2025 Honor Awards

iolair (Gaelic for “eagle,” pronounced eye-oh-LAIR) is a newly founded artist residency on Orcas Island, created to support the making and sharing of contemporary art in a rural context. The residency’s first building in Eastsound serves as both anchor and platform, combining gallery, studio, work loft, and dwelling into a single hybrid space that fosters exchange between visiting artists and the local community. Designed for growth, the program anticipates future buildings that will expand opportunities for production and dialogue. Artists are invited through a nominating committee of contemporary arts professionals, ensuring a diverse and rigorous practice. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, iolair is committed to sustaining a vibrant cultural presence on Orcas Island.

Negotiating Dual Realms
The program required two opposing conditions: privacy for focused work and openness for public engagement. The design response is both refuge and forum. An L-shaped plan frames a courtyard equal in size to the building, establishing a flexible outdoor room for gathering, installations, and dialogue. Facing North Beach Road (the busiest street in Eastsound) the façade mediates public and private realms with a sliding shutter and extruded vitrine, allowing the artist to work in seclusion while also showcasing art to the street. Together, courtyard and operable façade balance seclusion and exchange.

Shaping Space
Conceived as a carved mass, the building’s sloping roof reflects the gradient from public to private use. Monolithic, ebony-stained cedar siding reinforces its sculptural quality, while a circular “eagle’s eye” window marks the gallery, drawing light deep into the interior and connecting to the park to the north. Inside, the program is compact yet layered, sequencing from the expansive gallery / studio with work loft to the kitchen, service spaces, and finally the intimate bedroom with the interior gradient of scale and privacy echoed by the sloping roof above.

Responsible Design
The modest scale, efficient massing, and natural materials minimize environmental impact while reinforcing the village fabric. The site plan anticipates future development, with a second structure (“east lair”) planned to expand artist workspace and programming.

Art & Architecture
From the outset, local artists were engaged as collaborators. A nine-foot steel courtyard gate, forged steel handles inlaid with site-harvested applewood, a sculptural firepit, custom handrails all by a local artist, and a stone installation by a local sculptor (both based on Orcas Island) root the project in the island’s creative community. These works embed art within the architecture, making the building itself both canvas and frame.

Inspiring Exchange
Resident artists have described the building as a muse, with its light, proportions, and courtyard relationships shaping their work. In this way, iolair is not simply a container for art but an active participant in its making, expanding access, linking international artists with local audiences, and fostering cultural dialogue.

Read full article at Honor Awards Seattle: https://aiaseattle.submittable.com/gallery/7876d139-96b9-4fe9-b25d-b8bf2bd3e04b/51613068