The American Architectural Foundation, in partnership with the AIA, hosted the 17th annual Accent on Architecture Gala February 10 in the soaring Great Hall of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., a glorious event that saw 1,000 architects and architecture champions unite to celebrate the past, present, and future power of architecture “to enrich and elevate the human spirit.”

AAF President and CEO Ronald E. Bogle warmly welcomed guests and acknowledged this year’s sponsors of Accent on Architecture and spoke of the AIA’s upcoming sesquicentennial celebration in 2007 and the Foundation’s eagerness to lend support to that endeavor. AAF Board of Regents Chair Norbert W. Young, FAIA, and AIA President Kate Schwennsen, FAIA, then jointly introduced plans to create the “American Center of Architecture,” one of the major initiatives of AIA150, the AIA’s ongoing program to mark and celebrate its sesquicentennial.

Schwennsen explained that the American Center of Architecture is going to be both a “place and a forum for new ideas,” and will serve as the “future-looking counterpart to the celebration of our past.” Young termed the American Center for Architecture program “one of the most exciting ideas in years,” emphasizing that it draws on the strengths of the AIA and the AAF. He noted that it will be designed to enhance existing programs of both organizations and will strongly emphasize sustaining the Octagon.

Schwennsen also introduced the 2006 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture/AIA Topaz Medallion recipient for excellence in architecture education William McGinn, FAIA. She then presented the AIA’s new Executive Vice President/CEO Christine McEntee, who assumed her new job on February 1. “I am honored to be here, and I consider myself most fortunate to have been selected as the AIA’s new CEO,” McEntee said. She acknowledged her immediate predecessor Norman L. Koonce, FAIA, for helping to set a firm foundation for the AIA and for helping her personally. McEntee noted that architects have a unique role to play in creating better, safer, more sustainable and beautiful environments. “There is a lot of work to do,” she said, “and this profession will step forward and do it.”

Pritzker family honored with AAF Keystone Award
Young presented the 2006 American Architectural Foundation Keystone Award to the philanthropic Pritzker Family of Chicago for their leadership in advancing design excellence through their patronage and the creation of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Cindy Pritzker, with her late husband Jay Pritzker, co-founded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979. Their eldest son, Thomas J. Pritzker, has become president of The Hyatt Foundation, which was established to administer the prize. The Pritzker Prize honors annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment that has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

Accepting the Keystone Award on behalf of her family, Gigi Pritzker-Pucker (daughter of Jay and Cindy), noted a similarity of purpose in the AAF and the Pritzker Prize in promoting excellence in architecture. She outlined the history of the award since its inception 27 years ago, recalling the notable recipients and jurors—including inaugural jurors J. Carter Brown, Hon. AIA; AIA Gold Medalist Cesar Pelli, FAIA; and J. Irwin Cummins, Hon. AIA, founder of the Columbus, Ind., drive to hire great American architects. “The jury makes the choices and we support them,” she said. “The family does not interfere with the process.” Pritzker offered her family’s profound gratitude to the AAF for the Keystone Award.

Thorncrown Chapel wins Twenty-five Year Award
The Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., has received the 2006 AIA Twenty-five Year Award for architectural design that has stood the test of time for 25 years. The small but soaring glass and cross-braced pine chapel, designed by the late AIA Gold Medalist E. Fay Jones, nestles into an eight-acre woodland setting on a sloping hillside in the Ozark Mountains. The tiny chapel, 24-foot-wide by 60-foot-long for a total of 1,440 square feet—soars 48 feet to the sky. Its 425 windows, made of 6,000 square feet of glass, filter woodland light across its upward diamond-shaped pine trusses to form ever-changing patterns of light and shadow throughout the day and night.

Robert A. Ivy, FAIA, Architectural Record editor in chief and author of Fay Jones, the seminal book about the architect and his works, brought the chapel into the Building Museum for the audience. “Thorncrown is elemental, a manmade temple,” he said. “This small building draws vistas with the primal force of truth.” Ivy recalled that the first Accent on Architecture celebration in 1990 honored Fay Jones as that year’s Gold Medalist. “His work continues to inspire and move us,” he noted.

