George Baird, Intl. Assoc. AIA, has received the 2012 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion, which recognizes excellence in the teaching of architecture. The 2012 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award, which honors a profound involvement in social issues, was given to Mortimer Marshall Jr., FAIA. George Baird joined the architecture faculty at the University of Toronto, his alma mater, in 1967. In 1972 he co-founded the firm Baird Sampson Neuert, which designed Toronto’s Thomas L. Wells Public School, the first LEED-certified public school in Canada. In 1993 Baird joined the faculty of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he served as director of master’s degree programs. He returned to the University of Toronto in 2004 as the dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. In 2010 he received the Gold Medal from the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada.
Mortimer Marshall, after serving in the Air Force, became the Department of Defense’s director of design, overseeing architectural policies and construction standards for the U.S. military’s multibillion-dollar building program. In 1982 he founded the Marshall Group, a Reston, Va.–based architecture, interior, and construction firm that has designed facilities for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Department. The first African-American board member of the National Institute of Building Sciences, Marshall has sponsored minority scholarships for students of architecture through the ACE Mentor program. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) will award Baird the medallion at their annual meeting in Boston this March. Both Baird and Marshall will be recognized at the AIA’s 2012 National Convention and Design Exposition, held in May in Washington, D.C.
