Haverford College’s new VCAM building is one of four projects to win an AIA Minnesota Honor Award

Author: Amy Nash

AIA Minnesota has honored four projects with 2018 AIA Minnesota Honor Awards, including Haverford College’s new Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) building, designed by MSR. The awards were announced at the A’18 MN Minnesota Conference on Architecture on Thursday, November 15th. The Honor Awards recognize outstanding architecture and urban design by AIA Minnesota members and member firms. The VCAM building is the only non-Minnesota project to have received an AIA Minnesota Honor Award this year.

A highly flexible, 24/7 learning environment of intersecting spaces, the VCAM building is designed for interpreting and making visual media. The project involved repurposing a neglected 1900 gym, while honoring the building’s legacy. The design preserves the old gym’s strong, fundamental geometry as a single volume encircled by the existing suspended running track, while inserting a new three-story box that houses stacked functions of making, editing, and viewing. The old serves as a container for the new, creating continuity between Haverford’s rich history and its future, focused on an inventive academic agenda. The project is currently registered for LEED-NC v3 Gold certification.

79 projects were submitted for the 2018 AIA Minnesota Honor Awards program and evaluated in five categories: architecture; interiors; renovation and restoration; and urban design and master planning. Three internationally-renowned architects evaluated the submissions for their degree of design invention, attention to detail, advancement of sustainable design, and other factors. The 2018 Honor Awards jury included Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, Distinguished Professor and E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture at the Fay Jones Scholl of Architecture at the University of Arkansas; Allison Grace Williams, FAIA, founder of AGWms_studio and adjunct lecturer at Stanford University in California; and Kim Yao, AIA, principal of Architecture Research Office in New York City. Recipients will receive their awards at the annual AIA Minnesota Awards Dinner on December 7th at International Market Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Learn more about this year’s AIA Minnesota Honor Awards program here.

 

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