It's time for Western Home Awards 1989-1990

An open door is once again the symbol we've chosen to herald the Western Home Awards program. This biennial architectural awards program, now a third of a century old, is cosponsored by the American Institute of Architects and Sunset Magazine.

Four years ago, the door of the Greene brothers' 1908 Gamble house in Pasadena opened the call for entries. Two years ago, we chose the door of the Storer house, in Hollywood, designed in 1925 by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The door at left brings us into the second half of the 20th century. It leads to the walled entry court of a house in Long Beach, California, designed in 1963 for Edward Frank by the Long Beach architectural firm of Killingsworth, Brady, Smith Associates. That same year, it won an Award of Merit from both the Western Home Awards and the national AIA.

More important, this house was among the 28 remarkable Case Study Houses. Arts and Architecture Magazine and individual clients commissioned tbe houses to explore and celebrate modern residential architecture in postwar Southern California. Built between 1945 and 1966 and visited by more than 350,000 people, the Case Study projects have had incalculable impact on the way houses are perceived and built today. (In October, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles plans an exhibition on these houses that will include two full-scale reproductions.) Sunset and the AIA created the Western Home Awards program in 1956, during the Case Study Houses' heyday. This program, too, was conceived to promote the very best in Western residential architecture, and today it continues to highlight exceptional design in both custom and merchant-built houses.

If you're proud of your house or project and would like to share it with 5 million Sunset readers, we urge you to enter. In May, we'll announce the jury; next October, we'll publish the winning houses. Who is eligible?

Entries must be the work of registered architects in the 13 Western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Only projects completed since January 1985 will be eligible. Entries may be made by an architect or owner with the other's consent; a developer or builder may enter with the consent of both architect and owner.

By mid-March, architects in the West should receive entry brochures. If you're a registered architect and don't get one by March 24, or if you're a builder, developer, or homeowner and would like one, please write to AIA-Sunset Magazine, Box 2345, Menlo -Park, Calif. 94025. Entry fee is $50.