Mayborn Mammoth Plaza Architects Honored with 2025 AIA Waco Design Award

Mayborn Mammoth Plaza Architects Honored with 2025 AIA Waco Design Award

The Mayborn Museum Complex is proud to celebrate RBDR Architects, recipients of a 2025 AIA Waco Design Honor Award for their work on the Mayborn’s Mammoth Plaza. This year’s AIA Waco selection panel noted that the winning projects shared a common strength: each meaningfully contributes to bringing people together in shared public spaces—an increasingly vital aim in a time of social fragmentation.

Mammoth Plaza exemplifies this ethos. Conceived as both a welcoming gateway and a communal gathering place, the plaza seamlessly integrates architecture, landscape, and storytelling to support connection, reflection, and public engagement. RBDR’s design frames Tom Tischler’s monumental bronze mammoth sculptures while responding to the deep paleontological significance of Central Texas, where Columbian mammoths once roamed and where discoveries at the Waco Mammoth National Monument reshaped our understanding of Ice Age life.

Through thoughtful material choices, human-scaled spatial design, and a clear sense of place, Mammoth Plaza bridges prehistoric history with contemporary civic life. The AIA Waco recognition affirms the plaza’s success not only as an architectural achievement, but as a cultural landmark that invites the community to gather, learn, and experience history together.