AIA Nebraska, a chapter of the American Institute of Architects, is pleased to announce the 2023 Excellence in Design Award winners. This year the jury reviewed 105 projects. Six honor awards, four merit awards and seven citation awards were presented.
The AIA Nebraska jury, comprised of Chicago architects including the 2023 AIA National Gold Medal recipient and jury chair Carol Ross Barney, Juan Gabriel Moreno, project design principal, president and founder of JGMA, and Trina Sandschafer, design principal and executive vice president of Kahler Slater.
The Excellence in Design program is an annual event for Nebraska architects who submit built and unbuilt projects for consideration. Categories for consideration include Architecture, Interior Architecture, Unbuilt, Details, Masonry and Regional & Urban Design.
In addition, there are two categories for emerging architects and architecture students, including Built & Unbuilt Design. Projects are judged based on a variety of features, including unique design, originality, extended use attributes, sustainability, budget and use of environmental surroundings.
AIA Nebraska supports architects in fulfilling their commitment to excellence in design and livability in buildings and communities. Further information on this year’s design winners and past winners can be found on The American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter’s website www.aia.org/nebraska.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Honor Award
Springfield Elementary
Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture |
Springfield Platteview Community Schools
Springfield, Nebraska
The new, 74,000-square-foot school is a focal point for community pride and acts as a local gathering point. The school’s main entry leads to the central commons, which connects the classroom wing with shared learning spaces. This central space boasts a clerestory that becomes a glowing lantern when after-hours activities are hosted within. A critical prompt was to create an inviting place while providing a flexible learning space to meet the needs of an ever-changing education system. Light and structure provide inspiring spaces for children as they learn and play throughout Springfield Elementary.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Honor Award
Kiewit Luminarium
HDR | Kiewit Luminarium
Omaha, Nebraska
This 83,000-square-foot, hands-on, interactive STEM museum creates a place for people of all ages, identities, and backgrounds to explore astonishing phenomena at the intersection of science, art, and human perception. The building has been designed as a container to allow a diverse range of programming and exhibits the most flexibility. On the west side, towards downtown Omaha, it lifts off the ground, creating an elevated canvas in the air and acts as a billboard to the city. The space under the cantilever then becomes a protected pedestrian area – a large bus stop for group collection and arrival. The eastern form along the river anchors into the site along the riverfront boardwalk.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Honor Award
MCC Auto Tech Facility
BVH Architecture | Metropolitan Community College
Omaha, Nebraska
Located in South Omaha, the new Auto Tech Facility is a 100,000-square-foot building that serves as home to the College’s Automotive Technology and Automotive Collision Technology programs. The purposeful incorporation of nature and biophilic elements aids the facility in achieving LEEDv4 Silver certification. The program facilitates key partnerships between the college and private industry partners. The facility features state-of-the-art learning environments for students, faculty, and staff that are spread over two floors. In order to make both programs more visible to the public, the two floors of the building are connected by ample amounts of interior glass. Ultimately, the new facility sets a standard in automotive educational environments and will serve as an example for similar programs in the region and across the country.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Merit Award
Cobalt Credit Union – Gretna Branch
HDR | Cobalt Credit Union
Gretna, Nebraska
The building owner is the largest credit union in Nebraska and serves clients in sixteen counties in Nebraska and Iowa. From the exterior, the observer gets a glimpse of the warm wood interior glowing from inside. From the interior, ample daylight floods the public space from the clerestory windows and the raised ceiling provides a lofty sense of space. Customers and employees alike will engage in this project for years to come as the credit union continues to serve the public’s need for financial strategies and assistance.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Merit Award
Douglas County Justice Center
HDR | Omaha Douglas Public Building Commission
Omaha, Nebraska
Located in the urban setting of downtown Omaha, the new complex occupies a one-block area immediately south of the existing Courthouse. The tower is visually accessible to the city, clad in vision and opaque glass composed to express the public and private spaces within. Directly connected to the court’s tower, the youth center is designed with the aesthetic of an urban apartment building while maintaining the durability and security required. Clad in brick, metal panel and glass, ample daylight with views in (when appropriate) and out are the basis for a normative environment. The interior material pallet is soft and detailed to reflect a therapeutic setting. The complex, with collocated facilities and a normative, trauma-informed design, will allow for intensive restorative care, counseling, and guidance – serving the youth, their families, and the entire community.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Merit Award
Wigton Heritage Center and McGoogan Health Sciences Library
HDR | University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha, Nebraska
