Haystack architect given Gold Medal award

WASHINGTON – The board of directors of The American Institute of Architects voted Friday to posthumously award the 2007 AIA Gold Medal to Edward Larrabee Barnes, an architect who is best remembered for fusing modernism with vernacular architecture and understated design.

One of his best-known works was the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle.

The AIA Gold Medal, voted on annually, is considered to be the highest honor an architect can receive. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Barnes will be commemorated at the American Architectural Foundation Accent on Architecture Gala on Feb. 9, 2007, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Barnes, who practiced in New York City, was noted for crisp, geometric buildings in both rural and urban landscapes. In addition to Haystack, his best-known work included:

. Crown Center, Kansas City

. 590 Madison Ave. (the former IBM Building), New York City

. 599 Lexington Ave., New York City

. The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

. The Dallas Museum of Art

. Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, Washington, D.C.

. The Sarah M. Scaife Gallery at the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh

In nominating Barnes for the award, Toshiko Mori, chair of the department of architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, said that “Barnes’ work is held in high regard among architects internationally and is influential in reassessing both the contemporary and future models of architecture. It has a generous sense of proportion spatially which is very different from precedent European models.”