springfield in Southgate Estates. That home, designed for Robert and Diane Hufft, accomodates a retaining wall needed because of the site’s steep slope.

Line House, Hufft said, is actually a series of three buildings each dedicated to a specific use: The living building is the traditional home space, while the thinking building contains a library and the doing building is a workshop space.

Setting a tone

Among the other award winners is Jack Ball and Associates Architects PC, which received a public jury nod for Best New Construction for the Community Bank and Trust in Neosho.

Ryan Faust, project manager with the firm, said the $1 million facility, designed by principal Chris Ball, was intended to solve a problem inherent in many bank buildings: making the drive-through facility feel connected to the bank itself.

The firm’s solution was what it calls the “knife wall,” which cuts diagonally through the center of the building. “You can see it from the outside and the inside – it connects the exterior and the interior and helps to bring together the drive-through and the building,” Faust said. “We went a different route trying to meld those two elements together.”[[In-content Ad]]