The School Construction News & Design Share Awards 2001
The Awards Program 2001, the 2nd annual international awards competition sponsored by School Construction News, the Design Share Web site, www.designshare.com, and C/S Group, www.c-sgroup.com, included 62 projects from five countries. All projects were submitted and reviewed over the Internet, all judging was anonymous, and the jury wound up selecting winners from around the world. Top award winners-those receiving an Honor Award-are from Australia and Spain. Merit Awards go to schools in Canada and the United States. The winning projects represent the state-of-the-art in the design of elementary, secondary, and higher education facilities as well as special-use facilities.
Creativity in the designs of these buildings ran the gamut, from learning environments integrated into the fabric of the community, to architectural nuances such as small, Native American-inspired Kivas designed for student meditation. Some of the most memorable projects transcend the notion of learning environments as mere buildings, instead presenting designs that incorporate a broad range of community resources. One of the Honor Award winners, a College in Mandurah, Australia, has a spectacular learning street and art wall that blurs the boundaries between facility and curriculum streams. Another project, an elementary school in Berkeley, California, that earned a Citation Award, uses its site design to create what noted educator and jurist Dr. Anne Taylor calls “Learning Landscapes.” Projects taking other paths include those using resources provided in the educational program to serve the needs of broader community constituencies. Another Honor Award winner, an Educational Cultural Community Center in Alcobendas, Spain, houses an adult Mediateque, a high-tech library that serves a working class community with limited civic resources.
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The Jury Box An international panel of 12 jurors reviewed 62 project submissions and selected 38 winners. Jury members have a range of practice, education, and research backgrounds, and their collaboration created an interesting balance between education and architecture. Steven Bingler, AIA, president, Concordia Architects |
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Project Awards Honor Awards Merit Awards Citation Awards Recognized Value Awards Review these properties at www.designshare.com. |
Conclusions
One could surmise that the purpose of design competitions is to promote the development and dissemination of innovation-and this year’s competition is no exception. The projects represented in the Honor and Merit Award categories exhibit a new kind of thinking that transcends the limits of the stand-alone classrooms or the large-scaled isolation of what architect and juror Bruce Jilk has termed the “Citadel” school building. In addition to the three Honor and four Merit Award projects, 10 additional projects received Citations. Another 21 projects were identified as having Recognized Value in the ongoing dialogue about the design of more relevant and effective learning environments.
We must also keep in mind that what has been accomplished must always be measured by the balance of the work that remains to be done. In the context of the total competition, some projects were thought to have not gone far enough in the search for new and better designs for learning. And, as educational delivery systems and the environments that support them continue to evolve-incorporating more integrative and participatory concepts-it is clear that new tools are needed in an effort to meet the rigorous demands.