Presenting the 2020 AN Best of Design Awards winners, part 6 – The Architect’s Newspaper

Young Architects

2020 Best of Design Award for Young Architects: Atelier Cho ThompsonLocation: San Francisco and New Haven, Connecticut

Atelier Cho Thompson is a bicoastal design and concept firm working between the disciplines of architecture, interiors, graphics, and design strategy. Its expertise and passions transcend the conventional boundaries between these disciplines, resulting in a rich cross-pollination of ideas and strategies. This integrated design approach produces holistic environments in which all elements are deeply related to each other and to the heart of a central concept. The firm pushes forward the architectural profession in three key ways: design excellence, business innovation, and community engagement. As a design firm, it believes in the power of collaborative, thoughtful, and forward-thinking design for all clients, whatever scale and budget they may have.

2020 Best of Design Award for Exhibition Design: Machine HallucinationDesigner: Refik Anadol StudioLocation: New York

Machine Hallucination is an immersive art exhibition of New York, by New York, and for New Yorka fitting tribute to one of the worlds greatest cities and architectural marvels. Commissioned by ARTECHOUSE in Manhattans Chelsea Market and exploring over 100 million publicly available photographs of the city through artificial intelligence, the 30-minute experimental cinema piece visualizes New Yorks story hidden deep in the citys consciousness. By utilizing AI, a data universe of the city can be created in more than a thousand dimensions, allowing Refik Anadol Studio to intuitively understand the ways that memory can be spatially experienced and the power of machine intelligence to simultaneously access and augment human senses.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: BaleinopolisDesigner: Studio Gang

Project Name: The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and TechnologyDesigner: IKD

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Architecture ArboretumDesigner: Besler & Sons

Project Name: Haus Scallop, Haus SawtoothDesigner: MALL

2020 Best of Design Award for Temporary Installation: Drawing FieldsDesigner: Outpost OfficeLocation: Lake Forest, Illinois

Drawing Fields was a temporary performance venue on the campus of Ragdale, a nonprofit artists community just north of Chicago. Drawing Fields utilized GPS-controlled field marking robots to draw site-specific, building-scale drawings on the Ragdale campus. Outpost Office proposed this years ring as a series of temporal performances rather than a conventional installation. Each drawing in the series explored a different theme. Drawing Fields 1 probed robotic kinetics, Drawing Fields 2 delineated socially distanced zones for a scattered audience, and Drawing Fields 3 saturated the campus with colorful patterns. The project adapted to the financial and ecological precarity of our volatile present. Each temporary installation was water-soluble, nontoxic, and disappeared with rain, sun, and growth.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Chapel for Luis BarragnDesigner: Robert Hutchison Architecture

Project Name: Societys CageDesigner: SmithGroup

2020 Best of Design Award for Digital Fabrication: Stereoform SlabDesigner: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)Location: Chicago

Stereoform Slab examines the role of the ubiquitous concrete slab. It is an activation and an exhibition of a design method using advanced robotic fabrication to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete construction. Removed from its context, Stereoform replicates and abstracts a single-story concrete bay to create a simple architectural expression. SOMs research reveals that 40 to 60 percent of a buildings carbon footprint results from concrete slab development.When sustainable fabrication techniques are combined with robotics to create concrete formwork, material usage and waste are minimized. This new approach uses 20 percent less concrete, resulting in a 20 percent carbon reduction. At the full-building scale, carbon reductions of 25 to 30 percent through hyper responsive design and optimization are possible.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Hobbs State Park Monument Trail Campsite & Trailhead StructuresDesigner: Hufft

Project Name: London Timber PavilionDesigner: Schiller Projects and Novak Hiles Architects

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Rocket Mortgage Field House in ClevelandExecutive architect: GenslerEngineering, fabrication, and installation of custom metal feature wall: Eventscape

2020 Best of Design Award for Research: New River Train Observation TowerDesigner: Virginia TechLocation: Radford, Virginia

The New River Train Observation Tower design-build by Virginia Tech students and faculty sets multiple benchmarks for cross-laminated timber (CLT) research, design, and construction. Rather than import softwood CLT into oversupplied, hardwood-dominant forest regions of the eastern United States, the project team chose to think local to reduce carbon emissions. Following eight years of research, the team developed a structurally viable, high-performance local-species H-CLT product with low-grade wood. The H-CLT project is the first permanent building permitted for, and constructed with, hardwood CLT in the United States. The 30-foot-tall, 75-foot-long building sets a precedent for modular CLT construction and the upcycling of low-value local resources into high-value products in hardwood-dominant regions.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: The DW (The Dwelling on Wheels)Designer: Modern Shed

Project Name: Fetch HouseDesigner: CallisonRTKL

Editors Picks:

Project Name: GET WELL! Educational Design Ideas for the Post-Pandemic EraDesigner: LUBRANO CIAVARRA Architects

Project Name: Immersive Space SeriesDesigner: Office of Things

2020 Best of Design Award for Architectural LightingOutdoor: ConstellationsDesigner: FUTUREFORMSLocation: Pensacola, Florida

Constellations is a dynamic and immersive artwork animated by flowing patterns and algorithmic formations of light and shadow. It is an iconic sculpture that merges digital craft and cutting-edge fabrication with data visualizations of abstract phenomena found in nature at a variety of scales. Constellations creates a theater-in-the-round that acts like a portal into an invisible world of dynamic visual poetry inspired by ideas of science, art, and technology. Located between the Center for Fine and Performing Arts and the Hal Marcus College of Science and Engineering at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, the sculpture anchors the landscape between the STEM disciplines on campus and creates an open ended framework for dialogue between the arts and the sciences.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Belvedere Castle Renovation, Central ParkRestoration architect and client: Central Park ConservancyLighting designer: Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design

Project Name: PG&E Larkin Street Substation ExpansionDesigner: TEF DesignExterior lighting design: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design

2020 Best of Design Award for Student WorkGroup: Volland House No. 1Designers: Design+Make Studio, a partnership between El Dorado and Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and DesignLocation: Volland, Kansas

House No. 1 began as the Edison, a kit house commonly sold by the Gordon-Van Tine company. It was probably delivered in the 1930s by train to Volland, Kansas, where it was then assembled in its current location. The Edison was a two-bedroom bungalow described in the Van Tine catalog as a snug little homecompact, easily heated, and with a room arrangement that is a wonderful space utilizer. The house was subsequently transformed from a generic bungalow into a dedicated artist studio and accommodation space for the Volland Foundation. Its customization was both careful and complicated, requiring immense attention to detail and subtle refinements that heighten the homes original features.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: The BendDesigner: Kent State University

Project Name: Kaw Pavilion and Trail MarkersDesigner: University of Kansas Architecture

2020 Best of Design Award for Student WorkIndividual: Clearlake Wellness RetreatDesigner: Samuel Bager, Savannah College of Art and DesignLocation: Clearlake, California

With this wellness retreat in Clearlake, California, the designer Samuel Bager found it was vital to employ architectural intervention strategies at three different scales to engage a lush, natural context. The project creates a cohesive atmosphere through a series of architectural moments that embrace the local environment, all with the aim of enhancing ones perception of and relationship with nature. The separation of buildings on the site and the dispersion of programmed spaces foster privacy by distanceeven in public spaces.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: The Asheville Museum of Algorithmic Art (MOAA)Designer: Amanda Ridings, Savannah College of Art and Design

Project Name: RecoveryDesigner: Sam Bager, Savannah College of Art and Design

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Presenting the 2020 AN Best of Design Awards winners, part 6 - The Architect's Newspaper