The Seaside Prize is an award that highlights town planners, architects, and New Urbanism developments around the world and brings hundreds of people to Seaside, Florida, to gather and celebrate each year. As part of E. F. San Juan’s platinum sponsorship of the Seaside Institute and Seaside Prize Weekend in 2024, the founder and CEO of E. F. San Juan, Ed San Juan, created custom mahogany boxes for the award to be presented in.
The small box perfectly contours to hold the bronze key-shaped award in place. The first to receive the prize in these new enclosures were Victor Dover and Joseph Kohl, with our president, Edward A. San Juan, and Seaside cofounder Robert S. Davis presenting this meaningful award to them at the Seaside Chapel in February 2024. This is a beautiful presentation piece made with a felt interior and mahogany exterior. Being a part of this award is a memorable experience for the San Juan family, as their work has graced homes and buildings in Seaside, including the Chapel, since the town’s inception in the early 1980s.
“This box is a collective outpouring of everything my grandfather (Ed) knows how to do in a great way, all put into a small product to symbolize our thanks and appreciation for what Robert Davis and Daryl Davis have done and what the Seaside Institute stands for,” says operations manager Eddie San Juan. “My dad, Edward San Juan, worked firsthand on the Chapel at Seaside. It was one of the first jobs we ever did using a CNC router; we had an old Thermwood CNC, and he did a lot of programming to make the parts. We knew this would be an important part of our future. The project is deeply rooted in E. F. San Juan, and we are so proud to be a part of the beautiful Seaside, Florida community. To have these prize boxes made by my grandfather presented at the ceremony in the Chapel is such a cool, full-circle moment for our family and company.”
CHALLENGES
This project was expected to be meaningful to the recipients and potentially become a town heirloom, so these boxes needed to be magnificent. The biggest challenge in this project was creating something to hold this prize that represents just how exceptional it is.
SOLUTION
Ed was persistent and made many iterations throughout this creation process. He conducted many tests and trials to ensure the end product was exactly what he wanted. This box was created to be unique, and recipients were very pleased with what they received. It was so loved by the Seaside Institute’s founding members that they commissioned E. F. San Juan to make dozens of boxes that can be presented to past and future Seaside Prize winners.