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The Journal of Architectural Education proudly announces awards for Volume 58's Best Design and Best Article: Best Article...George Barnett Johnston at the Georgia Institute of Technology for "Drafting Manuals And Manual Training: Rouillon and Ramsey's Architectural Details" Best Design...Lisa Iwamoto at the University of California-Berkeley for "Translations: Fabricating Space" 2005 JAE Best Article Award JAE 58:4 (May 2005) George Barnett Johnston, Georgia Institute of Technology Drafting Manuals And Manual Training: Rouillon and Ramsey's Architectural Details In its analysis of the technical and cultural structure of Architectural Details, the drafting handbook produced by Louis Rouillon and Charles George Ramsey in 1924 as an antecedent to Architectural Graphic Standards , Johnston's article provides a welcome perspective on the development of architectural practice in the United States. By focusing on the training of architectural office workforce rather than single architect's education, the article manages to shift the attention away from architecture as a fame creation process. Instead, it considers the social and institutional context within which the profession existed at the turn of the century, bringing its intellectual and practical components convincingly together. In examining the need and the reasons for the publication of drafting manuals, Johnston opens a window onto the demographics of practice and its underlying social structure, with the inevitable distinction between work and labor, or the generation of ideas and the production of technical documents. Physical information (in its various connotations) becomes a way to connect the forming world of academia with the world of vocational training - i.e. to link Beaux-Arts elites and Mechanics Institutes technicians. Within this framework, the definition and representation of content within Architectural Details is seen as instrumental to the creation of a common culture. If the Manual's plates instruct future draftsmen on drafting and building techniques, its exemplifying images also educate them about spatial and formal social conventions. By highlighting the rhetorical power of professional manuals, Johnston demonstrates how vocation training "became intertwined with the draftsman's - and architect's - social construction." His is a precious addition to both social and technical history. 2005 JAE Best Design Article Award JAE 58:1 (September 2004) Lisa Iwamoto, University of California-Berkeley Translations: Fabricating Space This design article describes a highly effective pedagogical project that introduces students to new design and fabricating tools and techniques through an actual construction project. Three projects were produced, each of them culminating in a full scale installation on the theme of "threshold." Of particular interest were the gaps that appear between various elements of the process: between physical models and computer models, "between scales and modes of production.between rapid prototypings and full-scale mock-up, between seamless form and standard sheet material, between computer model and spatial or phenomenological effects." Rather than being taken as problematic, these translations are viewed as opportunities for discovery and invention. Thus students were encouraged to engage the process as a dialogue among various tools and techniques rather than as linear problem solving activity. The installation themselves are fascinating exercises in the poetics of construction. Using the potential of the CAD/CAM process for pre-cutting numerous pieces to exacting standards the projects explore how subtle variations can result in extremely imaginative, intricate constructions where the objective is not simply tectonic demonstrations but metaphor. Through the thoughtful way it engages the gamut of development strategies and techniques and the opportunity to construct and experience a design at full scale, this project offers students an excellent immersion in the potentials and problems of the CAD/CAM process. For full information about the Journal of Architectural Education's subscriptions, manuscript submission policy, and other details, visit http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/joae or call Blackwell Publishing at 1-800-835- 6770 (toll-free in North America), 1-781-388-8200 (U.S. office), or +44 1865 778315 (UK office).