Let’s take a break from large public buildings and luxurious residences and look at some ingenious small-scale works that the AIA have awarded this year within the framework of the 2011 Small Project Awards. As we see, it doesn’t take large architectural endeavors for the creative juice of some designer to flow rather profusely.

The AIA Small Project Awards Program, now in its eighth year, was established to recognize small-project practitioners for the high quality of their work and to promote excellence in small-project design.  This award program emphasizes the excellence of small-project design and strives to raise public awareness of the value and design excellence that architects bring to projects, no matter the limits of size and scope.

FALLINGWATER

Edited by Lynda Waggoner
Photographed by Christopher Little
Essays by David G. De Long, Rick Darke, Justin Gunther, Neil Levine, John Reynolds, and Robert Silman
In Association with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy

Rizzoli / HC w/jacket / 328 pages / 11” x 11”
250 color and b&w illustrations

Arguably the greatest residential work of Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterwork is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. Conceptualized by Wright for the Kaufmann family back in 1935, this weekend getaway, built over a waterfall, is the perfect synergy between nature and architecture.

“The union of powerful art and powerful nature into something beyond the sum of their separate powers deserves to be kept living.”— Edgar Kaufmann jr.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has just  unveiled the preliminary design for its expansion that will double the museum’s exhibition and education space while designed to enhance the visitor experience and more deeply weaving the museum into the fabric of the city. The new building will both transform the museum and enliven the city by opening up new routes of public circulation around the neighborhood and into the museum. Completion is projected in 2016.

Developed by architectural firm Snøhetta in collaboration with SFMOMA and EHDD of San Francisco, the over 225,000-square-foot expansion will run contiguously along the back of the current building and extend from Howard to Minna streets, allowing for the seamless integration of the two structures. The new building will provide SFMOMA with a greater public profile and an openness that will welcome visitors and project the museum’s role as a catalyst for new ideas, a center for learning, and a place that provides great art experiences for Bay Area residents and visitors.