THE DOGRUN
a place to share ideas
Lake|Flato Takes Top Honors at the 2013 AIA SA Awards
Posted by rhoang on 11/22/13 at 3:27 pm
A group of Lake Flatonians attended the San Antonio AIA Awards Banquet last Friday. It is always exciting to put projects up for award consideration and very rewarding and humbling to be selected for recognition. It ended as a very memorable evening that saw the firm win a record 6 design awards including top honors for our Desert Residence and Cranbrook Kingswood Girls' Middle School. Out of a total of 88 submissions only nine received built design awards.The jury of Josh Shelton of El Dorado (Kansas City), Rusty Smith of Rural Studios (Auburn University) and Wendy Pautz of LMN Architects (Seattle) were very complimentary of the quality of projects submitted by the San Antonio design community. Here were some of their comments on our projects:
Cranbrook Kingswood Girl's Middle School (Bloomfield Hills, MI) - Honor Award
"When you begin to look at the scale of the building, it’s amazing at how it works relative to the young girls that occupy the building. Over and over and over again there are these places that are for all this activity but also other spaces [seen here] that are inviting, safe, and serene but at the same time don’t feel like a lot of schools - they are incredibly open and transparent and the way those things happen simultaneously in this project are what really crushed this out of the park for us. It’s a really, really beautiful project."
-Rusty Smith, Rural Studio
Desert House (Santa Fe, NM) - Honor Award
"What we are noticing this firm did really well is engaging the site and leveraging kind of the experience of the site and architecture in authentic ways that are quiet and sophisticated -- and then at other times very bold. I think it is all something we can learn from but also think it’s inspiration to get back to the basics."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
Hog Pen Creek Residence (Austin, TX) - Merit Award
"This house we feel like there is a pleasant composition of materials, just a lightness about the way they interact with natural daylight. Overall composition just continues to unfold as an unexpected delivery of domestic space. We commend the architects."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
SK Ranch (Center Point, TX) - Merit Award
"What we loved about the project is that it engaged a variety of site conditions – a small fire pit that overlooks a cliff, to a guest house and a pool house that have the relationship with the primary house. It’s about a kind of architecture that spreads out to the site in all kinds of different ways."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
"One thing that we noted about the project right away from the very first sight is the porosity – the way in which it reaches out to engage its site."
-Wendy Pautz, LMN
Mill Springs Ranch (Vanderpool, TX) - Merit Award
"It’s very human.. human beings come to this place. Many of the Lake | Flato houses really engage the sites in interesting ways and this was one of the more compelling site plans because it wasn’t a forced compound that it created. It was very loose script on the site but it also managed to corral the site and relationships from one building to the next. There were a couple of outbuildings that were really compelling. It was a collection of small pieces of architecture that gather around a body of water. It seems like a really wonderful place to be."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
St. John's Levan Hall (Santa Fe, NM) - Citation Award
"It’s clearly contextual, it’s incredibly sophisticated relatively – it’s clear systems of passive heating and cooling and ventilation and daylighting in the way they conspire to begin to drive the form of the building as it spatially interiors tumbles down the site but remains contained in its context relative to its exterior space. On the one hand its really simple, and simple is really hard to do."
-Rusty Smith, Rural Studios
Cranbrook Kingswood Girl's Middle School (Bloomfield Hills, MI) - Honor Award
"When you begin to look at the scale of the building, it’s amazing at how it works relative to the young girls that occupy the building. Over and over and over again there are these places that are for all this activity but also other spaces [seen here] that are inviting, safe, and serene but at the same time don’t feel like a lot of schools - they are incredibly open and transparent and the way those things happen simultaneously in this project are what really crushed this out of the park for us. It’s a really, really beautiful project."
-Rusty Smith, Rural Studio
Desert House (Santa Fe, NM) - Honor Award
"What we are noticing this firm did really well is engaging the site and leveraging kind of the experience of the site and architecture in authentic ways that are quiet and sophisticated -- and then at other times very bold. I think it is all something we can learn from but also think it’s inspiration to get back to the basics."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
Hog Pen Creek Residence (Austin, TX) - Merit Award
"This house we feel like there is a pleasant composition of materials, just a lightness about the way they interact with natural daylight. Overall composition just continues to unfold as an unexpected delivery of domestic space. We commend the architects."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
SK Ranch (Center Point, TX) - Merit Award
"What we loved about the project is that it engaged a variety of site conditions – a small fire pit that overlooks a cliff, to a guest house and a pool house that have the relationship with the primary house. It’s about a kind of architecture that spreads out to the site in all kinds of different ways."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
"One thing that we noted about the project right away from the very first sight is the porosity – the way in which it reaches out to engage its site."
-Wendy Pautz, LMN
Mill Springs Ranch (Vanderpool, TX) - Merit Award
"It’s very human.. human beings come to this place. Many of the Lake | Flato houses really engage the sites in interesting ways and this was one of the more compelling site plans because it wasn’t a forced compound that it created. It was very loose script on the site but it also managed to corral the site and relationships from one building to the next. There were a couple of outbuildings that were really compelling. It was a collection of small pieces of architecture that gather around a body of water. It seems like a really wonderful place to be."
-Josh Shelton, El Dorado
St. John's Levan Hall (Santa Fe, NM) - Citation Award
"It’s clearly contextual, it’s incredibly sophisticated relatively – it’s clear systems of passive heating and cooling and ventilation and daylighting in the way they conspire to begin to drive the form of the building as it spatially interiors tumbles down the site but remains contained in its context relative to its exterior space. On the one hand its really simple, and simple is really hard to do."
-Rusty Smith, Rural Studios