The AIA Architecture Firm Award, given annually, is the highest honor the AIA can bestow on an architecture firm. It recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years. Leers Weinzapfel Associates, the Boston–based magicians who create beautiful public architecture and space, received the 2007 AIA Architecture Firm Award. The AIA Board of Directors awarded the firm based on its consistent ability to accept complex challenges and to envision designs of elegant distinction.

Jane Weinzapfel pauses to reflect on the milestone moment. It’s thrilling to have both our work and our firm recognized by the 2007 AIA Firm Award,” she says. “Architecture is a very collaborative art, and this award recognizes all the talented people who have contributed to the ambitious quality of our work.

Their commitment to the public realm and to the craft of building in dramatically complex projects represents a remarkable commitment to ingenuity, resourcefulness, and design excellence in the most extreme circumstance, writes David B. Greenbaum, FAIA, chair of the AIA Committee on Design Firm Award Jury Task Force in his nomination letter.

With a passion for material and detail exploration and desire to create meaningful social interaction, the firm develops a refined and tailor-made response to each set of project conditions. As architecture critic Robert A. Kliment, FAIA, notes: The work appears to be driven by fundamental values, searching for expression appropriate to the program and the place, and even to the budget and the capacity of the builder.

Partners Andrea P. Leers, FAIA; Jane Weinzapfel, FAIA; Joe Pryse, AIA; and Josiah Stevenson, AIA, meld a bold and refined architecture for the public realm, including transportation and urban infrastructure, the joining of new elements to existing buildings, and athletic and campus-life facilities. In this podcast, Ms. Leers and Ms. Weinzapfel discuss their approach of designing architecture for the public realm and with a social purpose. They also discuss what the award has meant to them personally in the past, and the new inspiration it provides the firm in the future.

Weinzapfel is fired up to continue making beautiful architecture. We hope to make this award an inspiration for some of our best work to emerge in the future, she adds. We love being able to make a positive difference in our clients’ futures through their use of the spaces, buildings and landscapes we have created together.

LWA Select List of Built Work

• Harvard University New College Theatre, Cambridge, MA
• Harvard University Library Services Building, Cambridge, MA
• Harvard University Science Center Expansion, Cambridge, MA
• MIT School of Architecture and Planning, Cambridge, MA
• MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA - in Association with Maki and Associates
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Global Education Center, NC
• University of Pennsylvania Gateway Complex, Philadelphia, PA
• Princeton University Chilled Water Plant Expansion, Princeton, NJ
• The Ohio State University World Media and Culture Center, Columbus, OH
• The University of Cincinnati University Pavilion, Cincinnati, OH
• U.S. District Courthouse, Orlando, FL
• MBTA Operations Control Center, Boston, MA