NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Colden Florance Receives the District of Columbia Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation

Colden "Coke" Florance, FAIA, LEED AP, senior vice president at the Washington, DC office of SmithGroup, received the District of Columbia Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. The award was given in recognition of Florance's significant contributions during the past 50 years to historic preservation in the District of Columbia.

Harriet Tregoning, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, presented the award to Florance at a reception hosted on November 18, 2009 by the DC Preservation League and the Office of Planning. "The impact of Coke Florance's work in historic preservation and adaptive reuse projects throughout the District cannot be overstated," stated Tregoning.

Coke Florance's architectural work has been recognized with more than 30 local and national design awards. His practice has been devoted to developmental and planning issues critical to the city of Washington. Florance began his career in architecture at Chloethiel Woodward Smith & Associates, in Washington, DC. Subsequently, he joined Keyes Lethbridge & Condon (later known as Keyes Condon Florance), where he was involved in a number of notable adaptive reuse projects including Terrell Place, the former Hecht Company building and the Dime Savings Bank, which were restored and integrated into a mixed-use downtown development with office, residential, an art gallery, and retail.

Keyes Condon Florance merged with SmithGroup in 1996.

Coke Florance was also instrumental in the successful reuse of four buildings originally designed by Washington, DC architect, Waddy Wood. This work included the adaptive reuse of the Union Trust Building for First American Bank; repositioning the Commercial National Bank building to a trophy class office; the transformation of the former Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory into the Levine School of Music; and, the adaptive reuse of the Masonic Temple for the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Coke Florance is a past president of the Washington Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He was a founding member of the DC Historic Preservation Review Board, where he served as a Board member from 1982 - 1989. He has participated on a variety of advisory Boards and Commissions for organizations such as the Federal City Council, DC Preservation League, Salvation Army, the Washington Project for the Arts, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Baltimore Architectural Review Board.

Coke Florance is a graduate of Princeton University, where he earned a BA in Architecture in 1952 and MFA in Architecture in 1955.

SmithGroup (www.smithgroup.com) is ranked as the 7th largest architecture and engineering firm in the U.S. (Building Design & Construction "Giants" survey, July 2009) and employs 800. The firm is composed of client industry-focused practices serving the workplace, healthcare, learning and science and technology markets. With 346 LEED accredited professionals and 42 LEED certified projects, SmithGroup is a national leader in sustainable, environmentally intelligent design.