The American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Housing Knowledge Community, together with the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has announced two selections for the 2015 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards, which recognize innovative housing projects with excellence in design. This year's projects were selected in the Excellence in Affordable Housing Design and Creating Community Connection categories.

The Excellence in Affordable Housing Design Award was awarded to Brooks + Scarpa for their Step Up project in Santa Monica, California, which embodies the award’s recognition of “architecture that demonstrates overall excellent design responses to the needs and constraints of affordable housing."

Gossens Bachman Architects was announced as the winner of the Creating Community Connection Award for their Co-op Plaza Redevelopment in Brattleboro, Vermont. This award “recognizes projects that incorporate housing within other community amenities for the purposes of either revitalization or planned growth.”

More about the winners, after the break…

Videos

The future of Friedensreich Hundertwasser's last unbuilt work -- a proposed Art Center for Whangarei, New Zealand -- hangs in the balance and will be decided next week by a referendum. The center, backed by the Proper Northland Trust (PNT), was originally designed in 1993 by Hundertwasser to repurpose a waterfront government building, but was never completed.

Hundertwasser, an Austrian artist and architect who lived on and off in New Zealand from the 1970s until his death in 2000, centered his designs on colorful, organic forms, and the relationship between art and nature, as well as the practice of sustainable building.