ACSF Outstanding Achievement Awards
2022 Outstanding Achievement Award
Patrick J. Quinn Wins the 2022 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement
Designer of sacred space, scholar of religious architecture and art, and supporter of the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum since its founding, Patrick J. Quinn has won the ACSF’s 2022 Award for Outstanding Achievement. The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. “As an architect, professor, scholar, and champion of spiritual architecture,” stated the ACSF Board of Directors, “Patrick Quinn embodies the very values that the Forum promotes through its work.”
Quinn, a native of Ireland, was educated in University College Dublin and later at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design, where he studied under architect Louis Kahn. As a practitioner Quinn has focused on the design of spiritual architecture. His buildings have won an AIA National Design Award, Liturgical Conference Awards, and have been published in Art d’Eglise, Liturgical Arts, Faith & Form, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Kunstliche Kunstblatter, and other international publications.
After teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 Quinn became Dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then Institute Professor of Architecture from 1980 to 1996. He is currently RPI Institute Professor Emeritus. A national president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, a winner of the Rome Prize in Architecture, and a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at CEPT University at Ahmedabad, India, Quinn has been a visiting professor and critic at universities in the US and abroad. He has presented lectures on sacred architecture, design, and art to academic, professional, and public audiences in over 50 cities and universities on four continents.
Quinn’s prolific writings on religious architecture and art have been published in the US, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, England, Canada, and Venezuela. Currently he is an editor of The Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity, about to be released by Cambridge University Press. To mark the ACSF award, Quinn will deliver a lecture at ACSF’s 2022 symposium at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in June (visit acsforum.org for more information on the event).
Members of ACSF believe that the design and experience of the built environment can assist the spiritualdevelopment of humanity in service of addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues. The mission of theACSF is to provide an international forum for scholarship, education, practice, and advocacy regarding thecultural and spiritual significance of the built environment. More information about the ACSF and the Award canbe found at acsforum.org.
2021 Outstanding Achievement Award
Alberto Pérez-Gómez Wins the 2021 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement
Scholar and educator Alberto Pérez-Gómez has won this year’s Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF). The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. Phenomenologist Pérez-Gómez
Considered one of today’s
Pérez-Gómez directed the History and Theory of Architecture program at McGill University School of Architecture, where he was the Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor of History and Theory of
2020 Outstanding Achievement Award
David Leatherbarrow Chosen To Receive 2020 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement
Scholar and educator David Leatherbarrow has won this year’s Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF). The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. Leatherbarrow was chosen for his “scholarship, writing, and teaching in the fields of architectural phenomenology and history,” according to the ACSF Board of Directors.
Leatherbarrow is Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught architectural design, history, and theory since 1984, and served as Chair of the Ph.D. program for approximately two decades. Before his tenure at Pennsylvania he taught in England, at Cambridge University, and the Polytechnic of Central London. He has also visited and taught at many universities throughout the world, and has held guest professorships in Europe, South America, and Asia. Leatherbarrow studied architecture at the University of Kentucky, where he earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree. He completed his Ph.D. in Art at the University of Essex under the supervision of Joseph Rykwert and Dalibor Vesely.
Leatherbarrow’s research has focused on various topics in the history and theory of architecture, gardens, and urbanism; more recently his work has concentrated on ecological issues and the impact of contemporary technology on architecture and the city. When his latest book, Building Time, appears this fall, he will have published ten books, including: Three Cultural Ecologies (co-authored with William Wesley); 20th Century Architecture; Architecture Oriented Otherwise; Uncommon Ground: Architecture; Technology and Topography; The Roots of Architectural Invention: Site, Enclosure and Materials; On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (co-authored with Mohsen Mostafavi, which won the 1995 International Book Award in architectural theory from the American Institute of Architects); and Surface Architecture (also with Mostafavi), which won the Bruno Zevi Prize from the International Congress of Architecture Critics. Leatherbarrow has published scholarly articles in many architecture journals, such as, AA Files; arq: Architectural Research Quarterly;l’Architecture d’Aujuord’hui; Daidalos; Nordic Architecture; Shinkenchiku; Journal of Garden History; Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; and Rassegna. This year AIA and ACSA awarded him the Topaz Medallion for Architectural Education.
Leatherbarrow delivered his award lecture online in July, 2020. You can watch it here.
Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe Chosen To Receive 2020 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement
Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe of the Toronto-based firm Shim-Sutcliffe Architects have been selected for this year’s Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF). The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. Shim and Sutcliffe were chosen for their “demonstrated sensitivity to the spiritual in their built and unbuilt work,” according to the ACSF Board of Directors.
Shim and Sutcliffe are partners as well as collaborators. In their practice they share a deep concern for the cultural and spiritual significance of architecture, landscape, and interior and industrial design. Their work demonstrates a commitment to themes of the sacred and spiritual in architecture and landscape.
