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A house in Dallas was another I.D.E.A.S. award recipient. The "Residence for Art," by Lake/Flato Architects with Basharkah Engineers, Inc., was built on the edge of a large meadow. The client wanted a simple house to focus on her extensive painting and sculpture collection.

The main spaces have iron butterfly roofs and are designed as light steel and glass pavilions resting on art walls while opening to a courtyard and to the meadow. The jurors said: "Steel is comfortably integrated with a palette of natural materials...[which] create interesting conditions, textures, and details."

An AISC award of merit went to the Woodstock Branch Library in Portland, Oregon by Thomas Hacker Architects Inc. with Degenkolb Engineers and PAE Consulting Engineers.

The 7,500-square-foot (700-square-meter) branch library was intended to be "an airy pavilion," to create a feeling of openness and availability. The exposed steel structure of the reading room's large canopy cantilevers out of the ground with intricate bundled columns that eliminate the need for supporting walls, allowing an unusual transparency between inside and outside.

The jury called the library a "great example of a classical steel expression; refined, simple... It continues the tradition of the marriage between modernism and steel technology." The library's clear-anodized aluminum panels and a series of stainless steel panels etched with images that interpret the history of word and printing clad the building's exterior.

A very different use of steel was found in award-of-merit winner New 42 Studios in Times Square, New York, by architects Platt Byard Dovell White with Anastos Engineering Associates and Goldman Copeland Associates.

Described as a "three-dimensional collage of architecture and theater," the 11- story building is a "factory" for the performing arts, with rehearsal studios, an experimental theater, and other support spaces for nonprofit performing arts groups.

At night it is illuminated by colorful up-lights. During the day, the exposed structural steel and specially perforated stainless steel fins act as reflective sun louvers. The steel system was designed to create the impression of lightness and transparency, from the long spans of steel across the 50-foot- (15-meter-) wide studios to the exposed steel filigree on the face of the building.

Additional merit awards were given to the Desert Garden Ramada in Tucson, Arizona by Seaver Franks Architects Inc.; the Lake Austin Boat Dock in Austin, Texas by Miro Rivera Architects, and the Greenwich Playhouse in Greenwich, Connecticut by Austin Patterson Disston.

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The AISC is a not-for-profit technical institute and trade association that supports specification and code development, research, education, technical assistance, quality certification, standardization, and steel-market development.

A house in Dallas by Lake/Flato Architects was a recipient of the AISC I.D.E.A.S. award. Photo: Paul Hester The house is a series of art pavilions that surround a courtyard. Photo: Paul Hester The award-winning Woodstock Branch Library in Portland, Oregon by Thomas Hacker Architects. Photo: Timothy Hursley New 42 Studios in Times Square, New York, by architects Platt Byard Dovell White. Photo: Elliott Kaufman Photography   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.