Top Firm: Frank Harmon Architect: From Site, Client, And Experience, Frank Harmon Spins a Highly Specific, Easy-Living Modernism (2005 Leadership Awards‪)‬

Frank Harmon has won his fair share of accolades for design over the years. But no occasion evoked such a pointed reaction to his work as the judging of the entries for AIA North Carolina in 1999, when Harmon swept the competition by winning three out of four Honor Awards in his home state. On that day awards juror Max Protetch, the New York gallery owner, opened the concealed identification tucked into the submissions for three very accomplished, but very different, buildings by Harmon--and was stunned to learn of their common authorship. "I don't who this guy is," Protetch reputedly said, "but he's either a genius or a schizophrenic." Harmon, 63, lets go an easy laugh as he tells the story. "I'm quite comfortable with that," he allows, noting how his diverse body of work illustrates an important lesson he learned from his mentor a quarter century ago: The best buildings grow from the individual needs of the client, if only you take time to listen. "He let me know it was all right to start afresh every time." (More about that mentor later.)