Utah County architects compete for design awards

The Utah American Institute of Architects awards are a group of prestigious prizes presented each year to architects designing outstanding buildings across the state. This year for the first time, the local section of the organization will celebrate its fifth anniversary and hold an award banquet on Sept. 20.

Bruce Fallon is the current president of the AIA Central Utah section which includes Utah, Wasatch, Duchesne, Uintah, Carbon, Juab and Sanpete counties. It is one of three state sections; the other two cover the northern and southern areas of Utah.

"We wanted to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the Central Utah section," Fallon said. "We invited our 30 members working locally to submit their designs and had 17 respondents. Since the state competition had 27 entries from the entire state it was a very good response."

Architects from the Utah County area have not typically submitted designs to the Utah competition and Fallon hopes with a local competition in place, that more will send in entries to the state.

"We have very talented architects here and we hope that our competition will allow them to take their project to the state level, and even on to regional and national competitions," Fallon said. "There is a lot of preparation in submitting and it is a learning process for those doing it for the first time."

"Many architects do more work outside of our area and unfortunately many local projects are not done by local architects. People may notice their favorite building is not one of the winners and wonder why it didn't win but it was likely because it was designed by a firm out of this area," he said. "The three new buildings built here in Provo for example were not designed here in Utah Valley. The Nu Skin building was designed in Seattle, the Utah Valley Convention Center was designed by Populous in St. Louis and the Provo Recreation Center was by a Salt Lake City firm."

Scott Jensen, former president of the central Utah section, agreed with Fallon that getting the word out about local architects and what they can do is a challenge. Jensen is the chairman of the first design competition for Central Utah architects.

"One of the things we run into in the area is recognizing what a good design is," Jensen said. "Hopefully we can raise the quality of our designs and educate clients about what we have to offer. Some of the projects submitted to the design competition were very innovative in how they used light and color and technology which are very important elements."

Judges for the competition were Ken Naylor, a retired architect from Naylor, Wentworth and Lund and former National Council of Architectural Registration Boards president; R.K. Stewart, former national president of AIA whose experience included 20 years as an architect with Gensler in San Francisco; and Jim Lewis, an architect with FFKR in Salt Lake City. All three judges have had experience with design projects in Utah County and provided a local, regional and national perspective in the judging.

Jensen had the opportunity to sit with the three judges as they discussed the submissions. Designs do not compete against each other, but are judged individually according to specific parameters. There are two levels of awards; the honor award and the merit award.

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Utah County architects compete for design awards