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Big Impact of Small Projects Explored with AIA Awards

By Patrick Sisson
<b>Bloom: Los Angeles, California (USC School of Architecture)</b><p> Fabricated out of thermobimetal, a reactive, smart material, this pavilion reacts to sunlight and increased temperatures by curling up and creating additional shade.
Bloom: Los Angeles, California (USC School of Architecture)

Fabricated out of thermobimetal, a reactive, smart material, this pavilion reacts to sunlight and increased temperatures by curling up and creating additional shade.

The Centennial Chromagraph data visualization project at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture expresses the history of the school via a series of curved wooden ribs an colored pencils.

Budgets and bandwidth aside, architecture often aims for the big gesture to make a compelling artistic statement. But as the winners of the AIA Small Projects Award demonstrate, the impact of a project isn't necessarily correlated with its size or cost. The seven winners announced yesterday, a mixture of small homes, public spaces and installations from across the country, all met certain size and budget criteria. But many of them, from a riverwalk in the center of Des Moines to a "smart" pavilion in Los Angeles that utilizes heat-sensitize material that curls up and cools of based on the temperature, served as centerpieces of civic and social space, helping to redefine a landscape without needing to overwhelm it.


∙ Tour an LED-Spangled Cafe in Marcel Breuer's Yale Building [Curbed]
∙ Small Space archives [Curbed]