The Heritage Center addition and Wittson Hall medical library renovation began as an exercise to rethink how a legacy library could transform to support an innovative curriculum at the largest medical university in Nebraska and grew in scope to include a brand new atrium addition that would serve as a student commons for the campus while linking together two historic buildings. The Heritage Center addition provides an all-new glazed enclosure that connects University Tower, the oldest surviving building at the school, with Wittson Hall, which houses the medical library. Connecting across six different elevation changes between buildings, the Heritage Center serves as a social commons for the entirety of the campus.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Citation Award
Omaha VA Ambulatory Care Center
Leo A Daly
Omaha, Nebraska
The architecture creates a new gateway to the VA campus. Bold aesthetic strokes unfold through the design, inspired by symbolism but oriented toward experiential impact. The north façade, inspired by the rippling of a flag in the wind, guides veterans and staff to the entry. The flag wall encloses the clinic waiting area, which is designed as one continuous space to emphasize social connections that are vital to veteran wellness. In the clinic waiting area, a horizontally layered limestone wall guides patients to their care environment. Its form and materiality are inspired by the layers of soil tracked home by veterans through periods of peace and conflict. The clinical layout combines best practices from the VA and private sector. Clinics use an onstage/offstage configuration, enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration between clinicians. One clinic is exclusively for women veterans.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Citation Award
Sylvan Lake House
Actual Architecture Company | Donovan & Joanne Nielsen
Jarvis Bay, Alberta, Canada
This second home occupies a narrow lot on a large, recreational lake midway between Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta, Canada. The house comprises simple masses with spatial intersections that create a complex interior environment, all focused on the lake. A mute opacity on the inland side provides privacy and intimacy, while the lakeside opens to generous views and exterior spaces. Glass curtain walls and decks extend the indoor surfaces outside. Indoor porosity continues vertically connecting floors to provide a counterpoint to the monolithic stacked-box appearance of the exterior. Material selections are at a minimum, maintaining the prominence of the lake and surrounding woods. Furniture and artwork were selected with input from the architect. Environmental systems include a super-insulated building envelope, triple-pane glass, in-floor radiant heating, ducted forced-air cooling, and recessed or coved LED lighting.
Category: Excellence in Architecture – Citation Award
Maverick Park
HDR | University of Nebraska at Omaha
Omaha, Nebraska
This metropolitan university is continuing the development of its Center Street campus with the addition of a new baseball and softball stadium complex. The requirements for different geometries prevent the use of the same field for both sports. Often, the two-field solution results in facilities that are inequitable between women’s and men’s sports. The site rises sharply away from the street to the west climbing 45 feet with a continued rise into multi-family residential beyond. Above the covered deck is a covered, open-air second deck open to both fields. The remainder of the pavilion consists of press and broadcast facilities for each field.
Category: Excellence in Interior Architecture – Citation Award
Hubbard Center for Children
HDR | Children’s Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
This children’s hospital wanted to embody just that, childhood. A 450,000-square-foot expansion and renovation project at the heart of Omaha, this project is a celebration of color and a destination to improve children’s lives. On the facade, dichroic fins within the unitized curtain wall system refract rainbows of light and perforated metal screens at the base are illuminated with color-changing scenes. The building comes alive. When inside, feelings of playfulness, openness, and discovery were created for an optimistic patient experience and positive distraction. Focusing on shape, color, and print, the design team developed an interior that is childlike, not childish. Graphics were incorporated to draw people through patient floors, while wood ceilings in waiting spaces indicate moments of pause. On lower levels, the full spectrum of colors and shapes was used to signal movement and community engagement.
Category: Excellence in Interior Architecture – Citation Award
WP Engine, Tenant Improvement
Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture | WP Engine
Omaha, Nebraska
Distributed between the top two floors of the warehouse building, this 400-person technology-focused office space is organized for various working styles. Ranging from phone booths for quiet work, conference rooms for hybrid meetings, large collaboration spaces for all-staff events, and open offices organized into neighborhoods, these working environments offer diversity in scale, visibility, and activity. At the heart of the 66,000-square-foot floorplate is the main two-story entry and dining space where energy and creative collisions are intended to occur. Moving towards the perimeter, stimulus and noise recede to calm and quiet for more focused work. Additionally, vertical openings between floors – visual or physical – are distributed throughout to further enhance interaction. A feature stair and skylight were inserted within the central space, infusing it with natural light and transparency across floors. Each element was thoughtfully designed as a backdrop to highlight the company’s personality alongside the existing architecture, while artfully incorporating branding and color throughout.
