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Award - Honor Award

Project - Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Center

Category - Institutional

Project Location - Colleville-Sur-Mer, France

Architect - SmithGroup

Associated Architect - John Lampros Architecte SARL

Client/Owner - American Battle Monuments Commission

Contractor - Methodes & Pilotage S.A., Paris, France

Photographer(s) - Roland Halbe Fotografie, Prakash Patel Photography

Jury Comments - This is a project that speaks less about its role as an interpretive center but more of the experience beyond the program. We felt very strongly about this project right from the beginning. It was one that we were immediately drawn to and it stayed at the very top of our list throughout the jury process. The building’s presence, the idea of the pavilions set upon a plinth, the appropriate link between openness to the landscape and the message of a meditative space that is conveyed is very striking.  It is a serious project and appropriately so. It is honorable to the point of reverential. Its denial of presence is perhaps its most powerful contribution to the sequence of outdoor and indoor spaces which prepares the visitor for the narrative experience held within.