Owners of nearly two dozen structures were recognized for excellence in design at the 2010 Design Evanston awards ceremony on Oct. 14. “Most architecture awards are given to architects or designers,” said Dave Galloway, past president of Design Evanston, a group that honors owners as the “initial motivators and facilitators for good design projects.” He and Design Evanston member Len Korosky served as emcees for the event.
The four-month selection process winnowed what judges deemed the best examples of architectural design in public use, residences, rehabilitation/renovation, adaptive re-use, single-family residences, landscape, interiors and urban design/planning. The group also presented two 25-year awards.
The City received two awards in the “Public Use” design category: one for Fire Station #5 on west Central Street, the City’s first LEED-certified public building, and the other for the Clark Street Beach building. A third award went to the LEED-certified synagogue of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation on Dodge Avenue.
Design awards for “Rehabilitation/Renovation” included those to Robert and Patrician Natke for a “playful, sculptural and purposes non-contextual” garage, to two homes – that of Mark Tendam and Neil Moglin and that of Daniel and Ellisa Goldsmith – and to Northwestern University for its Annie Mae Swift Hall. Awards for “Adaptive Re-use” went to Kristin and Troy Henikoff, whose home was formerly a church, and to Signe Adas and Andrew Spatz for their Shop Studios, created from a former auto body shop. Richard and Elaine Heuberger received an award for their single-family home. The Mather was recognized for its landscape, as was Northwestern University for its restoration of Tech Plaza. Mr. Spatz won a second award, for “Interior Design” for a home; other awards in that category went to Craig Golden for SPACE/Union Pizzeria and to The Mather.
Northwestern’s framework plan for its Evanston campus was recognized in the “Urban Planning” category; other awards went to the City of Evanston for its Lakefront Master Plan and the Mason Park field house. Two 25-year awards were presented – enthusiastically to Evanston Terrace, which, the jurors said, is “probably better today than when it was first constructed” – and cautiously to State National Bank plaza: “We give this award with reservations and concern over the proposed changes to the plaza area. … This is a classic work of modern architecture that should not be desecrated or hid[den] behind new retail construction.”
Citizens’ Greener Evanston was honored for its proposed offshore wind farm: Design Evanston noted in part, [L]et’s find a way to make it work and get it done.”