The Taubman Museum of Art announced today that the institution’s building, designed by Los Angeles architect Randall Stout, has been awarded a 2009 International Architect Award, co-presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd. and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. As the only global awards program of its kind, the International Architecture Awards program recognizes the best built and unbuilt architecture from around the world and has become the most important barometer for the future direction of new architectural design and thinking today. The new facility will celebrate its one year anniversary in November.
The awards celebrate, recognize and highlight the world’s foremost architectural solutions for the designs of new skyscrapers, corporate buildings, institutions, arts facilities, airports, private homes, industrial structures, and urban planning projects from London to Singapore. The selected projects challenge new approaches to design that are beyond the envelope of the everyday, while providing cities with key civic buildings that celebrate and harmonize architecture as a high art while finding answers to the complicated problems of environment, social context, improving quality of life, and sustainability.
“We are thrilled that the museum has once again been recognized as an example of cutting-edge design and has been awarded this incredibly prestigious international award,” said Dr. Paul T. Frantz, president of the museum’s Board of Trustees. “During our first year of operations we have experienced firsthand the expertise and innovation that Randall incorporated into the design to make our building as functional as it is architecturally and aesthetically intriguing.”
For the 2009 International Architecture Awards, hundreds of submissions were received from design firms in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. The submissions ranged from the latest new corporate high-tech headquarters to smaller planning projects, bridges, memorials, sacred spaces, and private residences. All submitted projects were designed by architects in their respective countries of origin or abroad for both built and unbuilt projects alike, designed as of January 1, 2006. The jurying took place in Helsinki, Finland under the auspices of the Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA).
The museum and Randall Stout Architects were included among thirteen new distinguished projects and urban schemes in the U.S., and ninety-seven projects worldwide, that were selected in this year’s International Architecture Awards program. Other notable firms whose projects were recognized with awards include Alsop Architects, Kieran Timberlake, LOT-EK, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Zaha Hadid Architects. Projects in China, Japan, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, Canada, Australia, Vietnam, Portugal, South Africa, Taiwan, Austria, Ireland, France, Slovenia, Korea, United Arab Emirates, Latvia, Denmark, Iran, Luxembourg, Uganda, Burkino Faso, and Indonesia also received awards.
In 2007, the Taubman Museum of Art received one of the American Architecture Awards awarded by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd. The American Architecture Awards honor and celebrate the most outstanding new accomplishments for architecture designed and built in the U.S. by leading American firms and international architecture firms practicing in the U.S. The American Architecture Awards identify the new cutting-edge design direction, urban philosophy, design approach, style, and intellectual substance in American architecture today.
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