Best of Year: Institute

Annie Block -- Interior Design, 12/1/2010 2:22:00 PM

Project: Levitt Goodman Architects
Firm: Native Child and Family Services of Toronto
Location: Toronto

Providing social and cultural support for aboriginals, this nonprofit now occupies a 35,000-square-foot downtown building, consolidating four previous offices. Dean Goodman established a visual connection for visitors through natural materials and original art. Meetings and drumming sessions take place in a longhouse-style structure with a honeycomb interior of Eastern white cedar illuminated by pendant fixtures made from bundling used fluorescent tubes. Pendant globes hang in the reception area, where a desk in yellow-birch heartwood is shaped like an eye. The roof terrace is paved with limestone slabs and planted with sweet grass, sage, tobacco, and other species native to the Great Lakes region. In one corner stands a cedar-clad healing lodge. In the center, tree-trunk stools surround a fire circle.

Merit Winners:


Project: Battery Park City Library
Firm: 110 Architect
Location:  New York
Standout: The accent color may be tangerine orange, with chairs by Jens Risom and Verner Panton, but the LEED certification is solid Gold.
 

Project: Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory School, Chapel of Saint Ignatius Loyola
Firm: John Ronan Architects
Location: Chicago
Standout: This high school’s cladding of fiber-cement panels gives way to glass-block walls at the corner occupied by the chapel.


Project: Whatcom Museum
Firm: Olson Kundig Architects
Location: Washington
Standout: A double-glazed wall, arced to follow the sun’s path, brings sunlight into the museum’s newest branch.