ROANOKE, VA.- Georganne Bingham, executive director of the Art Museum of Western Virginia, announced today that the institution’s new Randall Stout designed facility has been selected to receive one of the prestigious 2007 American Architecture Awards awarded by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd. The new Art Museum is scheduled to open to the public in November 2008.

The American Architecture Awards honor and celebrate the most outstanding new accomplishments for architecture designed and built in the United States by leading American firms and international architecture firms practicing in the USA. The American Architecture Awards have become the most important awards program for public recognition for excellence in architecture in the United States. The awards identify the new cutting-edge design direction, urban philosophy, design approach, style, and intellectual substance in American architecture today.

“We are thrilled that the new Art Museum has been awarded this incredibly prestigious award, and we are so proud that it has been chosen as an example of the most cutting-edge design going on today nationally and internationally,” said Georganne Bingham. “We knew Randall Stout would design a very exciting building. The recognition of the new museum as one of the best designed buildings in the world exceeds our expectations, and we are again reminded of the excellent choice we made in selecting Randall as design architect for the project.”

Added Bingham, “We are delighted that the Art Museum has received such an important accolade even before it is completed. It gives us a great indication of the national and international attention that the museum will receive and bring to western Virginia and the Commonwealth when it opens next fall.”

For the American Architecture Awards 2007, The Chicago Athenaeum received hundreds of submissions from the best and most renowned design firms in the United States and international firms working in the U.S. The submissions ranged from new corporate headquarters, institutions, airports, sports and transportation facilities, and urban planning projects to private residences and multi-family housing designed as of January 1, 2005. The jurying took place in Dublin, Ireland under the auspices of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.

Thirty-five buildings in Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Great Britain were selected by the jury for the 2007 awards. Projects selected include new corporate headquarters, schools and universities, libraries, art museums, foundation headquarters, transit projects, lofts, residences, and single-family homes.

No skyscrapers or large-scale office buildings were selected this year by the Irish jury, signaling an ever-growing European concern for smaller, more intimate building types, an awareness of energy conservation and sustainability, and profound respect for the built and human environments.

The 2007 awarded projects and other selected works will form an exhibition, New American Architecture, to open in New York in November 2007. Details have not yet been announced.

All awarded projects can be found on-line at The Chicago Athenaeum’s website at
www.chi-athenaeum.org.

The Chicago Athenaeum, established in the city where modern architecture was first realized by Louis H. Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Miles van der Rohe, is the only museum of architecture and design in the United States and functions internationally as one of the foremost museums dedicated to both architecture and industrial design. Founded in 1988, the museum is dedicated to the art of design in all areas of the discipline, including architecture, industrial and product design, graphics, and urban planning.