IIT College of Architecture graduate program faculty Catherine Wetzel, Paul Endres, and Rick Nelson won the Creative Achievement Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), a national organization of architecture schools and educators, for their “Structures in the Studio” program for the first-year Master of Architecture studio.

The ACSA annual awards honor exemplary work in architectural education that challenges students and contributes to both professional practice and the public sector. The Creative Achievement Award recognizes a specific creative achievement in teaching, design, scholarship, research, or service that advances architectural education. The association will hold an awards ceremony at the ACSA 100th Annual Meeting in Boston, March 1-4, 2012.

The six-week “Structures in the Studio” studio module teaches the integration of material practices in design from the perspective of construction and structural applications. ACSA jurors found that the lectures, workshops, and models focused on the structural design-linked studio to the profession “not merely as digital simulation, but also as an expressive three-dimensional textbook of applied knowledge.”