BY MIKE PULFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[Music Hall ballroom]](/editions/1998/12/26/musichall_175x149.jpg)
Music Hall ballroom
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The YWCA's Battered Women's Shelter and renovations of Florence Mall were recognized as the top interior design projects in the 1998 Cincinnati Design Awards competition.
The awards were presented by the Cincinnati chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Cincinnati-Dayton chapter of the International Interior Design Association.
The YWCA project involved the conversion of a 97-year-old house to accommodate more than 60 women and their children. The idea was to create "a safe, relaxed home-like setting intended to reduce a woman's initial trauma," says Judith S. Wilson of KZF architectural firm.
The 828,000-square-foot Florence Mall project involved a redesign of public concourses, entrances and associated signage and graphics, says Bob Rich, of Baxter Hodell Donnelly Preston. Designers replaced a dark dropped ceiling with open, lighted arches and added colorful, patterned marble floor tile, lighter railings, interior landscaping and an expanded center court. Top awards in the architecture category were for work on the Playhouse in the Park, Mount Adams; Music Hall ballroom, Over-the-Rhine; Backstage Entertainment District, downtown, and the riverfront pavilion in Rising Sun, Ind.
Recognized were Baxter Hodell Donnelly Preston Architecture Inc., for the mall; KZF, for the women's center; Glaser Associates, for the Playhouse; Beck Architecture Inc., for the ballroom; Michael Schuster Associates for Backstage, and Muller Associates for Rising Sun.
Architectural merit awards went to A.M. Kinney Associates for work on the Town Center Garage elevator and stairs west of Music Hall; Baxter Hodell Donnelly Preston, for the new Health Professions Building at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, Clifton, and to Muller for an addition to the New School, North Avondale. Great Houses of the Queen City (Cincinnati Museum Center; $34.95) by architectural historian Walter E. Langsam and photographer Alice Weston, and the Krohn Conservatory Master Plan, by SFA Architects Inc., were cited for architectural advancement.
The annual competition drew 55 entries.
