Visting Professors Lisa Gray, Alan Organschi receive national recognitions from American Academy of Arts and Letters, AIA College of Fellows

RWU Visiting Professors Lisa Gray and Alan Organschi of Gray Organschi Architecture, New Haven have achieved significant national recognitions in Spring 2012. Gray Organschi Architecture has served as Architecture Teaching Firm in Residence in Fall 2010 and 2011, and return to RWU in Fall 2012 to teach Arch 613 Graduate Thesis Design Studio.

Lisa Gray was recognized as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) at the American Institute of Architects Annual Convention in May, in recognition of her “significant contribution to the profession” and “to architecture and society on a national level.”  She and other 2012 Fellows were honored at an investiture ceremony on May 17 at the 2012 AIA National Convention and Design Exposition in Washington, DC.

On March 20, 2012, the American Academy of Arts and Letters announced that firm principals Elizabeth Gray and Alan Organschi were awarded an Arts and Letters Award in Architecture. This award honors American architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction. The winners were chosen from a group of 40 individuals and practices nominated by the members of the Academy. The members of this year’s selection committee were Henry N. Cobb, Michael Graves, Hugh Hardy, Steven Holl, Ada Louise Huxtable, Richard Meier (chairman), James Polshek, Billie Tsien, and Tod Williams. “Simple structures like a contractor's storage shed or a footbridge,” said Tod Williams, “are gently re-imagined and then realized as elegant, exactingly detailed buildings that are as spare and as astonishingly rich as a poem.”

The awards were presented in New York City in May at the Academy’s annual ceremonial. Work by the winners was featured in the upcoming exhibition on view in the Academy’s galleries on Audubon Terrace through June 2012.