Visitor Center Architect Receives Industry's Highest Honor

Peter Bohlin, founder of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and the award-winning architect who conceived Grand Teton National Park’s Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center, received the 2010 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal on December 3, 2009.  The annual distinction represents the profession’s highest honor and is bestowed upon an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.  Bohlin is the 66th AIA Gold Medalist and joins the ranks of such visionaries as Thomas Jefferson (1993), Frank Lloyd Wright (1949), Louis Sullivan (1944), Le Corbusier (1961), Louis Kahn (1971), I.M. Pei (1979), Frank Gehry (1999), and Renzo Piano (2008).

In Bohlin’s long career, he has designed rural homes, nature centers, and urban buildings and is best known for his contextual use of materials.  Grand Teton National Park Foundation, the park’s primary fundraising partner, selected Bohlin to design a contemporary educational building to replace the park’s outdated visitor center built in the 1960s.  “We envisioned a facility that would be forward-thinking and sustainable, yet echo the landscape and history around it.  Our goal was to entice people to come inside, stay for a while, and learn something about Grand Teton,” Foundation President Leslie Mattson said.  “Peter has helped us significantly raise the national profile of the park.”

The initial phase of the 24,000-square-foot Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center was completed in 2007 and serves many of the nearly four million annual park visitors.  Bohlin is collaborating again with his original team for the project’s 3,600-square-foot final phase, a privately funded 150-seat auditorium that will feature a high-definition theater and the center’s second signature wall of windows.  The auditorium breaks ground in April 2010 and opens to the public by spring 2011.  The foundation’s fundraising efforts are currently underway for the $4.1 million project.

“We couldn’t be happier for Peter and for Grand Teton,” Mattson said.  “His interpretation of the modern visitor center has given the park one more reason to be explored and remembered.”

Bohlin’s projects have earned 14 national AIA awards, including 9 Institute Honor Awards, COTE Top Ten Green Project Awards, AIA Committee on Education Awards, and AIA Housing Awards.  Bohlin Cywinski Jackson is a 200-person practice with offices in Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Established in 1997, Grand Teton National Park Foundation provides private financial support for programs and projects that enhance, preserve, and protect Grand Teton National Park’s treasured cultural, historic, and natural resources.  In addition to the visitor center and its upcoming auditorium, the organization funds wildlife research, bear-resistant food storage boxes, and the summer Youth Conservation Program, a teen work crew that restores popular trails and historic sites, with generous gifts from its donors.