School Notes: School of Architecture
March/April 2017

Architects honor former dean

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) have named former dean Robert A. M. Stern ’65MArch as the recipient of the 2017 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion. The medallion honors an individual who has been deeply involved in architectural education for more than a decade and whose teaching has influenced a broad range of students. The award citation reads, in part: “[Stern’s] legacy at Yale has been documented extensively through the publication of catalogs for all 50 exhibitions hung at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery during his tenure as dean, the school’s biannual journal, Constructs, and the 2016 publication of Pedagogy and Place: 100 Years of Architecture Education at Yale.”

Miller Prize goes to New Haven firm

Plan B Architecture and Urbanism, founded by alumni faculty members Joyce Hsiang ’99, ’03MArch, and Bimal Mendis ’98, ’02MArch, has received one of the inaugural J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prizes, part of the celebration of architecture, art, design, and community in Columbus, Indiana. The American Institute of Architects has ranked Columbus the sixth most architecturally significant community in the nation. Plan B’s winning submission, “Anything Can Happen in the Woods,” will take the form of an installation at the Cummins Corporate Office Building that turns the site into a temporary urban forest. Mendis’s and Hsiang’s firm is a design and research collaborative based in New Haven that explores urbanization and sustainable development.

Restoration of Yale museum earns award

Knight Architecture, founded by George Knight ’95MArch, has earned a 2017 AIA Award for the renovation of the Yale Center for British Art. Designed by Louis I. Kahn and opened in 1977, the YCBA houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the UK, with more than 2,000 paintings and 250 sculptures, 20,000 drawings and watercolors, 40,000 prints, and 35,000 rare books and manuscripts. Knight Architecture restored the center’s public galleries to their original design and renewed the internal systems, research spaces, auditorium, and other amenities, all of which enabled the museum to reimagine and reinstall more than five centuries of British art.