ENR Northwest is pleased to announce that William Bain Jr., consulting partner at Seattle-based NBBJ, will receive the Legacy Award for 2018.
ENR’s annual Legacy Awards recognize individuals who have established a solid legacy of lifetime service to the architecture, engineering and construction industry and to their colleagues.
Bain helped lead NBBJ in Seattle as it grew from a single office to a major international architecture firm and his work has had a significant impact on the city’s development and design. He is a past president of both the Seattle chapter and the Washington State Council of the American Institute of Architects. Bain has also taught design at Cornell, NYU, Harvard, University of Washington, Washington State University and the Technology Transfer Institute of Japan.
His work includes the 1981 restoration of Seattle's historic Olympic Hotel, Bagley Wright/Seattle Repertory Theatre at Seattle Center, the 56-story Two Union Square, the United States District Courthouse in 2004, and the Four Seasons Hotel and Condominiums, which opened in 2009. Bain was also involved in the siting, design and construction of the Seattle Public Library. He worked on seven separate projects for the Battelle Memorial Institute; Honolulu Municipal Office Building; demonstration housing in Saitama, Japan; and Pacific Place, the centerpiece of downtown Seattle’s retail revitalization.
A graduate of Cornell University—where he studied under Phillip Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, Paul Rudolph and Aldo Giurgola—Bain won the university's York Prize. After serving with the Army Corps of Engineers, he returned to Seattle and joined the nascent firm of NBBJ.
Bain has also been president of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and chairman of the Downtown Seattle Association. He was recently presented with the Filley Award for Excellence by the honorary land-economics society Lambda Alpha International. He has received the AIA Seattle Medal, its highest honor to an individual for lifetime achievement.
ENR Northwest will provide readers with much more information about Bain in the June 2018 print edition. Additionally, ENR Northwest will honor Bain at our Best Projects Awards event in Seattle this November.
