Washington, D.C. -- The American Institute of Architects (AIA) recognized two design projects with its 2018 Innovation Awards. The Innovation Awards recognize the exemplary use and implementation of innovative technologies and progressive practices among architects, designers, collaborators and clients. Awarded projects must support the design, delivery and operation of buildings or research in practice and academia. This year’s recipients for the 2018 Innovation Awards were: Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab (Allston, Mass.; Shepley Bulfinch) and Stalled! (Joel Sanders).

The Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab provides much-needed space for life science ventures that have a connection to the Harvard University community. The building’s second floor houses the laboratory space, with 36 lab benches, shared tissue culture core labs, centralized fume hoods, a cold storage room, and a private 1,000 square foot suite. Glass walls provide a visual connection to the space below and promote collaboration and movement. The first floor is a flexible space for individual and collaborative work, socialization, and events. Anchoring the otherwise open area is a central core that includes enclosed meeting rooms, phone booths, and a kitchen. A social area defined by a wood ceiling and floor intersects the core, providing further definition to the open area while still allowing the flexible furniture to move and accommodate a range of activities and special events.

Stalled! takes as its point of departure national debates surrounding transgender access to public restrooms to address the design consequences of an urgent social justice issue: the need to create safe, sustainable and inclusive public restrooms for everyone, irrespective of age, gender, religion, and disability. Using an innovate methodology that assembles a cross-disciplinary research team of architects, transgender historians, and legal scholars, Stalled! explores the question of all gender restrooms from a cultural, political and legal perspective. The mission is to create viable economical restroom guidelines and prototypes for retrofit and new construction projects that can be adopted and deployed across the U.S.

For more information, visit www.aia.org.