Pugh + Scarpa Architects To Receive 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award

Pugh + Scarpa Architects to Receive 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Board of Directors (BOD) voted today for Pugh + Scarpa Architects to receive the 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award. The distinction is based on its 35 years of consistent excellent work, including its seamless blending of architecture, art, and craft; community involvement; attention to sustainable design; and nurturing of in-house talent.

The AIA Architecture Firm Award, given annually, is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.

Founding partners Gwynne Pugh, AIA, and Lawrence Scarpa, AIA, and Angela Brooks, AIA, who became a partner in 2001, are known for forging a broad, inclusive, experimental approach to socially and environmentally sensitive urban planning and design.

“We’re thrilled,” said Lawrence Scarpa, AIA, after being notified. “It was a surprise just to be nominated. It’s just stunning to win.”

“Pugh + Scarpa’s practice is known for both design and its commitment to running a socially and environmentally responsive practice,” writes Thom Mayne, FAIA, in support of the nomination. “Comfortable with aesthetic, practical, political, and functional issues, they have mapped an architectural path that is as didactic as it is successful.”

Over the past 10 years, the firm has won 13 national AIA awards, including:

• Solar Umbrella, Venice, Calif., completed 2005
• COoP Editorial, Santa Monica, Calif., completed 2003
• Colorado Court, Santa Monica, Calif., completed 2002
• Reactor Films, Santa Monica, Calif., completed 2000
• Orange Grove, West Hollywood, Calif., completed 2005
• Jigsaw, Los Angeles, completed 2005

The firm has more than 40 state and local AIA awards. In 2008, Pugh + Scarpa received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Interior Design.

Other awards include; Record Houses, Record Interiors, The Rudy Brunner Prize, Emerging Voice in Architecture presented by the Architectural League of New York, The Collaborative Practice Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, The AIA Henry Adams Medal and The Leadership Award for Sustainable Design presented by the California Legislature Assembly. In 2003, Pugh + Scarpa was also selected as a finalist for the World Habitat Award presented by The United Nations and Building & Housing Social Foundation.

The award will be presented June 12 at the 2010 AIA National Convention in Miami. Previous recipients include Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects, Leers Weinzapfel, Moore Ruble Yudell, Muphy/Jahn, and KieranTimberlake. In recognition of Pugh + Scarpas legacy to architecture, their name will be chiseled into the granite Wall of Honor in the lobby of the AIA headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Posted in AIA Los Angeles.

 

Downsizing: Today’s Home Buyers Are Thinking Small

During the real estate boom, new home construction became a game of ever increasing square-footage. That had a certain logic to it: If you saw your house as an investment to make you rich, bigger could only mean better, right?

Now that the economy has unfurled and people are realizing that prices don’t always go up, houses are getting smaller — and more practical. Instead of feeding the desire for flash, architects and homebuilders are responding to how families actually spend time and use space, as well as to new buyers entering the market. “A house is back to being a house,” says Stephen Moore, a senior partner of the architecture and planning firm BSB Design in Des Moines, Iowa. Read full article by Barbara Kaviat at Time in partnership with CNN.

 

Second Phase Of Cleveland Museum Of Art Renovation Gets Go Ahead

Trustees of the Cleveland Museum of Art have voted unanimously to embark on the second major phase of a $350 million expansion and renovation. The vote, however, only authorises the first half of the remaining work, which includes completing exterior façades and the raw interior structure of a new West Wing and central atrium. Trustees will vote again in June on whether to proceed with the final stages, including completion of interior floors, walls and ceilings, and the installation of art in galleries devoted to textiles, pre-Columbian and Asian art.

Al Rankin, president of the museum’s board said:”I am absolutely committed to having this project proceed through to its full completion.”

The second phase construction which has now been approved would leave the museum looking finished from the outside by the end of 2011. If work stopped at that point, offices, galleries and public spaces would be left raw inside the atrium, the West Wing and a multi-storey structure on the north side of the atrium.

Viñoly devised plans in the early 2000s to revive the original design principles of the museum. His design called for demolition of the museum’s 1958 and 1983 expansions. Two new wings on the west and east would link the museum’s neoclassical 1916 building to the modern-style 1971 Education Wing designed by Marcel Breuer.  Found in WORLD Architecture News.com.

 

Copenhagen UNFCCC Meeting: U.S. Offers Multi-Billion Contribution To Global Climate Fund

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) negotiations entered their second week in Copenhagen. Previously stalled negotiations on a political agreement were resuscitated by U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clint…read more at The Dirt.

 

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Contingency Vs. Retained Search – Common Fallacies

As an executive search consultant specializing in the architectural, engineering, and landscape design industries, I have worked with many clients on both a retained and contingent basis.  GCA International is primarily a retained executive search firm serving the A/E industry but does work on a contingent basis when needed.  Here is a great article that can help you clear up any questions on either process and ultimately give you a better understanding of why a retained search is much more beneficial in your search for a senior architect, engineer, landscape architect, or interior designer.

 

CTA Architects And Engineers

CTA Architects Engineers is a full service multidisciplinary Architecture and Engineering design firm. Dedicated to integrated and sustainable design.

 

Obama’s New Jobs Initiative

The Obama administration and House Democrats are pushing forward a second jobs initiative this week, though prospects for Senate consideration of the measure before year end are grim. The proposal will redirect $75 billion from unspent TARP appropriations to job creation programs and extensions of emergency assistance for those now out of work. The measure is expected to ultimately include $35 billion for highway and transit construction, $2 billion for water construction projects and affordable housing construction, and about $11 billion for school construction and renovation. Additional appropriations will include $23 billion for teaching jobs, and $6 billion for other job programs including local law enforcement, summer jobs for youth, and college work/study programs and AmeriCorps job training.

Conspicuously absent from the House measure are two programs President Obama has promoted as creating “green” jobs: so called “cash for caulkers” incentives for home and business weatherization efforts, and tax incentives for small business new hiring.

Emergency relief measures in the House bill will include $79 billion to provide a six month extension of unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies, and other “safety net” programs for the jobless. In the expectation that Senate action on the House bill will not happen until next year, the House is at the same time including a two month unemployment and COBRA benefits extension in the Defense appropriations bill, attempting to avoid the break in benefits jobless folks experienced last time Congress stalled action on unemployment extension legislation.

The White House is also proposing a $5 billion addition to tax credits for renewable energy products, in an effort to spur hiring in the manufacturing of such things as wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars. Knowing that the $2.3 billion in the stimulus package for such projects was oversubscribed suggests that users of such new incentives are ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Speaking at a Home Depot store in Alexandria, Virginia yesterday, Obama highlighted the home weatherization programs as part of the administration’s efforts to assist the construction industry, where unemployment has reached 21%. His remarks, however, glossed over the fact that the $5.5 billion appropriated in the stimulus package for energy retrofits of federal government buildings has been painfully slow to percolate out into the economy. GSA so far has allocated only $1.5 billion of the $2 billion appropriated for use in 2009. The agency is racing to allocate the remaining half billion dollars in the final two weeks of this year. Furthermore, of the $2 billion to be allocated, only $89 million, or less than 4.5%, has actually been paid out to contractors.

Reports from contractors in this sector indicate that government projects are replacing only 15% to 30% of the private sector business lost due to the crash of the economy.

James G. McConnell, Attorney at Law – 708-923-9935

 

Green Building Appraisal And Financing Issues

“We’ll loan you money for the house, but not for the solar or the spray foam”.  Read more at Business Advisor.

 

Top Schools For Architecture

Ever considered a career in architecture? This article provides both job and educational information, including a list of some of the top architecture schools in the nation!  Education – Potal.com