2019 Collaborative Achievement Award
The Collaborative Achievement Award recognizes the excellence that results when architects work with those from outside the profession to improve the spaces where people live and work.
Throughout a 50-year career characterized by scholarship and the interchange of ideas about innovative learning environments, Anne Taylor, Hon. AIA, has linked architecture and education in creative ways. A frequent collaborator with design professionals, Taylor’s focus on integrated design curricula has turned architecture into a lens through which today’s children can study the world.
In 1975, as a full professor in the University of New Mexico’s Art Education Department, Taylor made the unorthodox move to the university’s School of Architecture and Planning to address the gap she observed between architecture and education. Today Taylor is regents professor emerita at the school as well as a distinguished professor for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
In addition to her work in academia, Taylor has nourished partnerships through consultation work with architects focused on school programming and design. Drawing on her research and dissertation, her insight allows her collaborators to transcend programmatic space requirements and their designs to reflect the key concepts of core educational standards. In her acclaimed monograph, Linking Architecture and Education, Sustainable Design of Learning Environments— just one of her many publications—she lays out charts, taxonomies, and tools that clearly illustrate how architectural elements can be translated into learning opportunities.
AIA chapters in New Mexico have long partnered with Taylor and have greatly benefited from her professional development workshops and University of New Mexico courses. She has trained AIA members to teach concepts of architecture and design to students in pre-K through 12th grade. The students’ teachers and administrators also benefit from her tutelage; she pairs them with architects to experiment with visual thinking tools in a search for solutions to specific design problems.
At Mark Twain Elementary School, a Title 1 school in Albuquerque, Taylor partnered with AIA Albuquerque on a three-year program to implement her curriculum in grades two through five. With the final year of the program on the horizon, teachers have attested to its success, often noting increased attendance on architects’ teaching days and students relying on collaborative approaches to problem-solving in the classroom. Taylor has also worked with a second-grade teacher to tweak the curriculum to work with national and state core standards for that age group.
While it is difficult to forecast what students will do with their architectural knowledge as adults, the spark of curiosity Taylor ignites represents limitless potential. A true pioneer, her contributions will reverberate in young minds for generations.
