- From top left: Hacienda Ja Ja, ASU Health Services Building, Broadway 1221, and Cross Timbers Ranch
The process of being selected, designing, value engineering, and building a project (not to mention all challenges in between) is a long and exhaustive one. At the same time, having a project that you can be proud of and that exceeds the client's expectations is richly rewarding. The icing on the cake is being honored by a jury of well respected peers for the completed projects that have culminated from this process.
Friday night at the San Antonio AIA Awards, Lake|Flato was so honored with 4 design awards for our work in the built environment. Out of a total of 58 submissions only nine received awards of distinction, one took home a sustainability commendation, one for mayor's choice and one for the 25-year distinguished building award. The jury of Thomas Hacker from Thomas Hacker Architects (Portland) , Jennifer Yoos of VJAA (Minneapolis) and Brian Jones of ISA (Philadelphia) was very insightful as they handed out these select number of awards. Here were some of their comments on our projects:
Hacienda Ja Ja - Sustainability Commendation Award
"The building made all the right moves. Testament that a very beautiful building can be a very sustainable building." - Thomas Hacker
Broadway 1221 (in association w/ OCO Architects) - Citation Award
"Taking a project that had really failed, never been completed and finding an opportunities to make it a really vital exciting urban place. We liked the diversity in the way that these circulation spines were exposed so you saw the activity and life of the building. It created more of a life for this community. "
- Jennifer Yoos
ASU Health Services Building (in association w/ Orcutt Winslow) - Merit Award
"Made a somewhat forbidding health services building for ASU into a very warm and welcoming complex. They done this I think by using a very significant addition to add a layer to the existing building that continues into the new building. The placement of that addition and extension of that circulation space form what I think is a really wonderfully modulated edge of inside outside filtered lenses that allow visitors and students who are ill to be there in a way that is both comfortable and also engaged; which is a very rare thing in a place of healthcare. My hat is completely off to this team. It is also by the way incredibly beautifully detailed on the outside as well. But for me the big deal is what it does inside. " - Thomas Hacker
Cross Timbers Ranch - Honor Award
"This ranch project really struck us as to this wonderful relationship that is set up with the site and creating a series of outdoor rooms with different experiences which really carried into the interior this extension between interior/exterior spaces with porches and spaces that are shaded, ways of ventilating and moving air through and this kind of episodic series of interior modern, minimal and beautiful experience. Well crafted. We love the delicate almost Japanese aesthetic of this timber construction out of steel, this layered quality of these steel pieces that created these overhang. Beautiful. "
- Jennifer Yoos
A group LF'ers were in attendance to receive our awards and to hear first hand these insightful comments. All in all a great night for Lake|Flato. As a firm, we have been honored many times in the past for architecture that draws from a common theme - designs that are sensitive to place, integrates seamlessly with the surrounding environment, revitalizes communities, is highly sustainable and has attention to craft. This passion for designing the
right way is one core aspect that draws us together as LF'ers. Getting recognized for our work reaffirms that others appreciate this design philosophy.
