BNIM project receives top honor in 2014 Design Excellence Awards

For its work in renovating the lobby of the Des Moines Community Playhouse, BNIM has received the highest honor in the Kansas City Design Excellence Awards for 2014.

The American Institute of Architects/Kansas City’s annual ceremony was Friday at The Guild. A people’s choice award and awards honoring sports architecture also were announced.

The Des Moines playhouse was originally built as a movie theater in 1934. The castle-like structure had undergone numerous renovations during the past 60 years, including the addition of a 3,000-square-foot children’s theater in 1995.

BNIM’s $2.4 million lobby addition is the first phase of a $10 million renovation that will add an education wing with classrooms, storage, dressing rooms, administrative offices, green rooms and updated the playhouse’s main stage theater and mechanics.

Juror Julie Eizenberg, of Koning Eizenberg in Santa Monica, called it a really lovely and kind project. “It’s a tiny little project, but it’s not about size, it’s about resources,” she said. “They didn’t try to dress it up. They worked with the essential things to make it all sing together.”

Awards of merit were presented to KSU Design + Make Studio and El Dorado Inc. for their Roof, Ground, Water project at The Blue Barn Theatre in Omaha; DLR Group, Marlon Blackwell Architect and Hight Jackson for its phase one designs of Fayetteville High School in Arkansas; Gould Evans for its Southwest Fisheries Science Center in LaJolla, Calif., for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Design + Make Studio and El Dorado Inc. also received a citation for their work on the Asian Americans for Equality mobile office.

AIA/Kansas City also presented sports venue awards to HNTB for its design of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. and AECOM in association with TVA Architects and Perkins+Will for their work on the Matthew Knight Arena at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

HTNB designed and built the the new San Francisco 49ers’ 69,000-seat stadium to be an expandable outdoor entertainment venue that can accommodate a variety of events, including Major League Soccer and World Cup events. It has been selected as the site for the Super Bowl in February 2016.

The Matthew Knight Arena is a 12,364-seat, multipurpose venue that exceeds state requirements for sustainable design and has been awarded LEED Gold certification.

AIA Kansas City created the sports venue award last year to recognize the the effect that Kansas City-based architects have in the world of sports venue design.

The people’s choice awards were resurrected this year to allow the general public to vote on 23 local nonresidential projects that were nominated for the Design Excellence Awards. Over four weeks, 875 people cast online votes for one of the completed projects.

The winner was Gastinger Walker Harden + BeeTriplett Buck for its design of Capitol Federal’s midtown branch at 4242 Main St.

This story was originally published November 15, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "BNIM project receives top honor in 2014 Design Excellence Awards."