LPA Brings Home 6 Design Awards

The American Institute of Architects Orange County has given LPA Inc. of Irvine six of this year’s 14 Design Awards for public and private projects.

In the organization’s 21st annual awards ceremonies, held Friday at Noguchi Gardens, LPA took one of the two Honor awards for the Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School, expected to open in Irvine in fall 1997.

The firm also took three of the five Merit awards--for the unbuilt Cal State University chancellor’s office in Long Beach, the Saddleback Valley Community Church in Foothill Ranch and two buildings on Van Nuys Boulevard in Van Nuys, an Amtrak station and headquarters for Valley Telecommunications (counted as one project). LPA also won two of the seven honorable mentions, for Anaheim Plaza and San Marcos City Hall in northern San Diego County.

Bissell Architects, a Newport Beach firm best known locally for its additions to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, won the other Honor award for the San Francisco Solano Catholic Church in Rancho Santa Margarita. The challenge of the project was to house a contemporary congregation in a city-mandated Spanish Colonial or Mission-style building, the architects said.

Picking up what the jury called the “strongest” of the Merit awards was Mark H. Singer and Associates of Laguna Beach for the Cline residence in that town. Built on a steep canyon-view lot with significant traffic noise, the house is shielded from the street and organized to yield a panoramic view in increments, room by room.

RTA/Blurock of Costa Mesa won a Merit award for principal Thomas H. Blurock’s cabin-style vacation house on a scenic 20-acre site in Tom Miner Basin near Gardner, Mont., 15 miles north of Yellowstone National Park.

Special awards this year included the board of directors’ prize for Community Excellence in Design, given to Santa Ana arts activist Don Cribb and Councilman Rob Richardson “for their vision and dedication in bringing the Santa Ana Artists Village to reality in order to revitalize a dying urban center.”

Another Santa Ana project, the downtown mural “A City Dreams of Art,” was the focus of a special citation from the Architectural Foundation, a charitable wing of the institute, to Artegeo gallery owner Daniel Arvizu and Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido.

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The board also lauded Brea (for building affordable housing and supporting Habitat for Humanity) and Costa Mesa (for the Triangle Square redevelopment project).

“Anamorph,” the public art project with a Greek athlete theme at the Pond of Anaheim--by Richard Turner, Ann Preston and Michael David--won the Architectural Foundation’s Art in Public Places Award. UC Irvine won the foundation’s Award for Excellence in the Built Environment.

Jurors this year were architects Rodney Friedman, Dennis McFadden and Michael Palladino.