May 9, 2005 (RALEIGH, NC) – The Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C. and a series of 10 metal screens for a Charleston, S.C. low-country house, both designed by Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, received top honors in the 2005 AIA Triangle Design Awards.
The Triangle Section of the American Institute of Architects’ North Carolina Chapter presents the awards annually. AIA Triangle’s membership includes over 600 architects from a 10-county area. Of the 76 projects submitted to this year’s awards program, the Penland School received one of only four Honor Awards. The metal screens received the only Detail Award.
This is the fourth design award for The Penland School, which has received an NCAIA Honor Award, a South Atlantic Region/AIA Merit Award, and was chosen as one of only 10 international projects to receive a Business Week/Architectural Record Award. According to Harmon, the 5500-square-foot structure was designed “to embody the spirit of craft-making by clearly revealing how it was made.” Classes of 12 students use the building to design, fabricate and finishing iron objects ranging from three ounces to three tons.
The AIA Triangle Award is the second honor for Harmon’s metal screens, which he devised to both shade and protect a glass-fronted house he designed along Charleston’s Shem Creek. They also recently received a 2005 “Architectural Objects” Award from Inform, an architectural journal based in Virginia that covers four mid-Atlantic states. Fabricated by Christian Karkow of Raleigh, the screens weigh 800 pounds each yet can be easily manipulated by a single person.
Judges for the 2005 Awards were New Orleans architects Steve Dumez, AIA, and Trey Trahan, AIA, with Reed Kroloff, dean of Tulane University’s School of Architecture.
The awards were presented on April 13 at the Doris Duke Center in Durham. An exhibit of all the entries will be on display at various public venues around the Triangle throughout the year.
For more information on Frank Harmon and these two projects, visit www.frankharmon.com.
Sponsors for this year’s awards program and presentation event were Custom Brick, Adams Products, and Triangle Reprographics, Inc.
Tags: AIA/Triangle, Charleston architecture, design awards, green architecture, modern architecture, NC architects, NC architecture, Penland School of Arts & Crafts