Hello Interfaith Design community! This is Part II of the 2021 Faith and Form Awards. Click to view Part I here. Click on any of the images below for more information on the project.
Up next on Wednesday we'll be showcasing the recent award winners for the Faith & Form Religious Architecture & Art Awards as we quickly approach the International Religious Art & Architecture Awards Program & Reception for the 2022 award winners as part of A'23, the AIA Conference on Architecture 2023. Registration for both the conference and the awards program and reception is still open.
Contemporary Monastery
Category: Student Work Award
Julia Martinelli
Wimberley, Texas
Jury Comments: This design for a monastery, a place that most would associate with isolation, creates a dynamic connection to the community, offering the fruits of labor to the community. The design enhances the engagement. The ensemble of buildings relates to the landscape, creating an opening outdoor room. It’s very sensitive place-making, and the project is beautifully rendered.
photography credit
Chapel of Saint Agatha
Category: Unbuilt Work Honor Award
Theoklis Kanarelis, Architect
Rukomo village, Nyagatare, Rwanda
Jury Comments: In response to the hot climate, this sanctuary of darkness and shade offers a cool place for contemplation. It manipulates light in a very mature way over the course of the day. It’s heavily experiential, with non-traditional shapes, but they have a timeless quality at the same time. There is no ‘front’ or ‘back’ on this church, it is very sculptural.
Photography: Argiris Balatsoukas, Miltiadis Igglezos
Intertwined Eternities
Category: Unbuilt Work Award
John Marx, AIA, Form4 Architecture
Aptos, California
Jury Comments: Columbaria are usually very static compositions. This project uses curved geometry in a columbarium that is anything but orthogonal. It offers a journey to explore, lending an organic quality to its sense of place. The architecture sensitively responds to the rolling nature of the location. It is very poetic.
Congregation Habonim
Category: Unbuilt Work Award
BSK Architects
New York, New York
Jury Comments: A thoughtful use of materials and how they converse with each other–the architecture aids in that dialogue. There is a delightful use of light and show in the interior in the way the wall judiciously modulates light. The redesigned space incorporates glass from an earlier worship space and a connection to the congregation’s history.
Historic Rural Churches of Georgia
Category: Multiple Site Engagement/Advocacy Honor Award
Sony Seals, Historic Rural Churches of Georgia
Various locations in Georgia
Jury Comments: This is a very ambitious effort to conduct ongoing research to document faith environments that might be forgotten. It is very timely, the program makes the information more accessible through the web, raising the community’s awareness of these gems. The stories that go along with the architecture have been preserved.
Photography: Various Volunteer Photographers
The Interreligious Community Project
Category: Faith Community Civic Engagement Award
Sharing Sacred Spaces, Inc.
New Haven, Connecticut
Jury Comments: It is refreshing to see a program like this, and how it has been made to happen. It is highly appropriate in this time of division and conflict. The program recognizes that there is a big difference between reading about someone else’s faith, and physically crossing paths with that person in their faith space. It uses architecture to learn about the practice of a faith.
Photography: Paul Duda, Studio Duda, Paul Bloom
St. John’s Episcopal Church/Downtown DC Business Improvement District’s “Mural March”
Category: Faith Community Civic Engagement/Visual Arts, Performing Arts, And Other Creative Collaborations
St. John’s Episcopal Church, DowntownDC BID, the PAINTS Institute collective
Washington, D.C.
Jury Comments: At a time of racial strife, instead of ‘circling the wagons’ this church and its collaborators reached out to the community at the scale of the city and the nation. They changed the narrative and made something very positive out of a very negative act. It is important that this project is ongoing, and the work here is historic. It brings multiple voices to this place.
Photography: The Rev. Rob Fisher
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Rachel Hernandez
Rachel Hernandez Person
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