January 2015
| Business World
155
design awards. In 1991, the firm even won
the highest honor that the American Insti-
tute of Architects can bestow – the Archi-
tecture Firm Award, recognizing ZGF for
“creatively transforming client needs and
aspirations into elegant, inventive architec-
tural form, and establishing a standard of ex-
cellence and expectation of quality to which
other firms aspire.”
According to Ted, those awards are always
appreciated, but it’s especially rewarding to
see how their projects are directly influenc-
ing or impacting the users.
“Whether it’s a hospital where you can see
kids in an environment where they actually
heal better, or a laboratory building where
researchers are working on finding cures for
diseases – we want the building to be a cata-
lyst,” he says. “To me, that’s much more grati-
fying than anything else.”
Recently, at the 2014 AmericanArchitecture
Awards – hosted by the Chicago Athenaeum
Museum of Architecture and Design, to-
gether with the European Center for Archi-
tecture Art Design and Urban Studies and
