AAF, AIA Put the Accent on Architecture
American Architectural Foundation and American Institute of Architects honor the Pritzker family, E. Fay Jones’s Thorncrown Chapel, architecture firm Moore Ruble Yudell, and Antoine Predock, FAIA.

Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a small but soaring glass and cross-braced pine chapel designed by the late E. Fay Jones, FAIA. Image courtesy of AIA.

The American Architectural Foundation and the American Institute of Architects held the 17th Annual Accent on Architecture Gala, honoring the best in the past and present of architecture, earlier this month at the National Building Museum. The groups honored the Pritzker family with this year’s AAF Keystone Award; Thorncrown Chapel, designed by E. Fay Jones, FAIA with the AIA Twenty-Five-Year Award; Moore Ruble Yudell with the AIA Architecture Firm Award, and Antoine Predock, FAIA with the coveted AIA Gold Medal. Here is a rundown of this year’s winners.

American Architectural Foundation Keystone Award
Every year, the AAF honors an individual or organization from outside the architecture and design field in recognition of their leadership in advancing design excellence. This year the award was presented to the Pritzker family of Chicago, in honor of its patronage of architecture and its role in founding the renowned Pritzker Architecture Prize. Each year the Pritzker Prize honors a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of talent, vision, and commitment to design excellence.

Predock's work is marked by the physical interaction with the land, and he is known for allowing his clients' "voices" to come through in his projects. At its best, Predock's work is infused with a sense of spirituality that seamlessly connects the land, space, client, and society with the built structure.

American Institute of Architects Twenty-Five-Year Award
This year’s AIA Twenty-Five-Year Award honors Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a small but soaring glass and cross-braced pine chapel designed by the late E. Fay Jones. The chapel sits on eight acres of woodlands in the Ozark Mountains and consists of 425 windows constructed with 6,000 square feet of glass. The chapel filters forest light across its diamond-shaped pine trusses to form changing patterns of light and shadow. The chapel received an AIA Honor Award in 1981 and it is fourth on the Institute’s list of top 10 twentieth-century structures.

American Institute of Architects Firm Award
The 2006 AIA Firm Award was presented to Moore Ruble Yudell, a firm that began 28 years ago as a spirited collaboration among partners and associates. From the start, the founding partners, Charles Moore, FAIA, John Ruble, FAIA, and Buzz Yudell, FAIA, have shared a passion for original architecture that grows out of an intense dialogue with places and people, celebrates human activity, and nurtures community. The firm has carried these values through a wide variety of projects, ranging from single-family houses to community planning, to civic, cultural, educational, and mixed-use projects. The firm’s leadership includes landscape architect Mario Violich, ASLA.

American Institute of Architects Gold Medal
This year’s AIA Gold Medal was presented to Antoine Predock, FAIA, an architect whose approach to design strongly reflects his home in the American West. Predock was honored for the diversity of his work, which ranges from the celebrated Turtle Creek house, which was built in 1993 for bird enthusiasts in Texas, to the $285 million San Diego Padres ballpark that reinvents the concept of a stadium as a garden, rather than a sports complex. Predock’s work is marked by the physical interaction with the land, and he is known for allowing his clients’ “voices” to come through in his projects. At its best, Predock’s work is infused with a sense of spirituality that seamlessly connects the land, space, client, and society with the built structure.