Category: Excellence in Unbuilt Architecture – Honor Award
Omaha Central Library
HDR, Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture | Heritage Omaha
Omaha, Nebraska
The uses of a library – and the resources within – are changing. This central library concept supports this mission, by providing access to 21st-century resources and prioritizing space for gathering, learning, and collaborating as a critical public resource. As technology has transformed our world, libraries must also transform, and in the process become a tool for the democratization of not just information, but also technology. While books and typical library materials will be on display and browsable on every level, the bulk of the system collection will be housed in an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) – a first-of-its-kind for a public library. The design strives to be net-zero, deploying a high-performance façade, a photovoltaic array, geothermal loups, and an underfloor air distribution system to keep the indoor environs both efficiently comfortable and sustainable. This library is designed to reflect the changing landscape of this area and functions as a catalyst to transform the neglected core of the city.
Category: Excellence in Unbuilt Architecture – Merit Award
Deadend Viaduct
Goodlife Architecture
Hastings, Nebraska
In 1936, a public works project was completed in Hastings which allowed vehicles to soar over one of the nation’s busiest railroads. Eighty-five years later the highway had been moved and the crossing had not been maintained, to the point that city officials decided to have it demolished. Some residents still depended on the viaduct as a connector in the recreational trail system. So when a section of bridgework sat in extended purgatory while awaiting demolition permissions from the railroad authorities, Goodlife Architecture was asked to reimagine the ruin as a public amenity. Paths for pedestrians and cyclists follow the viaduct’s curved approach to the crossing, terminating at a vertical tower. Ascending, one is treated to a long view of the prairie horizon. Providing a visual connection between the bridge and the tracks, a lower-deck observation platform offers a moment of respite and serves as a trainspotting destination for a surprising number of enthusiasts — local and tourists. At the tower’s base, travelers interpret the enormity of the diesel engines at grade, then continue their trek into the town center, tracing the line of the former overhead bridge to a five-point intersection of the municipal trail system.
Category: Excellence in Unbuilt Architecture – Citation Award
Bridge Park :: Park Bridge
BVH Architecture | Applied Underwriters
Omaha, Nebraska
This pedestrian bridge acts as an immersive environment connecting the public pedestrian trails within a greenway network that includes sensitively designed landscapes and thoughtfully considered programming. The new bridge will span over Pacific Street leading to the mixed-use pedestrian-friendly development that includes living, working, shopping, and playing in Omaha. The space between circulation routes is programmed with activities interlaced with vegetation, softscape, and hardscape. With an intentionally dynamic experience, the immersive bridge environment allows people to play, inhabit, or circulate on the bridge. The wood skin transforms the experience, becoming more open from within the bridge. Playful lighting dapples the exterior, interacting with vehicles passing by — all powered by integrated photovoltaic panels.
Category: Excellence in Architectural Detail – Honor Award
Kiewit Luminarium Facade
HDR | Kiewit Luminarium
Omaha, Nebraska
The Kiewit Luminarium design incorporated steel structure with steel stud framing for the exterior envelope. Insulated metal panels and glass curtain wall complete the enclosure. Perforated metal panels are used across the entire façade for a shading structure. High-efficiency mechanical equipment, photovoltaics, and lighting fixtures significantly exceed the 2018 energy code.
Category: Excellence in Regional & Urban Design – Citation Award
Conceptual Terrain
HDR | Mat-Su Health Foundation
Palmer, Alaska
This master plan, developed in-tandem with a full market study and an economic feasibility study, creates a long-range vision and implementation plan for a mixed program community to enhance the existing infrastructure and population anchor provided by the regional medical center. The solution to ensure its sustainability is to use the hospital as the foundation to build population density, drive increased economic and social enterprise, and create a new urban center. Using ideas such as these, the project can create population gravity that helps sustain the medical center and, most importantly, improve the quality of life for the people of the Mat-Su Valley.
Category: The Don Littler Excellence in Masonry Award
Sponsored by the Nebraska Masonry Alliance
White Lotus Group/Nebraska Realty – Lincoln
DLR Group | White Lotus Group
Lincoln, Nebraska
This project is a new 30,000-square-foot multi-tenant office building on an approximately three-acre site in a fast-growing suburban neighborhood in the southeast quadrant of the city. With its simple and elegant massing, ample access to daylight, and integrated outdoor amenity spaces, the building is designed to attract, inspire, and motivate Nebraska Realty employees and future building tenants alike. A masonry base is topped with a white box that reaches out to the community. Shifting planes in the building’s massing create communal spaces, including an outdoor amenity deck on the second floor adjacent to the future Nebraska Realty offices.
