Last night was awards night for the WA Chapter of the AIA. It’s been a few years since I attended but as a lay judge (in the Heritage category) I felt duty bound to show my face. And fill it with entrée, main and dessert of course.

How firmly David Karotkin’s tongue was pushed into his cheek when he said “there will be no losers tonight” remains unknown, however as the disembodied “Price is Right” voice read out the winners for the Public Architecture category it seemed as though everyone would definitely be a winner – 11 gongs in all!

Acorn Photo clients Site Architecture and TAG Architects were among them for Serisier Building and Coady Centre, Mercedes College and Roseworth Primary College and Education Support Centre respectively (below). (respectively).

George Temple Poole winner of 2010, Blane Brackenridge’s spaceship chic House in Cottesloe took out the Marshall Clifton Award for Residential Architecture with one of the two commendations going to the elegant pavilion based Wright Feldhusen Eagle Bay house (below and below).

The Harold Krantz Award for Multiple Residential was landed by Officer Woods Architects for their wonderful medium density development in Stevens Street, Fremantle. Jenny and Trent were kept busy with this, their only entry this year, as it also took out the Walter Greenham Sustainable Architecture Award.

CODA’s Women’s Health and Family Services building in Newcastle St and Parry and Rosenthal’s Southern Seawater Desalination Plant both garnered Architecture Awards in the Commercial category. Claremont Quarter by Christou Design Group and Hassell received a commendation for Urban Design.

The judging experience gave me a great insight into how the images we shoot are used and seen by the jury panels. As I mentioned earlier, I was invited by the Institute to be a lay juror this year. First time. The panels are all comprised of three architects and one layperson. This year the Institute introduced a presentation day which is open to the public. Architects speak on their projects and supplement professional shot images with plans and photographs from the construction phase. Over the following weeks site visits are made by the jurors.

Kim Burges originally suggested I join the residential jury, but having photographed almost half the entered projects I felt the conflict of interest issues were too great. Instead I joined Nerida Mourdant, Eamon Broderick and Alex Quinn on the Heritage panel.

9 projects with wildly divergent briefs and budgets made it a reasonably tough job. The ultimate winner of the Margaret Pit Morison Award for Heritage went to Donaldson and Warn for their careful restoration and upgrade of the Marsala House, a spectacular 70′s listed house designed by Iwan Iwanoff. An Architecture Award and Commendation went to Griffiths Architects and Bernard Seeber Pty Ltd for Cathedral House and Fremantle Railway Station. None of these were photographed by me so no pics here retro fiends!

Bad news folks; Adrian is leaving us. It’s nothing personal (or so he assures me!) rather an alignment of family factors that is too hard to ignore. And timing is of the essence, he and Helen are heading back to Blighty ahead of the birth of their second child.

Adrian has been with us for yonks – like all great histories the exact date of our meeting is lost to the mists of time, let’s just say it was about a decade and a half ago. He started at Acorn as an broom wielding, tea making, scum sucking assistant. He will leave as a photographer pure and simple. A photographer whose technical skills are matched by his sensitive creative aesthetic.

Most people we’ve told about the “change”, as we’re calling it, have been lost for words. A couple of them managed to sputter out something that decoded to “what in blazes are you going to do?!” Our old mate John H. Browne texted in this comment; “Why?”

Tragically at this writing these questions remain essentially unanswered. On Jan 20th we’re having a send off, if we don’t know any more by then we’ll just make something up. Drop us a line if you’d like to be there.

Oh yeah, comments are on, please leave any wishes and reminiscences here.

Adrian Lambert checks out his prospects in the northern hemishere