NEWS RELEASE

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
ANNOUNCES 2004 ARCHITECTURE AWARD WINNERS

New York, March 30, 2004 -- The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the winners of its four awards in architecture for 2004. Candidates for these awards were nominated by the 250 members of the Academy. Nominees were asked to send portfolios, and the winners were selected by an award committee of Academy members: Henry N. Cobb, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Hugh Hardy, Stephen Holl, Ada Louise Huxtable, Richard Meier (jury chairman), and Cesar Pelli. The prizes will be presented at the Academy's annual award and induction ceremony in May.

Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize

Hans Hollein won the $5000 Brunner Memorial Prize, given to ''an architect of any nationality who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art.'' Mr. Hollein, who celebrates his 70th birthday today, was born and works in Vienna. In the award citation, Richard Meier described Mr. Hollein's built work as "spatially unique, highly provocative, and superbly executed.''

Among Hans Hollein's projects are the Museum of Glass and Ceramics, Tehran (1978); Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany (1982); Cultural Forum and Social Housing in Berlin (1986); Haus-Haus Commercial Building, Vienna (1990); Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt (1991); Interbank Headquarters, Lima, Peru (2001), and the Volcano Museum, Auverge, France (2002).

Hans Hollein was a professor at the School of Architecture, Duesseldorf, Germany, from 1967 to 1976. In 1976, he began to teach at the University of Applied Art in Vienna, and served as its dean from 1995-1999. Mr. Hollein has received the Bard Award for Excellence in Architecture and Urban Design, the Reynolds Memorial Award, and the City of Vienna Architecture Award. He won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1985.

Academy Awards in Architecture

Two Academy Awards in Architecture of $7500 each are given to American architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction. The winners for 2004 are Preston Scott Cohen and Weiss/Manfredi Architects.

Preston Scott Cohen recently won the major international competition for the New Building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Cohen's fascination with geometric tension can be seen in the building's curved surfaces and intersecting lines on its exterior. In his two publications, Contested Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture (2001) and the forthcoming Permutations of Descriptive Geometry, Cohen investigates his theoretical and practical approaches to geometric design in buildings.

Among Preston Scott Cohen's other notable projects are the Montague and Tours Houses which received Progressive Architecture awards; and his design proposals for the Eybeam Museum of Art and Technology in New York City, and MOMA, Queens. He is the Gerald M. McCue Professor of Architecture and director of the Master in Architecture programs at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi are partners in the New York-based firm Weiss/Manfredi Architects. Committee member Cesar Pelli praised their work as ''an architecture of engagement with the place and its landscape, the people and their history, and with the materiality of building.'' Their built works include the competition-winning Women's Memorial and Education Center, Arlington, VA (1997); the Smith College Campus Center (2003); and the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY (2003). Current projects are the competition-winning Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park (2001); the proposed NYC 2012 Olympic Rowing Venues in Queens, NY; and Barnard College's Nexus (2003), winner of an invited competition.

Weiss/Manfredi Architects won a 2004 Progressive Architecture award for the Olympic Sculpture Park, three National AIA Honor Awards and two I.D. Environment's Awards. Marion Weiss is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Design. Michael Manfredi is a Trustee and founding member of the Van Alen Institute. The monograph, Site Specific, features their cross-disciplinary projects in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.

New Academy Award Established Last Year

A new Academy Award of $7500 was given for the first time in 2003 to ''a designer who explores ideas in architecture through any medium of expression.'' The first winner was the structural engineer, Guy Nordenson. In 2004 the prize will go to the landscape architect and urban designer James Corner. Committee member Hugh Hardy noted how Corner's work ''embraces complexity and is based on a careful synthesis of landscape, infrastructure, ecology, architecture, economic development, and city life.'' Among his projects are an open space Urban Design Study for the General Motors Facility, Detroit (1999); design for an Art Museum and Garden, Paju Book City, Seoul, Korea (2000); design development for Eastern State Penitentiary Park, Philadelphia (2001); master plan for Denver International Airport (2002); and master plan for the Fresh Kills Park, Staten Island, NY (2003). James Corner has been a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture, Graduate School of Design, at the University of Pennsylvania since 2000. He is the author of Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (with Alex MacLean, 1996), and Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (editor, 1999).

Exhibition

The work of award winners Hans Hollein, Preston Scott Cohen, Weiss/Manfredi Architects, and James Corner will be included in the upcoming Exhibition of Work by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Honors and Awards, from Thursday May 20 through Sunday June 20, 2004, at the Academy's galleries located on Audubon Terrace, Broadway between 155 and 156 Street. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m., and admission is free. The galleries will be closed for Memorial Day on Sunday, May 25, 2003.