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| Paul
Pettigrew, AIA, instructor, Kathleen Nagle, lecturer, and Catherine
Wetzel, assistant professor, College of Architecture, Illinois
Institute of Technology |
The AIA would like to congratulate the 2006 AIA Education Honor
Award recipients from The Catholic University of America, Illinois
Institute of Technology, and the University of Arkansas for their
outstanding achievements in digital design/fabrication, beginning
design, and community-based design education. “Each award
winner represents a standard for their respective subject that all
schools should aspire to,” said Jury Chair David W. Hinson,
AIA. “This is what the AIA Education Honor Award is all
about—recognizing excellence and helping us all to understand
how this standard can be reached by educators across the
country.”
Recipients received their awards at the AIA National Convention and
presented their work in a 1-1/2 hour session, moderated by Hinson.
Presentation boards prepared by the award recipients were also on
display in the convention gallery.
The AIA Education Honor Awards program, now in its 17th year,
recognizes collegiate faculty achievements and contributions to
education and the discipline of architecture. In evaluating
submissions, the jury looked for exceptional models of
instructional and educational excellence in classroom, studio,
community-based service learning, or laboratory work. Criteria
included courses that deal with broad issues, particularly in
cross-disciplinary collaboration and/or within the broader
community; contribute to the advancement of architecture education;
have the potential to benefit and/or change practice; and promote
models of excellence that could be appropriated by other
educators.
2006 AIA Education Honor Award
Recipients
Digital Design-Build Initiative School of Architecture and
Planning, The Catholic University of America, Washington,
D.C.
 Development
team: Luis Eduardo Boza, assistant professor and director of the
Summer Institute for Architecture and Graduate Concentration in
Digital Fabrication; with supporting educators George Martin,
assistant dean for undergraduate studies, and Matthew Geiss,
visiting assistant professor; and JP Muller, president of OEC
Engineering in Chantilly, Va.
This initiative is a collection of courses in which students and
future leaders in the design profession are asking questions about
the role of fabrication technologies in the design process and
profession as well as researching how these technologies can inform
their own design methodologies. Using the design-build model as a
method for learning, students are exposed to both traditional means
and methods of construction and the most innovative digital design
and computer/numeric-controlled fabrication technologies.
Jury comments: “The course has gone beyond playing with
digital technology as just a ‘smart’ tool and looks to
how the technology begins to inform design directly. Students are
learning about materiality through digital technology. They can
explore the subject in a variety of ways. Thinking about a clear
idea and its transformation into a well-crafted object is
paramount, and the progression of three courses establishes a
trajectory; it has a momentum that promises more advancement.
Together, the three courses create an ensemble. This expands
opportunities for a team of students with skills to go further,
integrating design ideas into built form.”
Architecture I, II
College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology,
Chicago
 Development
team: Catherine Wetzel, assistant professor, Kathleen Nagle,
lecturer, and Paul Pettigrew, AIA, instructor, College of
Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology
This two-semester studio sequence has multiple objectives. At its
most fundamental level, the sequence of projects introduces the
necessary two- and three-dimensional technical and compositional
skills to prepare students for subsequent architectural studies.
More important, the focus on critical thinking, inquiry, and
hands-on investigation, both individual and collaborative,
addresses the larger conceptual and physical context of each
assignment. The curriculum also establishes a dialogue between the
institution’s Modernist legacy and contemporary architecture.
The year begins with the investigation of a common object and ends
with a full-scale construction. The course emphasizes the
collaborative learning environment, which is modeled by the
teaching methodology and executed through individual and group
projects.
Jury comments: “This program allows students to become
immersed in many critical issues they have to think about as an
architect in a foundation course, including scale, materiality,
landscape, and working collaboratively. First-year design issues
are addressed in a fresh, innovative way. The professors transform
the campus into a large laboratory. Students understand scale
better through full-scale mock ups rather than just drawing a human
figure in their project. Relationships among plan, section, and
axonometric are learned through presenting these drawings
simultaneously.”
Habitat Trails: Habitat for Humanity from infill house to
green neighborhood
University of Arkansas Community Design Center, Fayetteville,
Ark.
 Development
team: Stephen Luoni, Assoc. AIA, director; Aaron Gabriel, Assoc.
AIA, project director; and Jeffrey Huber, project designer,
University of Arkansas Community Design Center; Marty Matlock, PE,
associate professor, University of Arkansas Department of
Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and Mark Boyer, ASLA, RLA
University of Arkansas, Department of Landscape Architecture.
The studio objective is to provide Habitat for Humanity with a
model for ecofriendly, affordable development that offers
high-value residential solutions to underserved populations and
their surrounding communities. The challenge is to create place
from Habitat’s modest single-family home specifications on a
greenfield site. The studio is organized as a collaborative venture
among architecture, landscape architecture, and ecological
engineering departments. Architecture students were responsible for
the production of the housing fabric and held accountable for
integrating sustainable neighborhood technologies developed by the
other departments.
Jury comments: "This project has jumped the scale of the
single-family house and provided a critical resource for the
organization, and it gives back to its community. Dollars that
would have been spent on culverts and physical infrastructure can
be used to create bioswales and more landscaped open space for the
community.”
Acknowledgements:
The AIA would like to thank members of the jury: David Hinson, AIA,
jury chair, associate professor, chair, Architecture Program,
School of Architecture, Auburn University, Ala.; Matthew Fochs,
AIAS, vice president, the American Institute of Architecture
Students, Washington, D.C.; Clark E. Llewellyn, AIA, director,
Northwest and Pacific Region, the American Institute of Architects,
director, School of Architecture, Montana State University,
Bozeman, Mont.; and Brigitte Shim, Assoc. AIA, professor,
University of Toronto, Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and
Design, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects Inc. Toronto, Ontario,
Canada.
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