AIA Columbus received 49 submissions total. We had five categories: Large Project, Small Project, Interior Architecture, Unbuilt, and Architectural Detail. Winners were chosen by a jury consisting of jury chair Katherine Darnstadt, AIA, Mide Akinsade, AIA, and E.B. Min, AIA. A big thank you to our sponsors Feinknopf Photography, O’Donnell & Naccarato , Osborn, Terracon, DesignPro, EDGE, Pella Columbus, ARC Document Solutions, Korda, Setterlin, Integrated Building Systems, and CMTA.
Click here to view the 2024 Architecture Awards booklet. We have printed copies of the booklet at the AIA Columbus Office. If you would like to pick up a copy, contact [email protected].
Honor Award – Small Project
Blacklick Woods Canopy Walk Tower |
Paros Architecture + Design
Project Information
Blacklick Woods Metro Park is a metropolitan park in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, owned and operated by Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks. Established in 1948, Blacklick Woods is the first park in the Metro Park system and became a National Natural Landmark in 1974. The park contains a nature preserve that is sanctuary to migrating birds along the Blacklick Creek corridor. The park is free and open to the public 365 days per year.
Over the past decade, the park has begun serving an increasingly diverse population of multi-cultural residents. In turn, Metro Parks sought to expand community outreach efforts with the intent of introducing its constituency, including residents who may not be inclined to visit park spaces, to a unique park experience. This experience manifests as an elevated canopy walk permitting exploration of the treetops in a casual and safe environment. This offers a one-of-a-kind experience, unlike any other in central Ohio. During the design of the canopy walk project, Metro Parks made the commitment to construct the recreational canopy walk as a fully accessible public experience by funding an outdoor elevator to accompany the Canopy Walk Tower egress stairs.
The Canopy Walk Tower is the manifestation of this commitment to accessibility while fulfilling the Metro Parks’ mission to conserve open space and provide places and opportunities that encourage people to discover and experience nature.
Jury Comments
“A successful folly in the woods executed with great detail and clear exuberance for the design brief, accessibility challenges, and love of nature.”
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Honor Award – Small Project
Daley Family Pavilion | WSA
Project Information
The Daley Family Pavilion transforms an underutilized corner of The Ohio State University’s campus into a vibrant, multi-functional hub. This innovative space serves as a nexus for student life, academic pursuits, and community engagement, designed to be a year-round destination that enhances the university experience.
The design solution features an elegant pavilion that seamlessly blends indoor and outdoor experiences. Its adaptable steel frame, aluminum cladding, and innovative roof lanterns create a modern aesthetic while maximizing natural light and energy efficiency. The flexible façade allows the space to open to the adjacent plaza, accommodating various events and group sizes.
Jury Comments
“This addition expertly resolves multiple lingering campus design issues and transforms the gap between two buildings into an elegant event hub. The plaza hardscape interventions use small furniture and pavement gestures to further extend the event program space. The sawtooth roof brings subtle and even lighting to further enhance functionality and provide a visual identity and beacon for the building.”
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Honor Award – Interior Architecture
Minerva Park Middle School | Triad Architects
Project Information
Amid the challenges brought on by the COVID pandemic, the architecture and interior design of Minerva Park Middle School began in spring 2020 and emerged as a symbol of resilience and unity. In a time marked by hardship, our design mission remained clear: to create an environment that transcended barriers and fostered togetherness. Our goal was to craft a school that not only engaged students, but also invited them to actively participate in their learning journey.
Located within a residential neighborhood in Minerva Park, Ohio, the site contains dense woodlands and a notably steep gradient that became an integral design element. Embracing the topography, the front façade of the building presents itself as a single-story structure, reducing the visual impact of its substantial size. As one moves further into the site, the back of the building takes on an industrial style with large windows. This view contrasts with the natural surroundings as the parkland cascades down to the lower entrances, creating a harmonious blend of nature and architecture. This integration continues inside the building, where the landscape becomes part of the interior design, connecting indoor and outdoor spaces.
