How Snow Kreilich won AIA Firm Award

Frank Jossi//June 20, 2018//

Snow Kreilich Architects, which is being honored with the AIA Firm Award, has more than 30 architects. (Submitted photo)

Snow Kreilich Architects, which is being honored with the AIA Firm Award, has more than 30 architects. (Submitted photo)

Frank Jossi//June 20, 2018//

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Snow Kreilich Architects is preparing to collect the highest honor bestowed on a firm by the American Institute of Architects on Thursday in New York City.

The Minneapolis-based firm will receive the AIA Firm Award at the national organization’s Conference on Architecture.

Only one other Minneapolis-based architecture firm has ever received the award.

“It’s a pretty amazing honor,” said Matt Kreilich, design principal. “The AIA ‘national’ picks one firm a year, one that has done proven notable architecture over a decade. It’s your peers that ultimately select you. It’s pretty incredible.”

Snow Kreilich is perhaps best known locally for designing CHS Field in St. Paul, home to the St. Paul Saints baseball team. But the firm has a varied design portfolio of apartments, individual residences and civic structures.

The firm was founded in 1995 as Julie Snow Architects, and Kreilich’s moniker was added four years ago. The firm has more than 30 architects as “our project reach and scope has gotten larger, and the scale of work has also gotten larger,” Kreilich said.

Among many things, the national award recognizes that half of the staff includes women and minorities. Having a prominent female architect such as Snow helps with recruitment, but even Kreilich struggled to explain how the diversity came about in a field dominated by white people.

“It’s hard to know why but I think the reason people come to work for us is the quality of the work they know they will get to participate and engage in,” he said. “It’s the same reason I came here years ago. I appreciated and respected the quality of the work Julie was doing.”

That’s pretty much why Snow started the firm. “I felt that design needed to be at the center of the studio agenda,” she said in an email. “Firms at the time were based on specific project type or some other specialized expertise. My interests were more focused on bringing design excellence to all of our projects.”

The award “recognizes the efforts we have made over time,” Snow said, “to elevate the design of every project with which we are entrusted, no matter the size or scope.”

But it’s more than just about design. The firm has worked to develop “a collegial environment” in which 40-hour workweeks are honored because “we recognize that we need well-balanced, focused people while at work,” she said.

Today, roughly half the projects Snow Kreilich works on are buildings for federal and local government agencies, while the rest comes from the private sector. “It’s a really good balance of public and private work,” Kreilich said.

Looking at past work, he pointed to CHS Field as a building designed with an “openness” that blurs into the city.

“It’s hard to know if you’re in the Farmer’s Market or the ballpark, it just blurs into the landscape,” he said. “Some people thought it should look like the historic buildings in Lowertown. We think buildings should be representative of their time and be respectful of the context in which they’re built — but not mimic it.”

Persuading clients to build modern buildings isn’t all that difficult because that is why they hire Snow Kreilich in the first place, he said. Projects have included Metro Transit’s 610 Noble Park and Ride Facility in Brooklyn Park, Minneapolis-based Target Commons, KNOCK Inc.’s office, and the Lofts at Mayo Park, in Rochester, Minnesota.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection “Land Port of Entry” on the Canadian border in Warroad, Minnesota, has an exterior composed mostly of wood, reflective of the heavily forested region, Kreilich said. It has geothermal heating and has received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

In the North Loop, the Commutator Brass Foundry Co. at 125 First St. N. and adjacent buildings are being renovated with the firm’s designs, Kreilich said. A new six-story, 150-unit apartment building north of Commutator will also exhibit some design elements Snow first outlined at the Brunsfield North Loop apartments at 915 N. Washington Ave.

Semper Development is behind the block-size project — dubbed The Foundry – located between First and Second Street North and First Avenue North and Second Avenue North.

Snow Kreilich also designed properties for pro bono clients such as the Leatherback Trust in Costa Rica (a nonprofit dedicated to saving sea turtles) and the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy in Kenya.

Giving back is important to the firm.

“The Snow Kreilich studio is an ideal role model for our younger practitioners,” wrote Arizonan architect Neal E. Jones, who was among those nominating Snow Kreilich for the national award. “They prove great architecture includes a respect for the citizens of their great city as shown by their urban infill housing projects, the dignity of their country as shown by their award-winning Ports of Entry, the importance of their profession and their willingness to share with colleagues as shown by their voluntary support for higher education.”

Kreilich is proud of the AIA Firm Award because he thinks it is less about architecture and more about how architects treat their clients and staffs. The only other Minnesota firm to win was VJAA in 2012.

More than 100 people have worked for Snow Kreilich during its history.

“What I’ve been saying a lot is we can’t do it without our clients, engineers we’ve worked with, and of course our staff,” Kreilich said. “This award is for them. That’s why they call it a Firm Award, right? It’s bigger and broader; it’s much more important than winning an award for a building. It’s about how you run your practice and what that means for the broader community.”

A look at some of Snow Kreilich’s projects over the years:

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For the five-story Brunsfield North Loop, architect Julie Snow crafted a reserved, gun-metal gray panel exterior much different from the traditional brown-and-red brick exterior found in the North Loop and Warehouse District. (File photo: Bill Klotz)

To add a dash of color, the building was designed with outdoor decks with a red backwash, a color that carries through to lobby seating and even the branding. (File photo: Bill Klotz)

One challenge of the Target Commons project involved weaving new mechanical systems into an existing concrete structure. (Submitted image)

In designing Target Commons in downtown Minneapolis, Snow Kreilich Architects aimed to satisfy the company's goal of making the space a suitable environment for both work and play. (Submitted image)

The Lofts at Mayo Park, a 29-unit multifamily building near downtown Rochester. (Submitted image: Snow Kreilich Architects)

Snow Kreilich Architects's plans for The Foundry, a block of apartments and multistory office space in Minneapolis' North Loop. (Submitted image: Snow Kreilich Architects)