RECENT DESIGN AWARDS

McCLAIN + YU is ecstatic to announce that we are the recipients of FOUR awards in 2022 for our Rio Rancho SkyRoom submission - UNM Jeff Harnar Award, AIA Albuquerque Award, AIA New Mexico Award, and the ACSA Faculty Design Award!

The SkyRoom within Rio Rancho’s Campus Park embodies the spirit of New Mexico with its subtle nod to the the Zia symbol and the 4 cardinal points with manipulation of light and shadow. Several other points of influence contributed to the SkyRoom design. First, the project needed to serve as the centerpiece within the newly developed Campus Park - Turfgrass lawn panels now spill out of the main opening of the SkyRoom offering visitors a cool, shady place to enjoy a picnics/concerts/fireworks. Second, we wanted the pavilion to provide a frame for a stone-lined amphitheater and traverse 30 feet of topographical change. Third, the SkyRoom was conceived as a geometrical construct – the result of a subtractive intersection of a large shed roofed structure with two cylindrical volumes.  The cylinders, one small, one large, intersect in the space, creating a surprising, albeit Euclidean ruled surface. Finally, the SkyRoom needed to serve as a performance space with unique acoustics, to create areas with a high degree of focus for sound along with other areas which diffuse sound.

We are excited to share with you some images of our SkyRoom!

SMITH PLAZA WINS BRICK DESIGN AWARD! →

Thank you Brick Industry Association for this design award! M+Y with Landscape Architects MRWM, and SURFACE DESIGN practice the words of our geist teachers:

“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.”- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“Even a brick wants to be something. A brick wants to be something. It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick... wants to be something more than it is. It wants to be something better than it is.” - Louis Kahn

The humble bricks come together to repeat its own measure, its patterns, with the ever presence to adjust its position. These movements in material bring beauty and elegance to textured space of the outside. The brick is the same but different in its ability to modulate the unit for its fullest expression. The brick is common, but rich and impressive by the artful hand/mind of the craftsperson! The brick aspires to be more, just as all architectural projects aspire to be more. It is our designed intention to take common materials, common circumstances and heighten the architectural potential for all buildings!

RECIPIENT OF THE 2016/17 AIA UPJOHN AWARD

Kristina H. Yu as PI, of University of New Mexico and McCLAIN+YU Architecture & Design, is the recipient of the 2016/2017 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Upjohn Research Award.  She is working with a highly skilled team from McCLAIN+YU and mPOWER. This collaboration stems back to design research projects to 2012. They will utilize the DRAGON SCALEs (TM) to create a demonstration project for interior building and cladding systems.