Our commitment to the environment goes beyond the visual, as evidenced by the building’s LEED Silver Certification. All material and design decisions were meticulously considered to attain this distinction, ensuring that our creation not only harmonized with its surroundings but also actively safeguarded them. This approach highlights our dedication to not just replicating nature’s beauty, but also to preserving its integrity for future generations.
Jury Comments
“Integration of architecture and interiors with natural daylighting and smart, cohesive but varied material choices. Diversity of spaces without feeling boring in an elevated sophisticated setting.”
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Honor Award – Large Project
St. Mary School German Village | MKC Architects
Project Information
This project is an addition and full renovation of the existing St. Mary Elementary School located in German Village of Columbus. The design for 350 elementary-age students provides updated facilities for the elementary school, as well as the entire St. Mary K-8 campus of 500 students. The design includes renovated and new classrooms, a new kitchen/food service and dining area, offices, sensory room, elevator, extended learning areas, and full HVAC/MEP improvements, among other improvements. The students’ dining hall, “Heritage Hall,” doubles as a parish hall and community center for local/community events. Extended learning areas around the classrooms and in the media center encourage students and teachers to use resources outside of the classroom for a more diversified educational experience. These include group-meet [mid-size groups], gather and display [labs and presentation], and huddle spaces [peer-to-peer], which allow for more concentrated discussion.
As a response to the constrained and historic site, the addition expands the existing elementary around the rectory into the rear parking lot, with the front yard remaining relatively open to maintain its historical elevation and provide a space for children to play. Areas, such as the dining hall, kitchen, servery, and stage platform on the front lawn are available for community events during or outside of school hours. A single main entrance at the front of the school acts as a secure separation for events such as these.
Jury Comments
“A stellar project overall.”
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Honor Award – Architectural Detail
The Yellow Stair [St. Mary School] | MKC Architects
Project Information
The Yellow Stair is a sculptural element within the heart of St. Mary Elementary School that provides function while also promoting immersion and creativity. Active functionality includes stairs, a bookshelf, and a workstation, while passive functionality includes immersion/experience, wayfinding, and color theory. The incorporated sculptural piece utilizes a yellow solid surface and yellow-painted walls and canopy to envelope the visitor. The half wall at the top of the stair serves as a protective barrier, while also allowing visual connections to different parts of the hub. The color-washed surfaces engage users on multiple planes, encouraging peering up, down, over, through, and around.
Jury Comments
“The stair was designed for a daily moment of discovery. Detail diagrams and presentation package reinforced this narrative in a clear, and directional manner that was complimented by the jury.”
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Honor Award – Unbuilt
Icehouse Repositioning | NBBJ
Project Information
A marquee property in the developer’s Warehouse District portfolio, the Icehouse Building is set to be both the first redevelopment and a catalyst for the rest of the district. As an old ice storage facility, it cannot compete with Class-A offices without rethinking its design.
By adapting its challenging aspects, amplifying its treasured features, and expanding its footprint, the building aims to become a re-envisioned office and food/beverage destination. The design breathes new life into the old structure, creating a unique market presence.
Leveraging the building’s thermal mass (masonry) and replacing its deteriorating exteriors, the major upgrade is a 15-foot slot atrium, injecting daylight into a very deep floor plate.
Jury Comments
“A bold approach to warehouse reuse by improving the building through subtraction and addition rather than a straight renovation.”
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Merit Award – Large Project
Crittenton Community Center | DesignGroup
Project Information
The Directions for Youth and Families (DFYF) Crittenton Center serves the most vulnerable youth in its neighborhood, providing crucial afterschool programming, opportunities for childhood development, educational assistance, and multiple forms of family support. The center’s function and mission focus on providing equitable, trauma-informed resources to youth in a community that generally has a dearth of similar programs and facilities. All decisions made on the project – material selections, colors, textures, programmatic distribution, landscape design, acoustic and lighting considerations, etc. – were made keeping community perception and impact to the children using the facility in mind. The owner’s vision of a “softer” design that met the community warmly and openly inspired the building’s undulating roof form, not only creates a softer profile for the building, but also creates opportunities for dynamic open spaces. Details include outdoor spaces that cater to different types of programming for children; a public-facing courtyard that contains a community garden, splash pad, and amphitheater; and a more private outdoor space that provides more secluded spaces for play and outdoor recreation. The interior of the building is zoned between more public and private spaces. This organization places a community “hub” facing the street, a large flexible space where kids can gather for meals or many other activities, and where community performances and meetings can occur. Further away from the main entry are multiple program spaces designed to promote holistic wellbeing and growth for the community’s children: spaces for art, games, dance, and music education, plus a high-school sized gymnasium.
