Spotlight on Snow Kreilich, A’18’s Architecture Firm Award Winner
Emily Pollock posted on June 29, 2018 | | 94 views
The Snow Kreilich tea, receives the American Institute of Architects’ 2018 Architecture Firm Award at Radio City Music Hall.
In his acceptance speech for the AIA’s 2018 Architecture Firm Award, Matt Kreilich said, “Our work is less about making a loud statement and more about blending in.”
It may sound like an odd statement coming from someone whose firm had just won an award recognizing at least 10 years of distinguished architecture, but Snow Krelich Architects has built its practice on designing buildings that stand out by blending in.
The Minneapolis-based firm, founded by Julie Snow in 1995, has made a name for itself designing what Kreilich called “everyday building types” like truck stops, factories and offices. Their heavily awarded designs are simple, elegant and fit their surrounding landscape. In a particularly famous example, Straight River Northbound Safety Rest Area has dark cladding on the sides to blend into the surrounding forest, a mirrored front to reflect the sky and a back-facing terrace for weary travelers to enjoy the ravine behind the building.
Snow’s portion of the acceptance speech focused on something just as remarkable and rare as the firm’s architectural designs: its culture.
“We try to balance what we ask of our people so that we try to get things to something relatively unusual in…