OKC-area architects present award to squirrelly guy
Metro area architects presented their annual awards Friday at a lunch ceremony at Will Rogers Theatre — and danged if they didn’t present me with one, too.
I am humbled. It was the B.H. Prasad Honorary Award, presented by the American Institute of Architects Central Oklahoma Chapter, which is putting on a great tour Sunday.
Prasad was a friend of the profession and supported it through his work at Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. The award presented in his name recognizes those who contribute “to the betterment of the architectural profession, the community and the built environment.”
My remarks:
I’ve been thinking about architects this week, knowing this was coming up, and i was trying to remember who was the first architect I knew, and it was Mike Brady.
But the first real architect I met was Anthony McDermid, who welcomed me to Oklahoma City in 1999 when I moved here. I’m an Oklahoman, but I’d never lived in “the City.” Kind of like “Big Country” Bryant Reeves, I thought that meant Sallisaw.
But he welcomed me to Oklahoma City, and into the architect and construction community, and held my hand in some ways, because I didn’t know much. I’ve come a long way from “Who’s Bruce Goff ?”
And I was also thinking about when I first encountered architecture as a thing, and it was at Oklahoma State University. I lived in Bennett Hall for two or three years and walked past the Architecture Building every day — and it was never closed! The lights were never out, no matter how long we stayed out on the Strip, coming back to the dorm. I was impressed with that.
And that got me thinking this week about this: Y’all are the reason the arts and sciences are in the same college. You make them dance. You make art dance with science in a way that can be exquisite and is always important. And I admire that. If anything, I try to communicate that, as I can, in my writing.
(The School of Architecture at OSU actually is in the College of Architecture, Engineering & Technology. Oops.)
The timing of this award is bittersweet for me. I got news of it six days after I learned that I am no longer the real estate editor of The Oklahoman. There is no real estate editor. I’m back to full-time reporting for the first time in 30 years.
The goal is so I, so we, can dig deeper, dive deeper, into issues, and into trends, and into news that, hopefully, you won’t be able to get from anybody else.
Lots of news is out there, and we really don’t try to compete anymore (to get it first). We try to create a niche, and create a situation where you have to come to us to get what we have because we’re the only ones who have it.
With that: We are in the Will Rogers Theatre. He famously said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” If he were here today, he would say, “All I know is what I read in the papers, and in the news apps, and on my Kindle, and on my laptop.”
And so, I encourage you: If you don’t, please subscribe to the digital Oklahoman. It’ll keep me a job, and it’ll keep y’all in the news. Thank you very much.
Congratulations to fellow award winners Farooq Karim, William Wayne Caudill Award; MA + Architecture, Solomon Andrew Layton Award; Lingo Construction Services, Keystone Award; and Darla Mullett, Robert M. Lawrence Volunteer Award. And congratulations to those recognized for earning their architecture licenses: Scott Breisford, Elizabeth Crossno, Clay Dobbins, Jessica Fleming, Zackarie Long, Shawn Llorg, Zachary Maggia, Audrey Merz, Stephen Mitchell, Andrew Stevens Jr., and Spencer Wilson.
Senior Business Writer Richard Mize has covered housing, construction, commercial real estate, and related topics for the newspaper and Oklahoman.com since 1999.