Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Known for community service, environmental stewardship, and inventive craft, materials, and forms, this is a firm whose time has come.

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
From left to right: Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA, Gwynne Pugh, FAIA, Angela Brooks, AIA — the three partners of Pugh + Scarpa Architects.
Photo © Luke Wooden

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Designed in collaboration with San Francisco—based Kodama Diseño Architects, Colorado Court established a new benchmark for sustainable and affordable housing design excellence in America. It was the first residence in the country to achieve LEED Gold rating and to provide 100 percent of the building’s electricity with on-site renewable energy. Vivid blue PV panels are mounted vertically on the stucco facade, ornamenting the building while also supplying most of the peak-load electricity it demands.
Photo © Tara Wujcik

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
In the design of this film-editing studio, the architects strove to combine the small, dark environments required with stimulating, well-lit work spaces. Editing studios and offices are contained in two curvilinear boxes that hover over a reflecting pool. The bow trusses of the ceiling and the brick walls of the existing 1940s warehouse have been left exposed. Luminous panels filled with ping-pong balls and acrylic beads near the lobby allow daylight in, which bathes the open volumes with diffused light.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Perhaps the best known of the firm’s projects — and the winner of multiple awards — the Solar Umbrella was inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House of 1953. Home to Scarpa, Brooks, and their son, the residence features a canopy of PV panels that envelopes the building, providing 100 percent of its electricity. Other green strategies include solar hydronic heating panels, a storm-water-retention system, and an airy, open design, with environmentally sound materials used throughout the interior.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Perhaps the best known of the firm’s projects — and the winner of multiple awards — the Solar Umbrella was inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House of 1953. Home to Scarpa, Brooks, and their son, the residence features a canopy of PV panels that envelopes the building, providing 100 percent of its electricity. Other green strategies include solar hydronic heating panels, a storm-water-retention system, and an airy, open design, with environmentally sound materials used throughout the interior.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Perhaps the best known of the firm’s projects — and the winner of multiple awards — the Solar Umbrella was inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House of 1953. Home to Scarpa, Brooks, and their son, the residence features a canopy of PV panels that envelopes the building, providing 100 percent of its electricity. Other green strategies include solar hydronic heating panels, a storm-water-retention system, and an airy, open design, with environmentally sound materials used throughout the interior.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Reusing an existing 1930s Art Deco masonry building, the architects created a distinctive office environment for the client, a production studio for TV commercials and music videos. The interior spaces revolve around a centrally located conference room, composed of a used ocean-shipping container purchased from the Long Beach shipping yard and deconstructed to reveal rich textures and a series of interlocking surfaces. The areas adjacent to this centerpiece remain open and spacious, a discrete backdrop to the conference area.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Reusing an existing 1930s Art Deco masonry building, the architects created a distinctive office environment for the client, a production studio for TV commercials and music videos. The interior spaces revolve around a centrally located conference room, composed of a used ocean-shipping container purchased from the Long Beach shipping yard and deconstructed to reveal rich textures and a series of interlocking surfaces. The areas adjacent to this centerpiece remain open and spacious, a discrete backdrop to the conference area.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
This internationally known arts center includes a complex of industrial warehouses, which contain production facilities, galleries, artist lofts, and the architects’ own offices. In their design, the architects maintained coherence with the character of the existing buildings, while they also innovated. Corrugated metal, steel, and glass blend with the context, while cold-rolled steel and translucent lexan panels are inventive notes. The building’s two textured, geometric facades complement their respective settings — street front and courtyard.
Photo © Benny Chan

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
This internationally known arts center includes a complex of industrial warehouses, which contain production facilities, galleries, artist lofts, and the architects’ own offices. In their design, the architects maintained coherence with the character of the existing buildings, while they also innovated. Corrugated metal, steel, and glass blend with the context, while cold-rolled steel and translucent lexan panels are inventive notes. The building’s two textured, geometric facades complement their respective settings — street front and courtyard.
Photo © Jane Smith

Firm Award: Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Pugh + Scarpa has DESIGNED a 15,000-square-foot building to be built on the grounds of the Laumeier Sculpture Park, an 105-acre rolling landscape scattered with outdoor art. The new facility is designed to complement an existing early-20th-century estate house, which currently houses galleries, a gift shop, and offices. The new, two-story concrete-and-masonry structure will provide space for exhibition galleries, special event areas, a library, administrative offices, collections storage, and a reception area. Designed to be set into a hill and clad in a perforated skin, it will allow for year-round educational programming and expanded exhibition opportunities.
Image courtesy Pugh + Scarpa