Unlike recent Gold Medalists, Peter Bohlin is not a lone prodigy; his contribution is inseparable from the firm he founded 45 years ago. His work lacks grandiosity, favoring instead a light touch, a Modernism mellowed by emotion.

The Mississippi Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal aims for no less than an “economic renaissance for coastal Mississippi,” says its chairman Jim Barksdale, a former president and C.E.O. of Netscape.

This is the eighth year that Samuel Mockbee and his architecture students at Auburn University have been designing and building striking houses and community buildings for impoverished residents of Alabama’s Hale County.