It’s Architecture Week in D.C., which means that the city’s blueprinters gather for more like two weeks of lectures, dinners, and awards sessions to celebrate each other. Last Friday, a panel of eminences picked out the year’s standout projects in D.C. The Architectural Award for Excellence, as well an AIA Presidential Citation, went to KGP Design’s Bike Transit Center at Union Station, in all its sustainable and aerodynamic glory.

Other honorees included:

• SmithGroup’s Salvation Army Community Center at 2300 Martin Luther King Avenue SE. As we walked from the Big Chair into the Anacostia historic district, Historic Preservation Review Board chairwoman Catherine Buell told me how much she hated it.
• The Rincon | Bates House on Capitol Hill by Studio 27 architects, which could be defined as the architectural equivalent of business in the front, party in the back.
• The American Pharmacists Association, which is at least historic.
• The beautiful School Without Walls, which is also very high-achieving.