In addition to providing a safe hub for childhood activities and after-school care, the building seeks to facilitate positive long-term outcomes and serves as a social justice initiative fostering equitable opportunities for the community. It was central to the project approach to understand this project as a means of community restoration – not neighborhood revitalization.
Jury Comments
“A clear building massing and shifting articulation that follows the community center program, provides visual interest with the two curved roofs and anchors flexible outdoor programming.”
Click here to view project photos.
Merit Award – Large Project
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine |
DesignGroup(Architect of Record)
Perkins&Will (Design Architect)
Project Information
The new home for the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (HCOM) is the first new building on the Union Street Green of Ohio University’s Athens Campus. This new facility is a transformational modern medical education building for the university and nation. At 120,000 gross square feet, the new HCOM facility provides space for medical education, clinical assessment and training; student support; administrative use; and future growth, and a Learning Resource Center. The program of space requirements for the new building were created to support the new curriculum for the college, so space planning and design enhance the changing curricula and emerging learning technologies. The design incorporates osteopathic principles for healthcare delivery and space for multi-disciplinary teams for learning and problem solving, and integrates holistic care principles.
The new home for HCOM embraces biophilic principals of design, and incorporates the new green directly into the public and educational spaces of the building, encouraging student and staff connections to the natural environment. It also promotes “active design” by encouraging physical activity within the building with the intent of maintaining student health and academic success. environment.
The project was designed with environmentally sustainable features, including healthy materials, furnishings, and systems. The new building is in the process of becoming WELL Building Certified, which is the leading tool for advancing health and well-being in buildings globally. This project was completed in collaboration with Perkins&Will.
Jury Comments
“An impeccable detailed and designed academic large project that weaves both small intimate spaces with expansive and light-filled public spaces.”
Click here to view project photos.
Merit Award – Unbuilt
Two Faced | studio a x a
Project Information
Two Faced is a micro-apartment structure in Brooklyn, New York, that challenges established notions of facade and function. Our interior units were developed as a graphic surface applied as a field on an otherwise normative structure. With this technique of imposition (a graphic surface unit imposed upon a normative construction method), we create “new” domestic spaces at the microscale that are sometimes uncomfortable, atypical, light-filled, convivial, and joyful. The narrow linear forms allow light and air to continually move throughout the building, making everyday life highly visual. Each surface unit has been extruded to create a tenant space that runs counter to the logic of the floor plates, separating the form of the elevation from the interior domestic functions. Because of the schism between interior function and exterior form, the units become strange liminal spaces where the two conditions are mediated: beds are placed on podiums or in cavities, closets are sometimes levitating or made of half-walls, and so on.
These volumetric units comprise nearly equal occupiable mass and void – occupants generally move from light-filled volumes for sleeping to deep dark closets and baths. This division diagrammatically organizes the mechanical, plumbing, storage, cooking, and bathing in the mass, while the remaining volume becomes the sleeping and living space. The specific limits of the mass are closely related to the scale of the occupant – from niches for toilets to podiums for beds. For example, the large scale of the closet is meant to be filled with the mass of stuff (clothes, shoes, boxes, and garbage) that our young occupants purchase instead of owning a traditional single-family home. Additionally, each unit is divided by a thick structural wall that is carried down to the shared ground floor, organizing plumbing and HVAC throughout the building.
Jury Comments
“An ambitious thesis journey into a speculative housing future that successfully merges density and amenity in an elegant building form.”
Click here to view project photos.