School Notes: School of Architecture
July/August 2017

Lifetime achievement award

Architect, sculptor, designer, and environmental activist Maya Lin ’81, ’86MArch, received the 2017 Yale Undergraduates’ Lifetime Achievement Award in a ceremony on April 13. Lin achieved early fame with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, submitted while she was still an undergraduate. Projects since then include the Women’s Table on Cross Campus; the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; the Langston Hughes Library; the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City; and more. She designed “What Is Missing?”—a multimedia, multi-location project that focuses on bringing awareness to habitat loss. Lin’s honors include the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts in 2009, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls. At the Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony, Lin emphasized the importance of dedication and persistence in the practice of architecture.

American Architecture Awards

Gray Organschi, a local architecture firm cofounded by Lisa Gray ’82 and SoA critic Alan Organschi ’88MArch, won two awards from the Chicago Athenaeum for their design of the Common Ground High School in New Haven: an American Architecture Award, which honors the best new buildings in America, and a Green Good Design Award in recognition of its achievements in sustainability. The project was designed in collaboration with Atelier Ten, a leading environmental design consultancy cofounded by Patrick Bellew, who was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor during Spring 2017. Christoff Finio, a New York–based firm cofounded by SoA critic Martin Finio, also won a 2017 American Architecture Award for their gut renovation of the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft in Louisville.