Last Friday evening, I served as the master of ceremonies for the 10th annual Cincinnati Design Awards, which recognize the best work in architecture, interior design, environmental graphic design and landscape design produced this past year in Cincinnati or by local firms for clients elsewhere.

Nearly 500 attended the awards ceremony in one of Cincinnati’s best-designed interior spaces, the Hall of Mirrors at the Hilton Netherland Plaza.

Earlier in the day, a team of five distinguished jurors from Cincinnati, New York City, Boston and Los Angeles evaluated 69 submissions. I was invited sit in on jury’s deliberations (though not to participate).

Cincinnati is a wonderful place to appreciate the role that architecture and design play in shaping a place’s distinctive sense of identity.

If you want to understand the development of Cincinnati, I recommend three tours.

First, begin at the east end of Fourth Street in front of the Taft Museum of Art, and then walk westward through the city’s original skyscraper canyon all the way to Central Avenue.

Second, for a sense of the industrial history of the region, drive Spring Grove Avenue from the Post Office in the West End to the Ivorydale plant in St. Bernard.

Third, to capture a glimpse of the suburban vision, take walks through Glendale, Mariemont, Lakeside Park and Greenhills. On all these tours, don’t just look at the buildings, but pay attention to the landscape design.

Ask questions about the original intent as well as later adaptations and what that says about the changing nature of the city.

Architecture and design not only tell us who we have been, and who we are, but also who we want to become, which is the function of the Design Awards competition. This is not just about expensive high design projects, but also about the merits of the interior design of chain stores like LensCrafters and Baby R Us, or a new architectural design for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

One of the most interesting discussions revolved around the nomination of Crossroads Community Church in Oakley which won a Merit Award. Situated in transformed Home Depot, with a significant addition, Crossroads is not your typical church.

The congregation started with the raw materials of any “big box” store -a giant cube with no niceties. At a time when converting century-old factories and warehouses into condos is all the rage, one juror said he was relieved to see that something can be done with big box stores, because someday “they will all have to be converted into something else.”

The organizers of the competition added a new category this year to recognize outstanding design that is also environmentally sustainable. Only two buildings were entered in this category, and the judges decided not to grant any awards, but the conversation around the topic of sustainability was fascinating.

It was not about specifics - green roofs, use of renewable materials, daylighting systems, rainwater recycling systems -but about the fact that within a decade these methods will become the standard in all projects, and we will cease thinking about them as cutting edge.

As one juror pointed out, the challenge at the moment is to find clients who understand the importance of sustainability and will allow architects and designers to incorporate the approach.

The most fascinating aspect of the deliberation was the significance of the work that has been done on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. This year, the focus was on the new Richard E. Lindner Athletics Center designed by architect Bernard Tschumi and the environmental graphics by Kelly Kolar and Marsha Short in the surrounding Varsity Village.

This amazing boomerang shaped building forms the pivot point between Nippert Stadium and the Fifth Third Center as if it was “an elephant tip-toeing through the jewelry store.”

The interior is breathtaking, what one judge jokingly called the “best use of red, white and black.”

But what has happened on the UC campus is bigger than any one building. Under the leadership of Ronald Kull, the recently retired associate vice president and university architect, the entire campus has been re-imagined. The newly completed Main Street provides coherence to a crowded and often confusing landscape.

This delightful transformation of the UC campus over the last two decades might be embraced as a hopeful metaphor for the entire region. Like the old UC, greater Cincinnati seems disorganized and disjointed, lacking coherence and a sense of purpose.

Like the old campus, the region is functional but dull, lacking a sense of pride that comes from purpose. The UC transformation took major investments to hire world-renowned architects, but it was vision, not money, that was critical. The vast majority of the elements on the campus are the same ones that were there in 1985, but the context has been changed.

Entrances announce a sense of pride and confidence, older buildings like Tangeman Hall have been reinterpreted not just renovated, and Main Street gives the campus coherence and invites the formation of community.

If you haven’t explored UC recently, I recommend it. And while you are walking, pose the question, “What lessons could we learn that might help reinvigorate or region?”

Dan Hurley is the assistant vice president for history and research at the Cincinnati Museum Center. He is also the staff historian for Channel 12 News and the executive producer of Local 12 Newsmakers. Reach him at dhurley@cincymuseum.org

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