Each year since 1997, The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design has celebrated new and outstanding American Architecture through the Museum's Honor Awards program.

Hundreds of submissions for this Awards Program were received from architecture firms across the United States. Forty-seven projects have been selected and are honored with the 2004 "American Architecture Award."

The program was organized and curated by Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, architect, journalist, and critic, and President/Director of The Chicago Athenaeum.

Winning projects in 2004 represent the best of new contemporary architecture being built from coast to coast including projects designed by American architects in Singapore, Kuwait, Great Britain, Chile, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.

The exhibition, which opened at The Chicago Athenaeum at Galena in January, 2005 and continues through April gives the public an opportunity to discover and appreciate the best new Architecture produced in our time. Co-sponsored by The American Center for Architecture and Design, a special edition of the exhibition is scheduled to travel to architecture schools across the United States.

In July, 2004, a jury of distinguished Irish architects and journalists chose 47 corporate headquarters, skyscrapers, institutions, transportation facilities, interiors, urban planning projects, airports, and residences for their design excellence. Twelve projects were awarded for new institutional and educational facilities and nine for single family residences. Two projects were also selected by the jury for bold new ideas in public housing and urban planning.

The jury for the American Architecture Awards was held under the auspices of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) in Dublin. The jury members were prominent members of Ireland's architecture and design community:

This year’s awards program honors new (2002-2004) corporate, institutional, commercial, and residential architecture, built in the U.S. or abroad by a U.S. architectural firm, both built and unbuilt projects alike. International firms headquartered outside the United States were eligible to submit projects built only in the United States.

The awards program is intended to draw attention to the broad diversity of architecture, architecture interiors, and urban planning. Winning projects are large or small in scope and involve new construction, renovation, or preservation/restoration.

"The Chicago Athenaeum believes that 'The American Architecture Awards' serves the direct and distinct purpose of promoting Good Design and as a vehicle to further enlighten the general public's understanding and knowledge about architecture and the design arts," states Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine.

"By focusing attention on the broad range of exemplary projects in this competition—from the single family home and public housing to the corporate office tower and other skyscrapers—we believe that the practice of architecture is further elevated and a standard of design excellence is promoted in our public environments and our public communities," Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine continues.

"And this year's results were extremely provocative and poetic," he adds, "from a simple high art suana in Minnesota by Salmela Architects to a modernist icon designed for the Mori Arts Center in Tokyo by Gluckman Mayner Architects."

While winning projects continue new trends in cutting-edge design in the United States, the emphasis on buildings and urban projects selected by the Irish architects centered on the sense of community in the urban and rural environment and modern lifestyle enhancement.

According to Ioannis Karalias, Museum Vice President, The Chicago Athenaeum, "each winning project—from the individual romantic house in the landscape to a towering skyscraper by SOM in Kuwait or the state-of-the-art corporate office environment in Great Britain by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates—demonstrates how design is performed by the best American architects with skill and sensitivity in resolution to formal, functional, and technical requirements."

"The awarded buildings and urban planning projects demonstrate an ongoing commitment to social progress, technical advancement, environmental concerns, and a sensitivity and the thoughtfulness of our current human civilization," Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine adds.

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design founded "The American Architecture Awards" in 1997 as a way in which to draw significant international attention to new buildings and planning projects being built and designed in the United States by the best of America’s architecture offices and firms. The program has a unique educational mission and public profile with the intent of promoting and celebrating American design and American architecture to a national and international audience.