The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected the 2011 recipients of the Institute Honor Awards, the profession's highest recognition of works that exemplify excellence in architecture, interior architecture and urban design. Selected from over 700 total submissions, 27 recipients located throughout the world will be honored at the AIA 2011 National Convention and Design Exposition in New Orleans.

We are hereby putting a small description of the awarded projects, but will be developping some of them into full feature in the next weeks.

2011 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture

The jury for the 2011 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture includes: David Miller, FAIA, (chair) The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP; Ashley Clark, Assoc. AIA, LandDesign Inc.; Curtis Fentress, FAIA, Fentress Architects; T. Gunny Harboe, FAIA, Harboe Architect, PC; David Neuman, FAIA, University of Virginia; Louis Pounders, FAIA,ANF Architects; Sarah Snodgrass, AIAS Representative, University of Nevada- Las Vegas; Allison Williams, FAIA, Perkins & Will and Jennifer Yoos, AIA, VJAA.

AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre; Dallas, Texas

Design Architect: REX|OMA, Associate Architect: Kendall/Heaton Associates

By positioning back-of-house and front-of-house facilities above and beneath the auditorium instead of encircling it, the 80,300-square-foot, 575-seat “theater machine” extends the technologies of the fly tower and stage into the auditorium to provide an almost infinite variety of stage-audience configurations; liberates the performance hall's perimeter to allow fantasy and reality to mix when and where desired; and allows for greater interaction between artistic and administrative staff, fostering new internal collaborations.

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Barnard College Diana Center; New York City

WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism

The 98,000-square-foot multi-use building establishes an innovative nexus for artistic, social, and intellectual life at the college. The facility brings together spaces for art, architecture, theater, and art history, as well as faculty offices, a dining room, and a café.

Rethinking the mixed-use building type, the Diana Center brings together the college’s previously dispersed programs and constituencies by setting up visual juxtapositions that invite collaboration between disciplines.

Horizontal Skyscraper / Vanke Center; Shenzhen, China

Steven Holl Architects

The building hovers above the landscape, freeing it for public use and for a unique scheme of ecosystem restoration. By lifting the building off the ground, the project is both a building and a landscape, a delicate intertwining of sophisticated engineering and the natural environment. The landscape scheme works to minimize run-off, erosion, and other types of environmental damage associated with development. Additionally, the project employs some of the most forward-thinking sustainable design strategies.

New Acropolis Museum; Athens, Greece

Bernard Tschumi Architects Associate Architect: Michael Photiadis

The base of the museum floats on pilotis over the existing archeological excavations, protecting the site with a network of columns. A glass ramp overlooking the archeological excavations leads to the galleries in the middle, in the form of a spectacular double-height room supported by tall columns. The top, made up of the rectangular Parthenon Gallery arranged around an indoor court, rotates to orient the Frieze exactly as it was on the Parthenon centuries ago.

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North Carolina Museum of Art; Raleigh, North Carolina

Thomas Phifer and Partners

The museum is, in essence, a single 65,000-square-foot room, separated by partial height walls into galleries, none a discrete, fully enclosed room. Overhead, hundreds of elliptical occuli bathe the interior in even, full-spectrum daylight, modulated to filter out damaging rays. In this gently luminous setting, the artwork takes on heightened vividness. Outside, matte anodized aluminum panels that enclose the building continue the discourse with the landscape. From oblique vantage points on the exterior, underlying strips of polished stainless steel capture unexpected and scintillating reflections.

One Jackson Square; New York City

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, PC

This 35-unit luxury residential building, located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village is home to the highest concentration of early architecture in New York City. The building volume steps down from 11 stories to seven stories, from north to south, accommodating the zoning laws and mediating the varied scales of the surrounding neighborhood. Undulating bands of glass identify individual floors, creating a ribbon-like series of convexities and concavities along the street wall.

The Ford Assembly Building; Richmond, California

Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects

The project converted a crumbling historic icon into a model of urban revitalization and sustainability. Now, Albert Kahn’s 1931 car factory for Henry Ford houses an acre-sized public event venue, restaurant/retail, and tenants including SunPower and Mountain Hardwear. The 500,000-squre-foot waterfront building was awe-inspiring even as a quake-ravaged, brick, steel and concrete ruin. Hence, the project design objective to reflect our current century led to the integration of modern architectural elements for today’s diverse building program while complementing and enhancing the edifice’s powerful forms.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Rooftop Garden; San Francisco, California

Jensen Architects / Jensen & Macy Architects

The SFMOMA’s rooftop garden is an open-air gallery defined by the intersection of sculpture, space and light. The entire back wall of the museum’s top floor is removed, allowing a seamless connection from gallery to garden. A large panoramic window at this new opening offers an elevated view to the garden, presenting it like a landscape painting inside the gallery. A glazed long-span bridge links the museum to a garden pavilion that in turn opens out to the garden through large sliding glass panels.

U.S. Land Port of Entry; Warroad, Minnesota

Julie Snow Architects, Inc.

U.S. Land Port of Entry supports the mission-driven demands of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), responsible for securing the nation’s borders and promoting legal trade and travel. This 43,000-square-foot facility is composed of three separate enclosed areas linked together with a continuous canopy. The main building houses the officer work area and holding cells, the secondary building houses the vehicular inspection garages, laboratory space and firing range, and the commercial building is used for unloading and inspecting commercial vehicles.

University of Michigan Museum of Art; Ann Arbor, Michigan

Allied Works Architecture

The recent expansion and renovation of the 1908 beaux-arts building opens the museum to the campus and regional community by lightening the building envelope and permitting greater public access to common areas. The addition is organized as three gallery wings formed by concrete, limestone, steel and glass that radiate from a central atrium and define corresponding exterior rooms. These new landscapes engage the site and become the spaces of mediation with the surrounding context.

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