Architecture faculty and students win multiple honors at St. Louis AIA Awards

Nov. 3, 2006 -- Faculty members, graduate students and recent alumni from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have received a total of five 2006 Design Awards from the St. Louis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Paul Donnelly and Axi:Ome LLC

"Architecture as Landscape: A Contemporary Hotel in Moscow," by Paul Donnelly and Sung Ho Kim, with Matthew Horvath.

The annual awards honor architects, designers and crafts persons for their contributions to excellence in the built environment. In all, 18 design awards were given in five categories: Craftsmanship, Drawings, Interiors, Unbuilt and Architecture. In addition, the Wainwright Building Complex received the chapter's Twenty-Five Year Award.

Paul Donnelly, FAIA, PE, the Rebecca and John Voyles Chair of Architecture, and Sung Ho Kim, assistant professor of architecture and principal of Axi:Ome LLC, won a Merit Award in the Unbuilt category for their proposal "Architecture as Landscape: A Contemporary Hotel in Moscow." Also serving as a consultant on the project was Matthew Horvath, PE (GA '05).

Designed for KECO Invest Engineering GMBH, a Russian development corporation, the hotel would integrate approximately 200 rooms with a convention center and public, commercial and recreational spaces at a site near the historic Donskoy Monastery, approximately 2.5 kilometers from the Kremlin. The structure employs an innovative polycarbonate roof/enclosure that slopes into a surrounding masonry landscape, blurring the distinction between ground and building while maintaining the neighborhood's existing proportions.

Donald Koster, AIA, LEED AP, a Weese Teaching Fellow and visiting assistant professor of architecture, received an Architecture Merit Award for a 1,200-square-foot wood-frame summer residence on the Nova Scotia coast. The structure, a modern homage to the ubiquitous vernacular Nova Scotia barn, employs multiple passive environmental strategies while blurring the distinction between indoors and out. Framed in wood and clad in Eastern white cedar shingles with a galvalume metal roof, the building materials were chosen for their authenticity, local availability and ease of maintenance in the harsh coastal environment.

Donald Koster

A Nova Scotia summer cottage by Donald Koster.

"Re-Imagining Lights" by graduate student Barbara M. Boykin received an Honor Award in the Drawing category. The project was praised for its "poetic quality and lyrical movement that echoes the sense of light and water."

Ian Caine, affiliate assistant professor of architecture, was part of a team from HKW Architects, St. Louis, which received an Architecture Merit Award for the K-6 Lunchroom Addition to the New City School, St. Louis.

Also receiving an Unbuilt Merit Award were Jodi Polzin, visiting assistant professor of architecture, and Greg Hitchcock, research assistant, for their proposed "Tulum Archeological Museum" in Tulum, Mexico.

In addition, dean Carmon Colangelo, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration in the Arts, served as jury chair in the drawing category. And recent alumnus Geoffrey Loo (M.Arch '04) — now with Cannon Design, St. Louis — received a Drawing Honor Award for "Beacon."