Mrs. Fay Jones, known affectionately as “Gus,” received the award. She recalled that shortly after construction of the chapel was complete, Fay Jones had said, “This is going to be a pretty nice little project but you know, no one is ever going to see it.

“I know that Fay would be so pleased to be included on a list with so many of his architectural heroes,” Mrs. Jones said. “I appreciate you honoring Thorncrown Chapel with the Twenty-five Year Award and in thanking all of you, I would like to quote Fay’s response when he received the AIA’s Gold Medal in Washington, February 22, 1990. He said, ‘This is a great moment in my life and to all of you who have made this so, I am truly grateful. Thank you very much.’”

Architecture Firm Award to Moore Ruble Yudell
Schwennsen presented California’s Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners with the 2006 AIA Architecture Firm Award, the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm. The Firm Award recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years. Robert Campbell, FAIA, Pulitzer Prize recipient and long-time architecture critic for the Boston Globe, offered his impressions of the 60-person firm and their work, which shows the influences of the now-deceased AIA Gold Medalist Charles Moore, one its founding partners. Campbell described the powerful sense of place created in three of the firms most noted projects: St. Matthews Church; Tegel Harbor, Berlin; and Tango Housing, Malmo, Sweden. He distilled the spirit of their project down to three essences: “collaboration, color, and making places.”

Buzz Yudell, FAIA, and John Ruble, FAIA, firm partners, accepted the award and brought their associates to the stage. “This is a wonderful and humbling experience,” said Yudell, thanking their firm and clients, as well as the AIA for fostering mentorships. He noted that working with the late and great Charles Moore was like being part of “a jazz ensemble. He encouraged improvisation.” Ruble spoke of the firm’s “enlightened clients” in the education, housing, and civic arenas. He also expressed gratitude toward the firm’s leadership and associates.

Predock accepts Gold Medal
As always, the crowning glory of the Accent on Architecture Gala comes with the presentation of the AIA Gold Medal, conferred upon an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. This year, that individual is Antoine Predock, FAIA, master of the American West vernacular. In nominating Predock for the award, Thomas S. Howorth, FAIA, AIA Committee on Design Gold Medal Committee chair, explained: “Arguably, more than any American architect of any time, Antoine Predock has asserted a personal and place-inspired vision of architecture with such passion and conviction that his buildings have been universally embraced.”

Washington Post architecture critic Benjamin Forgey, Hon. AIA, lauded Predock as “a fierce American individualist,” and told the audience that was one of the reasons for Predock being awarded the Gold Medal. “Like Frank Lloyd Wright, he has developed a fiercely personal view of architecture.” Forgey explained that he believes that the essence of Predock’s “willfully and idiosyncratically sculptural” architecture is that “he has discovered the process of discovery. It is no accident that no two buildings of his look alike, yet each is immediately identifiable as a Predock building.”

Schwennsen and McEntee presented the award to Predock, who seemed to admire the Gold Medal itself, then teasingly asked Schwennsen, “Kate, do I still have to do my learning units every year?” He then expressed his gratitude and paid homage to the people who have helped and inspired him throughout his career, beginning with Don Schlegel, FAIA, who as a young professor of engineering turned Predock toward architecture and “taught me always to be true to my inner life.” Asking his former professor to stand, Predock explained that Schlegel showed him that “it is possible for work to be—life. That is an extraordinary realization.”

Predock also expressed gratitude to his wife Constance, his coworkers, and associates at his firm. He also praised his “fortunate panorama of inspired clients” and asked them to stand and be recognized. He then named many of the influences that have inspired his work, from Frank Lloyd Wright to the Anasazi and Hopi cultures of the Southwest, which have shown him that “we don’t have to learn only from Europe. In the Southwest, we are most concerned with the movements of the wind and the sun and the iconic landscape. It is all essence and spirit—New Mexico does that to you.”

The 62nd Gold Medalist reminded the audience of the importance of peripheral vision: “Look to the sides for subtleties and nuances,” he advised. He spoke of “architecture as a dance” and the need to explore the tactile, perhaps through drawing and clay models that express the building’s life and can be “as liquid as a drawing. And, as wonderful as digital technology may be, that tactile quality must not be overwhelmed by the digital . . . The innocent mark is in all of us.”

—SS

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