The historic 1910 two-story brick structure built for Allen Forge & Welding Company and enlarged around 1927 for the Brogden Produce Company — and more recently home to longtime occupant Cal-Tone Paints — has emerged from its asbestos clad sheathing into a new incarnation as the home of Raleigh’s Contemporary Art Museum (CAM).

CAM Raleigh announces that it has received six architectural design awards since opening in April 2011. A partnership between the community and North Carolina State University’s (N.C. State) College of Design, to date CAM Raleigh has received a 2011 AIA Design Award (Merit), an AIA Tower Award, the 2011 Carraway Honor Award of Merit from Preservation North Carolina, the 2011 Sir Raleigh Walter Award for Community Appearance, and a Downtown Raleigh Alliance Imprint Award.

The Depot District contains Raleigh’s only significant collection of buildings related to the heyday of railroad transportation and shipping in the Capital City.

Located in an early twentieth-century structure in the Depot National Register Historic District, the museum’s 25,000 square-foot home inside a downtown warehouse was designed and renovated by the architectural team of Clearscapes and Brooks + Scarpa.

Celebrated highlights of the building’s new design include a dramatic deconstructed roofline, new lobby, and state-of-the-art gallery spaces.

Clearscapes, based in Raleigh, is a multi-disciplinary design firm that focuses on cultural facilities, higher education, urban mixed use, and large-scale public art. Brooks + Scarpa is the successor architecture firm formerly known as Pugh + Scarpa, founded in Santa Monica, California in 1991. The firm was recently chosen to receive the prestigious 2010.

AIA Architecture Firm Award—the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm—recognizing a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years. Frank Thompson, CAM Advisory Board member and member of the architect selection committee, says, “I think that CAM Raleigh’s innovative programming will contribute the same intrepid energy, excitement, and willingness to experiment that brought us to this extraordinary milestone.”

“I am pleased to see CAM Raleigh open. With its mission firmly in place, I believe that we have designed not just a building, but a piece of the city,” said N.C. State’s College of Design Dean Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA. “It is affirming to see the external excitement about CAM Raleigh, these awards are validation that the perseverance was time well spent.”

“CAM Raleigh contributes in ways that are beyond measure, enriching daily life and inspiring individuals to appreciate present and to explore new horizons. Art and design can do things not possible through any other means and I think this shows in our architecture,” said Executive Director of CAM Raleigh Elysia Borowy-Reeder.