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Daniel S. Friedman, Ph.D., FAIA, dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington in Seattle, echoed Murray's sentiments, lauding KieranTimberlake for "work of singular integrity and artistic achievement... nourished by an unparalleled program of applied research and critical writing."

In receiving the AIA's highest award for a firm, KieranTimberlake joins such firms as Leers Weinzapfel, Murphy/ Jahn, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Hugh Stubbins and Associates.

Grounded in Research

Stephen Kieran, FAIA, and James Timberlake, FAIA, met in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked as project architects at Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Each was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship in Architecture by the American Academy in Rome in the early 1980s.

"We believe in process as the first art," say Kieran and Timberlake. That approach has resulted in numerous award-winning buildings since the Philadelphia-based firm's founding in 1984.

The principals jointly received the inaugural Latrobe Fellowship from the AIA College of Fellows in 2001. That research prize spurred them to add full-time research staff to their practice. An office move the next year allowed them to design a flexible work space to accommodate research as a central element of the practice.

Kieran and Timberlake wrote the 2004 book refabricating Architecture on their research from that period. In the book they argue for a reconceptualization of architecture and construction based on technology transfer from the aerospace, automobile, and shipbuilding industries. "Few recent books have shaped our thinking on building as directly and dramatically as refabricating Architecture," said Friedman.

The architects warn that specialization and fragmentation are eroding the world of architecture. "[KieranTimberlake] has pioneered the concept of the integrated building where architecture, builder, material scientist and product engineer form an unique collaboration to produce extraordinary artful works of architecture," said Bernard Cywinski, FAIA, and Peter Bohlin, FAIA, of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.

One central idea in Kieran and Timberlake's vision for the profession is "mass customization": the use of automated production to efficiently create products and components that are designed for a particular use or site, in contrast to mass production's generation of so many identical objects.

An example of mass customization is SmartWrap™, a material that Kieran and Timberlake developed with Dupont, working with the principals' graduate research laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. SmartWrap is a lightweight print-based plastic building envelope that can "display information, and miniature systems embedded in the relatively thin walls can produce light and absorb solar energy for electricity production." The material was demonstrated in a solo exhibition at New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2004, where it enclosed a temporary pavilion, as reported in ArchitectureWeek No. 200.

KieranTimberlake's focus on education has also been praised. "The firm openly shares its methods with interns and practitioners through writing, programs and lectures in the United States and abroad," said nominator Murray. "By their example and ethics," said Bohlin and Cywinski, "the principals have been successful in creating a work environment that yields extraordinary architecture and extraordinary architects."

Kieran and Timberlake say, "Because we are educators, we have been a teaching practice from the outset." In addition to their graduate design research lab at Penn, which explores topics such as those covered in refabricating Architecture, they have taught at the University of Michigan, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Beautiful, Sustainable, Technical

For KieranTimberlake, theory is borne out in practice. Bohlin and Cywinski cited such recent projects as the Loblolly House and Sidwell Friends Middle School by KieranTimberlake as "attest[ing] to their successful fusion of research, technology, sustainability and prefabrication into an architecture of great depth and relevance."

Most of the firm's earliest projects were residential and commercial. One was the Greenberg Residence in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, completed in 1989. Located on a fragment of a 17th-century farm, the house is a long, gray structure aligned along a crest at the end of a meadow, with views of the original stone farmhouse and barns in the distance.   >>>

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SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The 2004 SmartWrap™ pavilion at New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum demonstrated a lightweight new building envelope developed by KieranTimberlake and University of Pennsylvania graduate students in collaboration with Dupont. Photo: © Barry Halkin Extra Large Image SmartWrap, a print-based building envelope material, can integrate systems that display information, emit light, and absorb solar energy. Photo: © Barry Halkin The Greenberg Residence (1989) in rural Pennsylvania was one of KieranTimberlake's early projects. Photo: © Barry Halkin Extra Large Image The University of Pennsylvania's Levine Hall (2002) acts as a bridge between two older buildings, enclosing a courtyard. Photo: © Michael Moran Extra Large Image A staircase in the Melvin J. and Claire Levine Hall by KieranTimberlake Associates. Photo: © Barry Halkin Detailed section information for the ventilated curtain wall at Levine Hall. Image: © Barry Halkin / KieranTimberlake Associates Extra Large Image The dining hall pavilion of Atwater Commons (2004) at Middlebury College. Photo: © Barry Halkin Extra Large Image The Atwater Commons dining room exemplifies the design emphasis on daylighting and natural ventilation. Photo: © Barry Halkin Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.