On December 8, the American Institute of Architects’ Board of Directors voted to award Santa Monica’s Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners the 2006 AIA Architecture Firm Award.
The firm designed the new Santa Monica Main Library (see page 1) the City’s new Fourth Street parking structure that is now under construction, and is one of three local architectural firms in the Related Companies of California, City staff’s choice to design and develop the City’s proposed mixed use project, “The Village in the Civic Center (see City Council story, page 1).
The two other firms are Koning Eizenberg (see story this page) and Pugh + Scarpa.
Given annually, the award is the highest honor the AIA bestows to an architecture firm. and is given in recognition of practices that has consistently “produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.”
The award will be presented to the firm at the American Architectural Foundation Accent on Architecture Gala, February 10, 2006, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Last year’s award went to Murphy/Jahn.
“This is a wonderful honor, which we share with our colleagues and clients,” said Buzz Yudell, FAIA, Moore Ruble Yudell founding partner with John Ruble, FAIA, when notified by AIA President Douglas L Steidl, FAIA, MRAIC, that his firm had been selected for the award. “We hope to do more and do better as we go forward.”
Steidl applauded the firm for “contributions to the architecture community, and particularly for the culture the firm established for intern education.”
The firm’s principals include Krista Becker, AIA, LEED® AP, Jeanne Chen, AIA, Michael S. Martin, AIA, Neal Matsuno, AIA, LEED® AP, James Mary O’Connor, AIA, and Mario Violich, ASLA, who share design and management responsibilities of the office with the partners. Tina Beebe is the firm’s colorist, and Stanley Anderson, AIA, IIDA heads the interior design team.
In practice for 28 years, the firm’s staff numbers more than 60 people. Initially, the firm’s primary work was residential design, but it now handles a a wide variety of public and private projects, as well as institutional and cultural spaces.
In nominating the firm, Michael Franklin Ross, Chair, AIA’s Committee on Design, said, “The firm has consistently produced an outstanding body of work rooted in a deep commitment to humanistic architecture. Their work is widely admired for its spirited celebration of habitation at many scales and its respect for people, context, and place. The firm continues to evolve in response to new challenges and opportunities while remaining true to the fundamental principles of humanism.”
Moore Ruble Yudell sees architecture as “the act of habitation, part of a continuum that seeks connections between people, place and culture. Its vision, centered on careful examination of site and climate, qualities of light, and the human experience, is credited in its development of spaces and buildings of every scale.”
Though it has long been based in Santa Monica, it has designed a number of buildings in other countries and other American cities, including the United States Embassy in Berlin, and Tango Housing at the Bo01 Exhibition in Malmö, Sweden, and the Joseph A. Steger Student Life Center at the University of Cincinnati.
The firm has received a number of previous AIA awards including two AIA Committee on Architecture for Education Merit Awards (2005), the AIA California Council Merit Award (2005, 2004), the AIA Los Angeles Merit Award (2005), the AIA Los Angeles NextLA Citation Award (2004), the National AIA Honor Award for Architecture (2003), and the National AIA Honor Award for Urban Design (1999), as well as the Westside Urban Forum Westside Prize (2005,2004), and the Council for New Urbanism Charter Award.
