WASHINGTON – December 14, 2023 – The Board of Directors and the Strategic Council of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) today honored Quinn Evans with the 2024 AIA Architecture Firm Award.
The annual AIA Architecture Firm Award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture practice. The award recognizes a firm that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.
The firm was founded in 1984 by its trailblazing namesakes, Michael Quinn, FAIA, and David Evans, FAIA, who installed an overarching philosophy steeped in the scholarship of technical preservation, creativity, and an eager embrace of adaptive reuse. Much of the firm’s early work was focused on main street programs throughout the U.S. through which the founders quickly understood the impact of preservation on communities.
Quinn Evans’ reputation for preservation, design excellence, and expertise in the revitalization of significant places quickly swelled, leading to work on national icons such as the Michigan State Capitol and Washington, DC’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Among the firm’s more recent work is the award-winning renovation of The National Academy of Sciences, also in DC, which included the restoration of its great hall and 56-foot-high, painted Guastavino dome. On the other side of the National Mall, the firm is shaping a high-performance environment for the celebrated National Air and Space Museum, Gyo Obata’s 1976 masterpiece that welcomes millions of visitors each year.
Quinn Evans has long been attuned to the environmental benefits of reuse. The firm has been guided by the mantra “the greenest building is one that is already built” for nearly 40 years, and it deftly synergizes preservation and sustainable design to imbue existing buildings with new purposes and brighter futures. The firm’s study of pre-fossil-fuel-era building traditions has helped dispel an array of misconceptions about the performance limitations of historic buildings, unveiling their relevance in creating a more sustainable future.
Quinn Evans has given life to under-valued properties in blighted neighborhoods while placing preservation on the front line of economic revitalization. As the U.S. continues to grapple with the inequity of the country’s colonial European legacy, the firm’s work helps communities catalyze positive change. It engaged Indigenous peoples from a number of communities to shape a stewardship framework for the protection and use of sacred land in rural Iowa and identified and documented a number of fragile Detroit sites linked to the struggle for Black civil rights. By connecting fully with the meaning of place and carefully exploring heritage and culture, Quinn Evans has embraced a critical perspective that has a profound effect on its practice.
Visit AIA’s website to learn more about Quinn Evans selection as the 2024 AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient.
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