It’s no surprise that the vast majority of this year’s AIA award winners share an interest in preserving the quality of the natural environment—architecture’s future is undoubtedly “green,” and the firms featured here represent the profession’s cutting edge. From Pugh + Scarpa’s energy-neutral Solar Umbrella House to Lake/Flato’s World Birding Center, which provides a conscientious gateway into the wild, to the seven regional and urban design winners, which consider sustainable ways to develop land—these projects exemplify how innovative design techniques can do more than just improve the aesthetics of a given site.
But while ecofriendly design is all the rage now, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the recipient of the 25 Year Award, has quietly demonstrated another approach to integrating architecture and nature, giving a different connotation to the word “sustainability.” The elegance, solemnity, and democratic accessibility of the structure’s black granite walls endow the memorial with a timelessness that makes this exemplar of bold form as relevant today as when it was erected in 1982.