The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has awarded the 2010 Honors in Collaborative Achievement Award to Louis Poulsen Lighting, Inc., the first lighting manufacturer company in history to win this award.
AIA Honors for Collaborative Achievement recognize the achievements of allied professionals and organizations that work in the field of architecture “who have had a beneficial influence on or advanced the architectural profession”.
This is the highest honor that the AIA can award to an affiliated firm, individual or organization worldwide. “Since the company was founded nearly 100 years ago, we have believed that beautiful and functional lighting fixtures cannot be designed in a vacuum without the input of the people/minds who actually design buildings”, says president Kent Stilling Pedersen, Targetti Poulsen USA.
“To receive such a prestigious accolade for collaboration is a great moment in Louis Poulsen’s history and validates our company’s mission”.
Buzz Yudell, FAIA, a founding partner in Moore Rubell Yudell and one of many prominent professionals in the field of architecture who nominated Louis Poulsen for this honor, wrote, “Over about a century, Louis Poulsen has evolved into a design firm with the talent to rival Apple, but with roots deep in Danish culture and ethics. At Poulsen, the culture of the firm has always been overwhelmingly about design... This ethos permeates everything they do”.
Lighting designer, Richard C. Peters, FAIA, professor emeritus of architecture, University of California, Berkeley, wrote, “They are the most important firm in the history of lighting. No other firm has the commitment to architects and architecture that Louis Poulsen does”.
John Small, head of product design at the architecture firm Foster + Partners, wrote, “I cannot imagine a more fruitful partnership between ourselves as architects and a design/manufacturing firm that contributes an essential design element- light itself. Out of all our collaborations here at Foster + Partners, our work with Louis Poulsen has certainly been one of the great successes”.
Past winners of the AIA Honors for Collaborative Achievement include Ove Arup & Partners engineering firm, Princeton Architectural Press, and The Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Architecture.
Louis Poulsen Lighting, Inc. is a design firm and lighting manufacturer that has succeeded uniquely through collaborating with architects, for almost 100 years.
Founded in 1874 as an electrical company in Copenhagen, Denmark, Louis Poulsen evolved into a firm that creates and produces many of the most beautiful and functional lighting fixtures ever designed. The history of Louis Poulsen’s achievements is a timeline of the firm’s most important and successful partnerships with architects in Denmark and across the globe.
Louis Poulsen has won numerous international design awards, including from the Chicago Athenaeum, the Danish National Association for Building, IF Gold Award, and the prestigious international Red Dot Design Award in Germany.
