One of the things I love about the Metal Architecture Design Awards is that the winners always surprise me. Every year, the judges have a very tough job as they look through all of the submissions and narrow down each category to a single winner. This year, our judges—Mark Dewalt, Henry Tom and John Saldana—poured over more than 100 entries and selected the projects they felt best exemplifi ed the category. In ad- dition, they presented two judges awards. And I love that they didn’t always choose the project that others may have thought. The winning project that is the best example of this is the Iowa Prison Industries
Outlet Building in Des Moines, Iowa, the winner of the metal building category. While there were a variety of projects submitted—from movie theaters to high schools to offi ce build- ings and college buildings—the Iowa Prison Industries is a small and unassuming metal building that got the judges attention for being a well-designed project. Be sure to check it out on page 28. Another winning project that pleasantly surprised me was the winner in the sustainable design category. Unlike most cam-
pus student centers, the student center at Monterrey Technical University in Cuidad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is made up of 11 standard ISBU 40-foot containers stacked on top of each other, creating voids and cantilevered areas. By using recycled contain- ers, the architects, Ruben Escobar-Urrutia, LEED AP, and Ricardo Pacheco with Cuidad Juárez-based Grupo ARKHOS, were able to reduce the amount of CO2
the building construction generated, along with cutting down on the overall cost of the project and
shortening the construction time by a month and a half. Turn to page 32 to see more about this project. Escobar-Urrutia and Pachero also designed the headquarters for the Chihuahua’s Businessmen Foundation, or FECHAC,
the winner of smooth metal wall panels and the grand award. Aluminum composite panels from Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., cover four 40-foot high pillars representing the foundation’s core values of giving, common good, solidarity and subsidiarity. While the tessellated aluminum panel volumes are unchanging, LED color-changing lights illuminate the ever-changing façade after the sun sets. Be sure to turn to page 20 to see this, and all of this year’s design award winners. Congratulations to all of the 2012 Design Award winners.
Marcy Marro Managing Editor
METAL ARCHITECTURE (ISSN-0885-5781) is published monthly by Modern Trade Communications Inc., 7450 N. Skokie Blvd., Skokie, IL 60077. Subscriptions are free for those in the metal construction industry in the United States. For those outside the industry, the subscription price is $45 per year, in the United States; $75, in Canada and Mexico; and $150 per year, in all other countries. Periodicals class postage paid at Skokie, IL, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Address service requested. METAL ARCHITECTURE, 7450 N. Skokie Blvd., Skokie, IL 60077.