The annual award’s ceremony — the first school-wide, in-person event since the start of the pandemic last spring — felt more like a pep rally this year, as attendees were handed blue cowbells for COVID-safe cheering and entered the grounds through an archway of blue and white balloons.

The celebration on May 8 brought faculty, staff and students together on the Hayes Hall lawn to recognize more than 100 students across the school’s programs in architecture, urban planning, real estate development, environmental design and historic preservation.

“We are here today because of our collective determination to mark one of the most important traditions of the school as a community, and with the celebratory flair and conviviality it deserves,” Dean Robert G. Shibley said in opening the Award’s Day + Atelier program. “Award’s Day and Atelier are all about you, our students — your diligence and academic achievement, your creativity and ingenuity, and your service to the school and our professions.”

The event was carefully organized to ensure a safe celebration, with masked guests seated on the lawn in spray-painted circles spaced six feet apart, and “roommate pods” grouped together.

Faculty and staff raced from pod to pod to hand-deliver awards, such as Xinyi (Cheryl) Qiu's Hyatt's Design Award.

A T-shirt cannon pumped prizes into the crowd in between award announcements.

As part of the outdoor Atelier exhibition, first-year architecture students showed off the results of their foundational studio, which challenged students to select two materials, two building components (e.g., floor, aperture, roof) and one programming element or “use” for the space. Here, students created a staggered series of percussive platforms.

This curved, wooden assembly, another first-year architecture project, invites users to climb inside and walk around the structure to experience a variated sound landscape.

Dean Robert Shibley walks through the indoor Atelier exhibition.

Student assemblies from the Situated Technologies graduate studio demonstrate the structural possibilities of bent planar surfaces — in this case, 6mm-thick plywood with carbon-fiber reinforcements — using the geometric forms of ellipse, triangle and square. The studio was directed by Nicholas Bruscia, assistant professor of architecture.

Colorful, form-finding study models preceded the bent, planar structures installed in the same exhibit space.

Guests were invited to wander the campus grounds for the indoor-outdoor exhibition of student work.