LMN Architects
LMN Architects

Today, the American Institute of Architects selected LMN Architects as its 2016 Architecture Firm Award ​winner. LMN Architects—a Seattle–based practice founded in 1979 ​by George Loschky, FAIA, Jud Marquardt, FAIA, and John Nesholm, FAIA—will receive the award at the 2016 AIA Convention in Philadelphia.

Vancouver Convention Centre West, designed by LMN Architects.
Nic Lehoux Vancouver Convention Centre West, designed by LMN Architects.
Cleveland Civic Core
Copyright Jim Maguire Cleveland Civic Core

The 120-person firm blends​ the multidisciplinary backgrounds of its principals into an approach that serves people first, building communities around its civic projects such as the Vancouver Convention Centre West—a 2011 AIA COTE Top Ten winner and the first convention center to achieve LEED Platinum certification—and the ShoWare Center, the LEED Gold-certified home of the Seattle Thunderbirds, a junior ice hockey team from Kent, Wash. In Cleveland, LMN Architects tackled Cleveland Civic Core, a super-scaled project where all of the pieces became interdependent: the restoration of Daniel Burnham's Cleveland Mall, the addition of the five-story Global Center for Health Innovation, and a remodeling of the Cleveland Convention Center. These works, and others in its extensive portfolio, showcase LMN Architects' sustainability efforts while underscoring the firm's commitment to communities filled with vitality.

Within the office, LMN Tech Studio ​serves as the firm's research arm, applying experimental and emerging technologies to the problems of architectural practice through its interdisciplinary R+D laboratory. 

“Through their design of several significant urban theaters and convention centers that are thoroughly wed to the life of our cities, LMN provides an altogether different vision of a fully sustainable and civic-minded future that embraces urban life,” Stephen Kieran, FAIA, of 2008 AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient KieranTimberlake, wrote in a recommendation letter supporting LMN Architects’ nomination for the award.

This year's jury for the Architecture Firm Award was led by Jim Rains, FAIA, founder of Rains Studio, and included Charles Griffin, AIA, senior principal with WHR Architects; James C. Lord II, AIA, director of design at KGA Architecture; Stephen Maher, AIA, managing partner of Ritter Maher Architects; Antoine Predock, FAIA, founder of Antoine Predock Architects; Linda Reeder, AIA, founder of Linda Reeder Architecture; Mark Ripple, AIA, principal and director of operations with 2014 Architecture Firm Award winner Eskew+Dumez+Ripple; and Charles Leroy Travis III, FAIA, principal with Housing Studio.

PACCAR Hall (interior), Foster School of Business, University of Washington won a 2013 AIA Honor Award for Interior Architecture.
Courtesy LMN Architects PACCAR Hall (interior), Foster School of Business, University of Washington

LMN Architects is the 53rd Architecture Firm Award recipient. Last year’s Architecture Firm Award was presented to Culver City, Calif.–based Ehrlich Architects at the AIA Convention in Atlanta. Led by partners Steven Ehrlich, FAIA, Mathew Chaney, AIA, Patricia Rhee, AIA, and Takashi Yanai, AIA, the firm blends an appreciation for vernacular architecture that Ehrlich developed while working in Africa with the Peace Corps with stylistic cues accumulated over the course of several early-career California Modernist renovations.  

This is a breaking news story, and will continue to be updated. 

See more work by LMN Architects in ARCHITECT’s Project Gallery. Read the AIA's full press release on the 2016 Architecture Firm Award. 

Read ARCHITECT’s complete coverage of the 2016 AIA Honor Awards.