Institutional—Library

2020 Best of Design Award for Institutional—Library: Billie Jean King Main Library
Designer: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Location: Long Beach, California

The new Billie Jean King Main Library is more than the traditional library of decades past. Positioned at the heart of downtown Long Beach, it is designed to provide a welcoming and flexible environment serving more than one thousand daily visitors. The state-of-the-art structural-timber building features distinct and identifiable interior spaces that maximize square footage and enhance user accessibility and staff efficiency. It also offers a rich program of activities in which reading and browsing through bookstacks are only a small part of the experience.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Hunters Point Library
Designer: Steven Holl Architects

Project Name: River Center Branch Library
Designer: Schwartz/Silver Architects and WHLC Architecture

Editors’ Picks

Project Name: Arizona State University Hayden Library Reinvention
Designer: Ayers Saint Gross

Project Name: Columbus Metropolitan Library Martin Luther King Branch
Architect of record: Moody Nolan
Associate architect: HKI Associates

Institutional—Higher Ed

2020 Best of Design Award for Institutional—Higher Ed and Project of the Year Finalist: Winter Visual Arts Building
Designer: Steven Holl Architects
Location: Lancaster, Pennsylvania

On the historic campus of Franklin & Marshall College, the Winter Visual Arts Building has taken shape as a raised pavilion framed by the site’s 200-year-old trees, the oldest elements of the campus. The building’s spaces aim to evoke the creative energy involved in teaching and making art. Drawing on Franklin & Marshall’s motto, Lux et Lex, the new center for the Art, Art History, and Film Department is conceived as “light” in contrast to the “heavy” exemplary brick architecture of the 1856 “Old Main” original campus building. The Winter Visual Arts Building activates the southern end of the campus as a new campus destination.

“The Winter Visual Arts Building is a remarkable addition to the historic campus of Franklin & Marshall College and the city of Lancaster [Pennsylvania]. Surrounded and shaped by the mature trees of the campus, it puts in dialogue art and nature, bringing together studios and treetops. The interior benefits from the soft natural light received through its translucent glass walls, while the exterior acts as a beacon for the campus at night. Here Steven Holl Architects continue familiar themes from previous projects while fitting carefully and effortlessly in its context.” Iker Gil

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Beloit College Powerhouse
Designer: Studio Gang
Associate architect: Angus-Young Associates

Project Name: Kansas City Art Institute Paul & Linda DeBruce Hall
Designer: Hufft

Editors’ Picks

Project Name: Isttaniokaksini/Science Commons at University of Lethbridge
Designer: Architects in association: KPMB Architects and Stantec Architecture

Project Name: The Commons at Tulane University
Designer: WEISS/MANFREDI
Local architect: Waggonner & Ball

Institutional—Religious

2020 Best of Design Award for Institutional—Religious: 14th Shamarpa Reliquary Building
Designer: Poon Design
Location: Natural Bridge, Virginia

For a visitor to this structure, architecture serves as a vessel of experiences and events—sustaining memories and beliefs. This project honors the passing of Shamar Rinpoche, the 14th Shamarpa and Red Hat Lama of Tibet, and contains relics within a gold-leafed stupa, one of only three such stupas worldwide. Exploring the divine principles of moderation and equanimity, the architectural language is universally sacred and infuses a design that is both neutral and dramatic, traditional and modern. If this architecture doesn’t scream for attention, that is precisely the point: to seek meditative stillness. This project expresses a crafted architecture of both human and spiritual hands.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Cathedral of the Holy Cross
Designer: Elkus Manfredi Architects

Project Name: Mount Auburn Cemetery Bigelow Chapel Renovation and New Addition
Designer: William Rawn Associates, Architects

Institutional—Kindergartens, Primary & High Schools

2020 Best of Design Award for Institutional—Kindergartens, Primary & High Schools: Thaden School Bike Barn
Designer: Marlon Blackwell Architects
Location: Bentonville, Arkansas

Sitting atop a berm on the eastern edge of the Thaden School campus, the Bike Barn translates the vernacular of the region into an athletic facility housing a multi-use court, bike storage, and support facilities. Locally fabricated wood trusses, typically used in suburban homes, were used to create a bold figure at the new independent school. Twelve trusses were hoisted into place above dimensional wood columns with steel flitch plates, revealing the profile of a modified gambrel barn carved into the space of the interior. With the exception of the storage and restroom volume the space is naturally ventilated through open-joint, red-painted cypress board siding, vented skylights, and roller doors.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Little Tiger Chinese Immersion School
Designer: Murray Legge Architecture

Project Name: The Barn at Belmont Day School
Designer: Utile

Editors’ Picks

Project Name: Deerfield Academy Athletics Complex
Designer: Sasaki

Project Name: Lisle Elementary School
Designer: Perkins&Will

Healthcare

2020 Best of Design Award for Healthcare: Tribeca Pediatrics Bushwick
Designer: OPerA Studio Architecture
Location: Brooklyn, New York

Tribeca Pediatrics’ new location in Bushwick, Brooklyn, uses a playful set of shapes and forms to welcome patients. The circle motif that has been a typical design element in all of Tribeca Pediatrics’ practice locations is taken to a new level of expression here. A large circular opening in the 20-foot-by-20-foot fiberglass facade echoes through the depth of the building as an implied cylinder. The cylinder appears as a three-dimensional void implied by two-dimensional arch profiles. At times, the rhythm of the arches changes through rotations on the various axes, creating an implied rotation at their respective intersections or as segments of the circle. The result is a fun, dynamic, light-filled space.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Center for Health & Wellbeing
Designer: Duda Paine Architects

Project Name: Curative Project Kiosk
Designer: One Hat One Hand

Editors’ Picks

Project Name: OrthoSouth
Designer: archimania

Project Name: University of Virginia, University Hospital Expansion
Designer: Perkins&Will