U.S. General Services Administration
2016 GSA Design Awards Asserts Federal Government’s Creative Leadership
WASHINGTON -- Today the U.S. General Services Administration and its partners honored 18 federal projects that represent GSA’s best contributions to architecture and related fields, in a ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. The event culminates the 2016 GSA Design Awards, the hallmark initiative of the agency’s celebrated Design Excellence Program.
“Every aspect of federal building investment can catalyze a community’s economic development, from choosing sites that support neighborhood businesses to workforce training,” said GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth. “The GSA Design Awards winners show how high-quality planning and design not only transform public buildings into cultural assets, but also have a vital impact on local economies.”
The GSA Design Awards has taken place biennially since 1990. Its Honor Awards and Citations recognize the federal employees, as well as the private-sector architects, engineers, landscape architects, urban designers, interior designers, artists, conservationists, and preservationists whose exemplary work benefits the federal civilian workforce and American taxpayers.
“While GSA is widely recognized as one of the nation’s most rigorous and highly principled developers of buildings, the Design Awards sets our standards ever higher,” said David Insinga, Acting Chief Architect of GSA’s Public Buildings Service. “These top projects are exemplars for future project teams, and they guide agency-wide stewardship of the built environment.”
Today’s ceremony also formally launched a new category of the GSA Design Awards—the 10 Year Award. Projects substantially completed between January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2005 were eligible for consideration in this category, and Insinga explained that the new award illuminates the correlation between creative achievement and long-term community gain. To mark the occasion, Insinga was joined on stage by Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who delivered a keynote speech celebrating GSA’s commitment to quality in public building.
Below is a complete list of the 2016 GSA Design Award winners, in ceremony order. Please note that several projects won awards in multiple categories or levels of recognition:
John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, Boston, Massachusetts (10 Year Award)
Lloyd D. George United States Courthouse, Las Vegas, Nevada (10 Year Award)
United States Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington, DC (Honor Award–Planning)
Mariposa Land Port of Entry, Nogales, Arizona (Honor Award–Architecture)
United States Courthouse Annex, Salt Lake City, Utah (Honor Awards–Architecture, Interiors)
United States Courthouse, Los Angeles, California (Honor Award–On the Boards)
Social Security Administration National Support Center, Urbana, Maryland (Honor Award–Engineering)
Clara Barton Apartment, Washington, DC (Honor Award–Preservation)
New Deal Easel Paintings, Washington, DC (Honor Award–Conservation)
Suspended Light Pillars, United States Courthouse Annex, Salt Lake City, Utah (Honor Award–Art)
United States Land Port of Entry, San Ysidro, California (Citation–Planning)
United States Courthouse, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Citation–Architecture)
B.H. Whipple Federal Building, Fort Snelling, Minnesota (Citation–Engineering)
United States Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington, DC (Citation–Landscape)
One World Trade Center, New York, New York (Citation–Workplace)
Conrad B. Duberstein U.S. Bankruptcy Courthouse, Brooklyn, New York (Citation–Preservation)
Birch Bayh Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Indianapolis, Indiana (Citations–Preservation, Conservation)
St. Elizabeths Campus, Washington, DC (Citation–Construction)
Planar Pavilion, Denver Federal Center, Lakewood, Colorado (Citation–Art)
Number 123, Mickey Leland Federal Building, Houston, Texas (Citation–Art)
For this cycle of the GSA Design Awards, a jury of six private-sector professionals reviewed 164 submissions for projects executed between January 1, 2010 and October 30, 2015, as well as those eligible for the 10 Year Award. The renowned Washington, DC–based architect Debra Lehman Smith chaired this jury, which assessed realized projects and approved concepts in disciplines ranging from planning and architecture to engineering, construction, and art. GSA employees and contract design professionals, among other entities, submitted eligible work.
The GSA Design Excellence Program champions design quality in GSA’s real estate portfolio. It maximizes the social, cultural, and economic impact of public buildings, by overseeing procedures for procuring the best talent for GSA projects and reviewing designs under development. The Design Excellence Program was founded in 1994, after initial GSA Design Awards jurors recommended that the agency take formal steps to enhance its construction and modernization investments. For more information on the GSA Design Awards, please visit: gsa.gov/designawards.
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