Today, the American Institute of Architects announced that Jan Gehl, Hon. FAIA, Michael Sorkin, and Anne Taylor, Hon. AIA, have each been recognized with the 2019 AIA Collaborative Achievement Award. The award recognizes "the excellence that results when architects work with those from outside the profession to improve the spaces where people live and work," according to the AIA.
Jan Gehl is the founder and senior adviser at Copenhagen-based urban research and design consulting firm Gehl. His work and writings, specifically his 1971 book Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space, "challenged readers to contemplate what they may often take for granted in open public spaces," according to the AIA press release. "Gehl has equipped the profession with the tools it needs to continuously support society’s democratic ideals," the release continues.
Michael Sorkin is the architecture critic for The Nation as well as the founding principal of New York City–based Michael Sorkin Studio. Also an educator, Sorkin is the director of the graduate program in urban design and a distinguished professor at the City College of New York's Bernard & Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. With his prolific writings over the past 40 years—including as architecture critic for The Village Voice and author and editor of 20 books, such as What Goes Up: The Right and Wrongs to the City (Verso, 2018)—Sorkin "has inspired countless architects and planners in their pursuit of more just and sustainable communities," according to the AIA release.
Anne Taylor is the president of Albuquerque, N.M.–based School Zone Institute, which sponsors the Architecture and Children Design Education Program, and she is a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico's School of Architecture and Planning. Her career has been dedicated to linking education and architecture, and her "focus on integrated design curricula has turned architecture into a lens through which today’s children can study the world," according to the AIA release.
This year's winners join past recipients of the AIA Collaborative Achievement Award, including the Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute and Klyde Warren Park (2018); the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship and Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA (2017); and George Smart (2016).
This year’s jury comprised chair Katie Wilson, AIA, of KMW Architecture; Mark Chambers of the New York City Mayor's Office of Sustainability; Curtis Fentress, FAIA, of Fentress Architects; Stephanie Herring, Assoc. AIA, of CambridgeSeven Associates; and Margaret Montgomery, FAIA, of NBBJ.
To read more about this year's AIA Collaborative Achievement Award winners, visit aia.org.
