2009 Northwest & Pacific Region Design Awards:

Architectural Excellence in the Region at an All Time High

This year the Northwest & Pacific (NW&P) Region Design Awards was marked by abundance. Thirty-one projects were picked to receive awards, the most recipients of any year to date.

Thirteen Citation awards, eight Merit awards, and ten Honor awards were handed out to firms across the region on Saturday, September 19, 2009. Each year the awards program is held conjunction with the NW&P Region Conference. This year the conference was hosted by AIA Alaska in Anchorage.

The winners of the 2009 awards proved that clever usage of materials and innovation is the key. Jurors for the awards commented numerous times on the winners “beautiful designs within a limited budget.”

Pervasive elements in the winning designs were the utilization of natural light sources, incorporation of the outdoors, and simple but bold concepts. Jurors noted, “Buildings with the level of character demonstrated by the winners are true assets to their community.”

The 2009 NW&P Region Design Awards recipients were fortunate to have an exceptional combination of jurors with a rare abundance of experience:

• Ian MacKinlay, an AIA Fellow since 1975, is the Founder of Mackinlay / Winnacker / McNeil, Inc and Architecture, Inc. Ian won over fifty awards for Architectural Design Excellence and is a three-time winner of America's highest award for constructed architecture.
• Ronnette Riley, FAIA, LEED AP, is the principal and owner of her namesake firm and member of the New York architecture community. The work of her firm, which opened in 1987, has been featured in numerous publications and won over 60 design awards.
• Trevor Boddy, Vancouver-based critic and curator, who has written on architecture for newspapers and architectural magazines such as the Architectural Review, Canadian Architect, and the Architectural Record. Trevor's column “DWELLING” is posted every Friday and his independent critical monograph The Architecture of Douglas Cardinal was named “Alberta Book of the Year.”

With jurors as experienced and decorated as this 2009 jury, it’s clear that while there was a profusion of awards all of them were excellent. This is especially surprising considering the criterion for the awards.

The NW&P Region Design Awards require that all entrants must have received an award from another AIA component, or a National Award, for the same project. As a result of these high standards, the NW&P Region Design Awards have become a ‘best of the best” competition. These winners prove that high-quality architecture is not dependant as much on capital as it is on talent.

Please take a moment to visit our website at view all the recipients of the 2009 Northwest & Pacific Region Design Awards by clicking here.

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The AIA Northwest & Pacific Region advances the interests and purposes of the AIA within the Northwest and Pacific geographic territory; in concert with the Components, individual AIA members, schools, and AIA chapters. Twenty-eight components and seven schools that make-up the AIA Northwest & Pacific Region. You can contact the Region Office at 724 Columbia St NW, Ste. 120, Olympia WA 98501, (360) 943-6012, info@aianwpr.org