Columbia, Maryland (October 27, 2008)—Nemetschek North America is pleased to announce that Vectorworks firm Shook Kelley won the Firm of the Year Award 2008 from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) North Carolina Chapter.

The award is given to a firm that has consistently produced quality architecture with a verifiable level of client satisfaction, for a prolonged period of time. Only one firm is selected each year from among many qualified applicants, making this the highest honor that the Chapter can bestow on a firm.

"We are thrilled to be given such a prestigious award, says one of Shook Kelley's founding principals, Stan Rostas, "and would like to accept this honor on behalf of all the clients, companies and entities who are a part of the Shook Kelley world and who helped make this possible."

Sixteen years earlier, founding partners Terry Shook and Kevin Kelley decided to take a different professional path than most of their peers. Growing out of their shared interest in how people, as consumers, interact and shape society and the physical world, they set out to build a firm specializing in strategic consulting services. This included urban planning, design, interior design, and architecture, but also added branding, consumer anthropology, and communication design to the mix. The firm, which at that time represented a serious departure from the traditional model of architectural firms, has since garnered an international reputation for pioneering this new field of services that merges these seemingly disparate disciplines into one integrated, proprietary approach called Perception Design.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C. with offices in Los Angeles and Chicago, Shook Kelley was founded in 1992 by Terry Shook and Kevin Kelley. An atypical design firm with a focus on leveraging consumer perceptions, Shook Kelley helps clients take complex business strategies and turn them into two-second icons that cue and trigger specific emotional values in consumers. For more information about Shook Kelley, visit www.shookkelley.com

To read more about the award, visit www.shookkelley.com/pages/press.html

Nemetschek North America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nemetschek AG. A global leader in design technologies, Nemetschek North America has been developing CAD software for the AEC, entertainment, landscape design, and manufacturing fields since 1985. For more information, visit www.vectorworks.net