Photo courtesy James Ewing/OTTO
Architecture Research Office (ARO) has won the 2020 Architecture Firm Award by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
The annual award is the highest honor AIA bestows on an architecture practice. The award recognizes a firm that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.
Founded in 1993, the firm is led by principals Stephen Cassell, FAIA, Kim Yao, AIA, and Adam Yarinsky, FAIA. With a staff of just 30, the firm’s portfolio includes a range of work that has been recognized with six AIA Honor Awards, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture, and the Academy Award for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2018, ARO was named AIA New York’s firm of the year.
“ARO’s work, ranging from their extensive work on additional American university campuses to the cultural work they are doing for the Rothko Chapel and have done for the Judd Foundation to the research work that they have done on urban climate issues as well as material fabrication, has been consistently tight in its articulation (no excess), but it emerges from a keen understanding of each project and a keen appreciation for each deployed material rather than coming from a school of minimalism,” writes Sarah M. Whiting, Assoc. AIA, dean and Josep Lluís Sert professor of architecture at Harvard University, in a letter supporting ARO’s nomination for the award.
AIA will honor ARO at the 2020 AIA Conference on Architecture in Los Angeles.
