The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Inouye Regional Center is among the winners of the 2018 American Architecture Awards.
Selected by the Chicago Atheneaum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, these annual American Architecture Awards are the country’s highest public awards presented by a public arts, culture and educational institution.
Located on a national historic landmark site in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, NOAA’s Inouye Regional Center features the adaptive reuse of two World War II-era airplane hangars linked by a new steel and glass building. The original aircraft hangars, designed in 1939 by Albert Kahn, inspired beautifully simple solutions for how the new center uses air, water and light.
The complex accommodates 715 people in a high-performance research and office campus that integrates NOAA’s mission of “science, service and stewardship” with the region’s cultural traditions and the island’s ecology. It houses a diverse range of critical programs, functions and federal departments, including the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
The overarching goal for the center was to accommodate new uses while restoring and preserving the site’s historic character. The new buildings and landscape elements needed to be compatible with but not mimic the original architecture and site design. The team worked closely with local preservationists to keep the hangars close to their original condition. The new building uses clear, simple forms and appropriate materials carefully selected to complement the scale and materials of the existing hangar buildings while addressing the requirement for the new facility to present itself as the state-of-the-art headquarters for NOAA in the Pacific region.
The LEED Gold-certified Inouye Regional Center previously won an AIA COTE Award for being one of the year’s best examples of sustainable design excellence.
HOK’s design team worked with Hawaii-based architect Ferraro Choi.
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