Johnson Center Wins Prestigious Design Award

The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons was recently named a 2009 AIA Institute Honor Award winner, the industry's most prestigious honor. Designed by Lyn Rice Architects, the center was one of twenty five projects selected from a pool of over 700 international applicants. This year's award recipients will be honored in April at the AIA 2009 National Convention and Design Exposition in San Francisco.

Opened in February 2008, the Sheila C. Johnson Design center combined four adjacent buildings at street level to create a 32,800-square-foot urban quad and programming destination. The center was funded by a generous $7 million donation from philanthropist and Parsons board chair Sheila C. Johnson.

This is the latest in a string of design awards for the center, including the 2008 AIA New York State Award of Excellence, the 2008 American Institute of Architects NY/Boston Society of Architects Biennial Building Type Honor Award for Educational Facility Design, and the 2007 American Institute of Architects/NY Merit Award for Projects.

For more information on the AIA Awards, please visit the AIA website (link to: www.aia.org). For more information on the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, please visit the website.