As the key location for skiing events at the 2010 Winter Olympics, Whistler, British Columbia, will no doubt be irrevocably imprinted on people’s minds this winter.

Known for community service, environmental stewardship, and inventive craft, materials, and forms, this is a firm whose time has come. “Cool” best describes this year’s AIA Firm of the Year, Pugh + Scarpa Architects. It speaks to the casual, unpretentious character of its work, which masks the refinement underlying what appears so easygoing.

Many readers may have come to know the work of AIA’s 2009 Firm of the Year, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (OSKA), through media coverage of such projects as Delta Shelter, Rolling Huts, and the much publicized Chicken Point Cabin. Sited in dramatic natural settings, the residences incorporate an abundance of glazing, a raw materiality, and the use of kinetic metal gadgetry that operates apertures and/or propels movement. These projects are the work of partner Tom Kundig, FAIA, whose architecture is both understated and bold, sometimes unpredictable, and always fresh.

The town of Crestone, Colorado, population 800, occupies a small swath of land on the eastern side of the remote San Luis Valley.

The modest size and budget of the Gentry Public Library (11,970 square feet, at $108 per square foot) belies its importance to the community of Gentry, Arkansas.

In today’s society, with advancing technology, the distinctions between work and other aspects of daily life, so clear since the Industrial Revolution, have melted away.

While Henry David Thoreau’s solitary sojourn at Walden Pond lasted two years, two weeks, and two days, it took Michal Friedrich, owner of Delta Shelter, also known as Stilt Cabin [RECORD, April 2006, page 92], in Mazama, Washington, only a year and a half to realize he wanted visitors to his secluded mountain retreat.