AIA honors the late architect Steven Izenour

November 02, 2001|By Inga Saffron INQUIRER ARCHITECTURE CRITIC

The annual awards ceremony held by the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) usually gives top honors to the designer of an exquisite recent building. But Tuesday, the AIA decided to bestow one of its highest awards on the late Steven Izenour, a beloved Philadelphia architect who died in August after spending his career promoting the virtues of vernacular buildings, lively streetscapes, and artful illumination.

In honor of his role as a mentor and elder statesman, the AIA named Izenour the recipient of the John Harbeson Distinguished Service Award at a ceremony held at the Westin Philadelphia. Izenour, whose death from a heart attack shocked the city's design community, was a member of the influential trio that includes Manayunk architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Together they produced the landmark book Learning From Las Vegas.

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The AIA also handed out a trove of its regular design awards in the categories of built and unbuilt work. Taking the gold award was Erdy McHenry Architecture of Philadelphia, an Old City firm that has rocketed to national prominence with its office building for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. Located opposite Maya Lin's Civil Rights Memorial, the layered, multistory structure has received national praise.

In fact, many of the awards given were for work far from Philadelphia. In the built category, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson received honors for the Keystone Building in Harrisburg and an admissions center at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Only Wesley Wei won an honor in the built category for a local building called A Room in the City.

In the unbuilt category, Purdy O'Gwynn Barnhart Architects was honored for the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg. Kling Linquist won for the New England Bio Labs in Ipswich, Mass., and Kieran Timberlake Associates was singled out for Levine Hall of the University of Pennsylvania.

In the restoration category, DPK&A Architects won both awards, and both buildings were outside the area: the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, Ga., and the Central Synagogue in New York.

Andrew P. Phillips was named Philadelphia Young Architect of the Year.

The other architects who received recognition awards were:

Wallace Roberts & Todd, Unity Plaza, Dallas.

Wesley Wei Architects, Blue & Green House, Philadelphia.

Ballinger, Brown University Life Sciences Building, Providence, R.I.

Purdy O'Gwynn Barnhart Architects, Hintz Family Alumni Center, Pennsylvania State University.

MGA Partners, U.S. Courthouse, Camden.

MGA Partners, Facilities & Real Estate Services building, University of Pennsylvania.

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Wallace Social Sciences Building, Princeton.

Kieran Timberlake Associates, Nancy & Edwin Marks Center, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Dommert Phillips, Asthma (Bus)ter, Philadelphia.

Richard Conway Meyer Architect, Philadelphia School Gymnasium