Design Award judge Stephen Van Dyck, AIA, LEED AP, partner, LMN Architects, Seattle, said, “The consistency of the concept around the project is the project. It’s not just about the outside of the building, it’s about the entire experience of the place. They nailed it.”

It’s the interior of the Mesa Rim climbing gym in San Marcos, Calif., that defines the exterior and gives it its unique design feature. “The strategy around the glazing helped the structure of the building become almost like an ornament,” said Design Award judge Stephen Van Dyck, AIA, LEED AP, partner, LMN Architects, Seattle. “It exposed a lot of the bones of the building in a really beautiful way.”

The central feature of this new custom residence in an established neighborhood is a zinc-shingled curved roof that imposes a texture and formality on the structure, and the beauty becomes elegant. Introduce weather, and the roof becomes a kinetic sculpture that forms snow into cones connecting the eaves to the ground.

** Winner in METALCON’s Metal in Architecture Design & Photo Contest for “Roofs” Category

The diagonal reveals are part of what Kayce Williford, AIA, senior associate at archimania in Memphis, calls the crown of the building. It has a weighted, masonry base topped with a metal-clad structure, where the reveals cross diagonally over vertical, corrugated metal panels. The metal-clad crown serves two purposes: it draws attention from pedestrians and roadway traffic, and it conceals step-ups and step-downs in the roof and HVAC equipment.

The building’s correlative program is expressed in two interlocking forms. “An L-shaped, steel-clad plinth contains the flexible first-floor unit and rises as a service spine alongside the slightly cantilevered, two-story wood box that houses the main residence,” says Sebastian Schmaling, AIA, LEED AP, principal, Johnsen Schmaling Architects.

The main design goal for architect Walter Scott Perry of Los Angeles-based Ecotech Design with the interiors was to create a simple, but open space using 20-foot-long by 9 1/2-foot-high, hi-bay shipping containers (from Crate Modular Inc., Carson, Calif.) with a 4-foot-wide by 12-foot-high site-built, steel, stud-framed clerestory space constructed between to create a 20-foot by 20-foot footprint or 400-square-foot interior.

“The reused heritage building houses a tropical garden and since the building started ruining when Manaus started its industrial district (late 1960s), we wanted to use an industrial look while maintaining its ruin aspect,” says Laurent Troost of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil-based Laurent Troost Architectures. “[It has] an industrial steel structure within its consolidated ruins. The final result is a mix of ruin, industrial and natural/vegetal that points at a new way of dealing with heritage buildings.”

Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), New York City, the David M. Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago builds on the city’s rich history of the Midway Plaisance, “City within the Park,” of the 1893 World’s Fair, which showcased a new American optimism for greener, safer and healthier cities.

** Grand Prize Winner in METALCON’s Metal in Architecture Design & Photo Contest

Ribbed metal panels give Frontline Townhomes in Memphis, Tenn., texture and depth. At different levels, different panels create scales and a sense of movement. Furthermore, the sense of movement is expressed by projections at the second floors. Popping out from gray metal panels, bright yellow entry doors and, on top of the buildings, bright yellow rooftop structures make it clear where entrances are and where you are amongst the development’s five buildings, three of which comprise the project.