The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has announced the 2009–10 winners of its annual awards for architectural education. The awards are given to college and university faculty for teaching, design, and research.
The ACSA's highest honor, the Topaz Medallion, given jointly with the AIA, this year goes to Michael Graves, who has taught at Princeton University for more than three decades. The Topaz Medallion honors "outstanding contributions" to architectural education over the course of 10 years or more.
ACSA president Tom Fisher said that some of the more senior faculty award winners remind him of something a colleague has said: "The real young Turks remain young Turks, even when they're not so young."
Awards for distinguished professors went to Anthony Schuman at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Chris Theis at Louisiana State University, Kathryn Anthony at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Thomas Hubka at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Three awards were given for teaching excellence by new faculty. The recipients are Kiel Moe at Northeastern University, Marshall B. Brown at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Tricia A. Stuth at the University of Tennessee.
The creative achievement awards recognize specific accomplishments in teaching and went to Thomas Fowler IV at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo and William H. Sherman at the University of Virginia.
Four ACSA Faculty Design Awards were given for work that helps promote the “general understanding” of architecture. They went to Gail Peter Borden at the University of Southern California; Kevin Alter and Ernesto Cragnolino at the University of Texas at Austin; Jeffrey L. Day at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and E.B. Min at the California College of the Arts; and Terry Boling at the University of Cincinnati.*
Awards for collaborative practice highlight ways that faculty, students, and community or civic clients work together toward common goals. There were three winners: John Folan at Carnegie Mellon University, Michael Hughes at the University of Arkansas, and Susan K. Rogers and Rafael Longoria at the University of Houston.
One award, given to two recipients, is specifically for housing design education, for teaching that helps prepare students to design residential projects in a community-minded fashion. They went to David Hinson, Frederick Norman, and Justin Miller at Auburn University, and Elizabeth Roettger at the University of Virginia.
Two awards are given for writing in the Journal of Architectural Education. The Best Design as Scholarship Article Award was given to Gustavo Crembil for the article "No Resistance." He teaches at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the City College of New York, and Parsons The New School of Design. For Best Scholarship of Design Article, Avigail Sachs at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville won for the article "The Postwar Legacy of Architectural Research."
The awards will be presented formally at the ACSA's annual meeting, scheduled for early March in New Orleans.
*Correction, Jan. 7, 2010: The paragraph on the Faculty Design Awards originally neglected to note that E.B. Min was a co-winner with Jeffrey Day. We regret the error.
