OPN wins two awards at IIDA Great Plains IDEA celebration
Two OPN projects were honored at this year’s International Interior Design Association Great Plains Chapter Interior Design Excellence Awards on May 3, 2024. This year six projects received a Project Award in addition to several special categories. OPN was the only firm to win two project awards.
Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust (Marion, Iowa)
Project Award
Known for warm and welcoming service, including signature chocolate chip cookies, this new branch bank location for a mid-size midwestern city needed to embody the bank’s commitment to community and fostering relationships. Inside, a conference room and three offices hold the elevation fronting the urban-edge. Careful detailing allows the steel structure and office modules to work in concert. Each office wall terminates gracefully into the steel column, intersected with the office’s glass fronts, maintaining an uninterrupted view through the building. Clerestory windows reinforce the interior circulation path and diffuse light through translucent glass. Walnut wood panels and slats are used at the teller line panels and the wall that wraps the vault and support spaces as a backdrop that brings warmth at the core of the light-filled open space.
Johnston City Hall (Johnston, Iowa)
Project Award
This new city hall, which combines municipal office functions with community spaces inside and out, seeks to create a civic core and community destination in the tradition of the rural Iowa town square with the intention of establishing a unique identity. The architecture and interior design is rooted in the belief that a building should be of the place from which it came. It was the intent to use materials and products from local sources wherever possible. Trees on the project site that could not be preserved were salvaged and incorporated throughout the building’s interior. Walnut, oak and ash trees salvaged from the project site were milled locally to construct a custom council dais, staff workstations, and public podium in the council chambers. Salvaged wood is also used in the lobby’s public reception areas and at the entrance to each space in the staff areas. One of the oak trees dated back to the city’s inception in 1969 was kept its form as a custom table in the lobby. Stone was from a quarry within 200 miles and all of the exterior structural columns are heavy timber. Art work incorporated throughout the site features local artists.
Read more about the winners here.
