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However, the suburban location of the Dulwich Gallery makes it difficult and time-consuming to reach. Until now, visitors who did make the journey found very few services to support their visit.

Moreover, the Gallery was badly damaged in World War II. It was in need of a complete overhaul if it were to continue to serve as a setting appropriate to the display and conservation of a prized collection of art.

Rick Mather Architects' design for updated environmental control systems and new visitor facilities provides "a sensitive and elegant solution to a very complex set of problems," the BW/AR jury found. Climate control and lighting have been completely modernized to preserve the collection, "an amazingly complex project carried off extremely well, the goal being achieved without interrupting or reinterpreting the original."

Since completion of the renovation in 1997, annual attendance has risen from 57,000 visitors to 120,000.

The Dulwich Gallery's new visitor facilities include a cafe, multipurpose room, restrooms, and education center. A glazed cloister with open-frame steel "columns" connects these buildings to the main gallery while providing a pleasing contrast with the massing of the historic museum. The small complex now forms a quadrangle that celebrates the gallery as the treasure it is.

The BW/AR Awards program, now in its fifth year, is sponsored by the American Institute of Architects in conjunction with Architectural Record and Business Week magazines.

Members of the 2001 BW/AR Awards jury are Charles B. Rose, AIA, principal, Charles Rose Architects; David M. Childs, FAIA, principal, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP; Neil Frankel, FAIA, FIIDA, principal, Frankel + Coleman; Chee Pearlman, design consultant and columnist for the New York Times; Terence Riley, chief curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art; Thomas Davenport, director, Institute for Strategic Change, Accenture; Robert T. Walston, chief executive officer, Liberty Livewire Corporation; Mark Walsh, chairman and chief strategy officer, VerticalNet; William Sims, Ph.D., CFM, co-founder, Facility Planning and Management Program and International Workplace Studies Program, Cornell University.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Headquarters by SmithGroup. Photo: Prakash Patel Saitama Super Arena by Ellerbe Becket, with Dan Meis Design Associate. Photo: Kokyu Miwa Photography Kuhonji Buddhist Temple Gate & Ossuary by Furuichi & Associates. Photo: Hiroshi Ito Wieden & Kennedy Headquarters by Allied Works Architecture, Inc. Photo: Sally Schoolmaster University of Pennsylvania Module VII Chiller Plant by Leers Weinzapfel Associates. Photo: Peter Aaron, Esto Photographics Corning Museum of Glass by Smith-Miller & Hawkinson Architects. Photo: Scott Frances/ Esto   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.