Shim apprenticed for Arthur Erickson in Vancouver and upon graduation she worked for Baird/ Sampson Architects in Toronto. She began teaching in 1988 at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture & Design, where she is currently a professor. She has served on numerous international, national, and local design juries, and is on the Aga Khan Architecture Award steering committee. Following graduation, Howard Sutcliffe immersed himself in the making of architecture. He contributed to the studios of Ronald Thom, Barton Myers, and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, working on international and national competitions and built projects, including the Kitchener City Hall. Shim and Sutcliffe formed their practice in 1994.
Among their celebrated works in the realm of the sacred are Congregation Bet Ha’am Synagogue (2009), designed to aid in the transition from the everyday to the sacred; the Atherley Narrows Bridge project, which addresses concepts of Native American spirituality and preservation of the 5,000-year-old Mnjikaning fish weirs; the Fung Loy Kok Place of Worship (Daoist) in Toronto (2015); and the chapel and residence for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto (2013). Shim and Sutcliffe’s work has won local, national, and international recognition and awards, and has been exhibited internationally and been published throughout the world.
Shim and Sutcliffe delivered their award lecture online in October, 2020. You can watch it here.
2019 Outstanding Achievement Award
World-renowned architect, theorist, and educator Juhani Pallasmaa has been selected to receive the 2019 Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF). The Award was instituted in 2017 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the founding of ACSF. The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. Pallasmaa was chosen to receive the Award because of his “long list of influential writings, lectures, and critiques regarding the phenomenology and meaning of architecture and the built environment,” according to the ACSF Board of Directors.
Born in 1936 in Hämeenlinna, Finland, Pallasmaa has distinguished himself in an architectural career that includes design, construction, writing, lecturing, teaching, and exhibition. He is regarded as one of the most articulate architectural theoreticians and practitioners today. Author of two dozen books and more than 300 essays in 30 languages, his landmark volume The Eyes of the Skin is one of the most read texts in architecture schools across the globe. His exhibitions of Finnish architecture have been mounted in more than 30 countries. He is a former professor of architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology and former director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture. His work has received numerous awards, including the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Finnish State Architecture Award, the Helsinki City Culture Award, and the Russian Federation of Architecture Award. Pallasmaa is also an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an Honorary Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was the 1999 recipient of the International Union of Architects’ Jean Tschumi Prize for architectural criticism. In May 2012 he was installed as Academician of the International Academy of Architecture. For many years, he served on the jury of the Pritzker Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of the field of architecture.
Pallasmaa travels extensively, lecturing and leading workshops that prompt students, teachers, and others to consider the most important topics of today. His sensitivity and commitment to the experience and significance of architecture go well beyond professionalism, cultural sophistication, and philosophy. His goal is to advance the existential and spiritual function of architecture in the service of humanity. “More than ever before, the ethical and humane task of architecture and all art,” observes Pallasmaa, is to “defend the authenticity and autonomy of human experience as well as the existence of the transcendental realm, the reality of the sacred.” He cautions that “living in this quasi-rational time of ours, we are in desperate need of the mental emancipation that the spiritual and artistic experiences can provide to human thought, emotion, and imagination.”
The 2019 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement is to be presented to Pallasmaa at the Forum’s annual symposium, which will take place at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, May 16-19, 2019. ACSF members believe that the design and experience of the built environment can assist the spiritual development of humanity in service of addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues. ACSF’s mission is to provide an international forum for scholarship, education, practice, and advocacy regarding the cultural and spiritual significance of the built environment. More information about ACSF, the Award, and the symposium can be found on the ACSF website: acsforum.org.
2018 Outstanding Achievement Award
KARSTEN HARRIES CHOSEN FOR ACSF AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT
Karsten Harries, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Yale University, has been selected to receive the inaugural Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF). The Award was instituted at the close of 2017 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the founding of ACSF. The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. Dr. Harries is the first to receive the Award because of his “seminal contributions to the philosophy of architecture and art,” according to the ACSF Board of Directors. Born in 1937 in Germany and trained at Yale University, Karsten Harries became Emeritus Professor in 2017 after teaching at Yale for more than 50 years. Dr. Harries is the author of more than 200 articles and reviews, and of ten books, several of which consider architecture and art, such as The Meaning of Modern Art (1968) and The Ethical Function of Architecture (1997), which won the International Architecture Book Award for Criticism from the American Institute of Architects. Much of his teaching and writing in recent years has focused on architecture as a way to address, according to Dr. Harries, “the question of the legitimacy and limits of that objectifying reason that presides over our science and technology.”Members of the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum believe that the design and experience of the built environment can assist the spiritual development of humanity in service of addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues. The mission of the ACSF is to provide an international forum for scholarship, education, practice, and advocacy regarding the cultural and spiritual significance of the built environment. More information about the ACSF and the Award can be found at the ACSF website acsforum.org.