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A miscellany of building types and styles garnered this year's state design awards from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects.
The six projects winning honor awards included a singular, studied video viewing room in a La Jolla museum, a spirited "art installation" for a bakery outlet in a San Diego shopping mall, and a complex, massive university gymnasium in Berkeley.
Also cited for top honors was an expressive, sprawling water reclamation plant in the San Fernando Valley, a scintillating and exuberantly engineered single-family residence in Beverly Glen and an inventive, aphoristic addition to a Venice house.
"The range of these design awards show an incredible richness," declared Paul Kennon, president of CRS Sirrine in Houston, who chaired the three-member jury for the council. Other members were Peter Papademetriou, a proferssor of architecture at Rice University, Houston, and Tod Williams, a New York architect,
Willing to Experiment
Kennon added that if anything distinguished the selection culled from about 280 submissions, it was the willingness of the designers to experiment. He and the other jurors explained that they looked to California as a place where architects can dream; a place where they can take risks.
"You can sum up the design awards by saying: Californians dare," Kennon said. He made his remarks during a panel discussion following the announcement of the awards at the Asilomar...