Two Projects Win Big at the AIA Philadelphia Design Awards
Last Thursday night, our team celebrated two wins at the AIA Philadelphia Design Awards. Blue Bottle World Trade Center in New York City won for Interior Architecture, while the Lauder College House (formerly called the New College House) at the University of Pennsylvania won in the Built Category.
These projects are representative of our long-term partnerships with both Blue Bottle and Penn — we have designed dozens of cafés for Blue Bottle across the country and are currently under construction for the New College House West at Penn.
This Blue Bottle café, the second on the East Coast designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, occupies a prominent street-level corner in Four World Trade Center. At the center of this bustling New York City hub, the 1,000-square-foot café provides a moment of respite and calm under dramatic 26-foot-tall ceilings where a carefully arranged series of millwork ribs organize the soaring interior space into layers of finish and acoustic treatment, and provide a modulated system for merchandise display and storage.
The Lauder College House is the University of Pennsylvania’s first purpose-built college house, embodying the vibrancy of its urban setting and bringing together undergraduates, faculty, staff, and graduates in a shared community that encourages engagement and collaboration. The seven-story, 198,000 gsf facility embraces the many scales of community that define the collegiate experience at Penn and is home to 350 students and faculty members.
“The building delights on so many levels — its marvelous integration of public and private open space, its sophisticated approach to fostering communities at multiple levels, its integration with the urban fabric, its deft use of materials, its craftsmanship, and, in particular, its assured manipulation of scale, which breaks down what is actually an enormous building into multiple integrated parts at human scale.”
— David Hollenberg, University Architect
The annual AIA Philadelphia Design Awards celebrate design excellence from members of the Philadelphia community in categories that include built and unbuilt work, interior architecture, historic preservation/adaptive reuse, planning, and more.
