Institute Honors Architects : Awards: The designers of the Tustin Market Place and the Plaza Tower Office Building are among the winners at the annual banquet in Newport Beach.

A private residence in Laguna Beach, Tustin Market Place and the Plaza Tower Office Building in Costa Mesa won top awards for their architects Friday at the 16th annual awards banquet of the Orange County chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Eight awards of merit, recognizing excellence in design and planning, and a special “people’s choice” award, were also handed out. This year’s theme was “Architecture in Context.”

The jury lauded the team of CRSS Architects Inc. of Irvine and Cesar Pelli & Assn. of New Haven, Conn., for making the Plaza Tower Office Building “an elegant, beautiful object . . . a thoroughly modern building that deals with form and light in a classic sense.”

The team of LPA Inc. of Irvine and Legorreta Arquitectos of Mexico City was honored for a harmonious combination of landscape and architecture in its design for Tustin Market Place.

Mark H. Singer’s design of his own home in Laguna Beach was described by the jury as “an artful collection of pavilions strung along a hillside.”

Members of the jury were Donald J. Canty, editor at large for Architectural Record magazine and writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Robert J. Frasca, principal with the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership of Portland, Ore.; Robert J. Geering, principal with Fisher Friedman Assn. of San Francisco, and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, a San Francisco designer and author of “Green Architecture.”

Two schools, two parking structures, an office building, a hotel, a private residence and the Orange County Performing Arts Center all won awards of merit.

Ralph Allen & Partners of Santa Ana was honored for the Kenneth L. Moffett Elementary School in Lennox (“tough without being oppressive,” said the jury). The team of Bissell Architects of Newport Beach and Venturi Rauch & Scott-Brown of Philadelphia designed the Graduate School of Management at UC Irvine, which the jury called “reminiscent of an old schoolhouse . . . an inexpensive contemporary structure.”

The IBI Group with L. Paul Zajfen of Newport Beach won for Library Site Parking Structure and Stadium Site Parking Structure, both at the Santa Ana Civic Center. (The jury commented that in Southern California, cars “are as revered as children and pets.”)

LPA Inc. picked up its second award of the evening for the One Venture Office Building in Irvine, a “very crisp, refreshingly modern building, free of cliches” and “very economical and experimental at the same time.”

The Hotel Santa Fe in Santa Fe, N.M.--which “reflects Pueblo architecture in strong, simple forms”--won an award of merit for Howard Needles Tammen & Bergendoff of Irvine and associate Richard Yates Architects Inc. of Santa Fe.

Sampieri Assoc. of Costa Mesa won for the McAlister Arizona Retreat in Katherine Landing, Ariz., a desert residence that is “so energy-efficient it is cooled only by ceiling fans,” the jury said.

CRSS Architects Inc. also took home a second award--this time, with the Blurock Partnership of Newport Beach--for the Performing Arts Center. The jury said “form and scale” give the structure “a strong civic presence,” and remarked on the way the portal “acts as a proscenium from the lobby.” The Performing Arts Center also won the “people’s choice” award, tallied from votes by members of the public.