Two alumni of the School of Architecture are among this year’s winners of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award.

One of five firms to receive a distinction in architecture, the New-Haven based practice Gray Organschi Architecture — run by Elizabeth Gray ’82 ARC ’87 and Alan Organschi ARC ’88 — accepted the $7500 prize on March 20.

Since 1991, the Arts and Letters Awards have honored American architects “whose work is characterized by strong personal direction.” They’re are selected by a committee of architects and architecture critics. Gray Organschi will display their work along with the other 2012 winners on the Audobon Terrace in New York City from May 17 to June 10.

In honoring Gray and Organschi, the Academy described them as “teachers, architects, and fabricators whose New-Haven based practice has explored the intersection of environmental constraint, social need, and available resources to produce architecture that is environmentally sensitive as well as culturally and physically durable.”

The Academy also commended the firm’s skill at transforming everyday structures into “elegantly, exactingly detailed buildings that are as spare and as astonishingly rich as a poem.” Nice. Read more here.