On August 13th, a three person jury convened at the AIA Headquarters to review the 2009 Charles E. Peterson Prize submittals. The annual prize recognized the best sets of measured drawings prepared by students to Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) standards and donated to the HABS collection. The prize honors the late Charles E. Peterson, FAIA, founder of the HABS program, and is intended to increase awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of historic buildings throughout the United States while adding to the permanent HABS collection of measured drawings at the Library of Congress. To date, more than 2,000 students from 68 colleges and universities have participated by completing more than 500 entries and almost 5,000 sheets of measured drawings. The students have worked alone and in groups, in required courses, electives, independent study and summer institutes.
This year fourteen projects were submitted from eleven schools from across the country. These included first time entries from the University of Cincinnati and the University of Miami (FL). The projects were judged on the significance of the building being documented, complexity of the site/structure, the appropriate level of documentation, and presentation of the measured drawings. A wide variety of submittals were carefully reviewed ranging from a two page set to a thirty-three page set. The drawings were completed using the traditional hand drawn ink on Mylar; computer aided drafting, as well as hybrid hand-computer drawn sheets.
This year’s jury was comprised of Mark Schara AIA representing the National Park Service, Hyman Myers, FAIA representing the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and Jonathan Spodek, AIA representing the AIA-HRC. The winners will be announced in the coming weeks with a formal awards ceremony during the AIA-HRC co-sponsored symposium Capturing the Past for Future Use: Integrating Documentation with Repair, Design, and Construction Practice in Historic Building Rehabilitation to be held on November 2 and 3 in Los Angeles.