Carol Ross Barney receives 2023 AIA Gold Medal
2023 AIA Gold Medal Award
Carol Ross Barney is awarded the 2023 AIA Gold Medal, honoring an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.
With her unwavering focus on design excellence, generosity, and social responsibility, she is an unrivaled architect for the people who champions good design as a right for all.
The American Institute of Architects
The Chicago Riverwalk’s “success has been instant and electrifying. Genuine new public space, owned by the city and free to use is something we rarely see… The end result is complex, urbane, and intriguing.
Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times
The Chicago Riverwalk may be the most viscerally satisfying new project of the season. We see collections of tall buildings, the streets between them, and people, all presented episodically and in high relief. We are in a living museum — one with no roof and no limits.
Reed Kroloff, New York Times
2023 AIA National Awards — Regional & Urban Design
Railyard Park receives a Regional & Urban Design Award for accounting for the entire built environment, local culture, and available resources, modeling architecture’s promise and true value to communities.
We’re looking at the park as a catalyst for future development. Railyard Park is a beautiful anchor that boosts economic and commercial development while maintaining a sense of place and authenticity for Downtown Rogers.
Meredith Bergstrom, Program Officer, Walton Family Foundation
World’s Most Innovative Company
Fast Company names Ross Barney Architects one of 2022’s Most Innovative Companies for “energizing Rogers, Arkansas, with a new park project and McDonald’s restaurants with a net-zero design”.
2021 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award
Ross Barney Architects Receives Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award. The honor acknowledges the studio’s forty-year commitment to design excellence, community, and the environment.
Read more about the honor.
DuSable Park design team selected
The Chicago Park District selected Ross Barney Architects’ joint venture with Brook Architecture (DuSable Park Design Alliance) to design DuSable Park; a 3.5 acre space where the Chicago River and Lake Michigan meet.
University of Minnesota Duluth, Civil Engineering Building
The building is used both as a learning tool for the students and as a recruitment tool for the program… structural bracing is left exposed and large bifold doors expose the high-bay spaces, both for moving objects in and out and for showing off experiments to prospective students. Rain scuppers channel stormwater into cisterns and a French drain system in the surrounding landscape and fully glazed sections between the more solid concrete and Cor-Ten steel allow passersby to see the activity within.
All told, the building-as-teaching tool reaps the benefits of a direct approach to architecture in delivering hands-on lessons in materials and methods.
Vernon Mays, Architect Magazine
The Searle Visitor at the Lincoln Park Zoo
The Searle Visitor Center represents the aspirations of a Chicago institution that has become one of the last free zoos in the country with a memorable building that is a gateway to the park, city, and world beyond. The information center, with its retracting walls, opens to the Zoo grounds in the summer months, enriching the visitor experience and creating an open and welcoming experience.
“What if… we design different modes of transportation in a sustainable and equitable way?”
Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, Hon. ASLA
Design Principal and Founder, Carol Ross Barney, spoke at Architectural Record’s 2022 Innovation Conference. Her talk, titled “Architecture and Infrastructure: Designing the Spaces In Between”, focused on making livable and sustainable cities with innovative infrastructure. Although transit, utilities, and public ways are not generally considered to be places for architectural or design interventions, they are important opportunities that we cannot afford to overlook.
It’s been a big plus for the community. One of the main reasons Google relocated here was for the transportation in the area
27th Ward Alderman, of the new station
From the Archive
Completed in 2005, the Oklahoma City Federal Building became the first federal building to be designed by a Women Architect. The project is a philosophical and practical response to tragedy, making a statement on the role architecture plays in protecting and inspiring society.
Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger described the building as “.…a public space… The federal government is not interested in barricading itself in a bunker, but in fact, makes a statement to the public that they own this building, which is what public architecture should be.”
Decarbonization Award
AIA Chicago honors the McDonald’s Global Flagship at Walt Disney World with it’s inaugural Decarbonization Award, Citation of Merit.
Fast Company World Changing Ideas
Fast Company names the McDonald’s Global Flagship at Walt Disney World a 2021 World Changing Idea finalist.
Environmental Stewardship
McDonald’s Global Flagship Chicago receives LEED Platinum Certification, the highest level of achievement from the globally recognized program.
Material Innovation
McDonald’s Global Flagship Chicago becomes first commercial use of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) in the city.
Justice
Ross Barney Architects is dedicated to empowering a sense of place, pride, and belonging; in our work and in our studio.
Environmental Stewardship
Ross Barney Architects designs to preserve the planet for future generations and is a signatory of the AIA 2030 Commitment and Architects Advocate. No matter the scope or scale, each of the studio’s projects explore an inventive and integrated approach to stewardship; anything less is not an option.
Railyard Park Signifies a Small-Town Renaissance
Addie Broyles of Metropolis Magazine catalogs the recent completion of the Railyard Park in Rogers, Arkansas.
Just the Ticket; New Railside Public Park
Matt Hickman of The Architect’s Newspaper reflects on challenges and opportunities and active train tracks presented for the Railyard Park “…a local trademark worth venerating, not obscuring.”
Innovation by Design
Fast Company honors the Railyard Park with a top honor for Best Urban Design.