• Featured,  Form

    The thoughtfully considered

    AIA Minnesota recognizes outstanding built projects for 2023   For nearly 70 years, AIA Minnesota has recognized its members and member-owned firms for their architecture and urban design work through its AIA Minnesota Honor Awards and Commendations for Design Excellence. Over the decades, the program has challenged architects to envision what is possible, recognizing that design can be a vehicle…

  • Creative Endeavors,  Featured

    Next to Lead

    One of 17 ethnically diverse women selected to participate in the American Institute of Architects’, or AIA’s, leadership pilot program called Next to Lead, Ellie Ziaie, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, senior associate and architectural designer at BKV Group practicing in the Minneapolis region, has a proven history of leadership throughout her design career. Ziaie’s interest in architecture grew from…

  • Featured,  Form

    Ecosystems of design

    A current marker of the advancements in sustainability and innovative thinking of modern architecture, the AIA’s COTE® Top Ten program entered its 25th year this year, with a slew of new awards for North America’s most ecologically groundbreaking works of architecture. Projects across typologies, from university libraries and the health sciences to commercial adaptive reuse and deep tech—such as Microsoft’s…

  • Featured,  Form

    A leader in architecture

    With a population that has grown nearly seven percent in a decade, and an ever-developing city core with new infrastructure, Grand Rapids, Michigan, has become a destination for living and working that is still uniquely malleable, in more ways than one. The city, the second largest in Michigan—but a relatively small one in the overall Midwest—is already an established 2030…

  • Creative Endeavors,  Featured,  Travel

    Design dialogue

    Last year, the IIDA and AIA Chicago unveiled its inaugural discussion series Designers and Architects Talk: A Series About Design and Its Impact on Client Success. The four-part program addresses the commercial interior architecture and design sectors, and after a successful first installment, the series has returned to the IIDA Headquarters in Chicago for 2020, with a variety of new…

  • Featured,  Relish

    Fine design

    In November 2017, Prime + Proper, a luxurious steakhouse experience, opened in Detroit, and quickly garnered attention for its elaborate interior design and approach to fine dining. Less than two years later in June 2019, McIntosh Poris Associates, the firm behind Prime + Proper’s distinctive style and preserved historic details, received a pair of Restaurant Design Awards from the AIA’s…