DEADLINES

 

July 15: Building Design & Construction magazine has extended the deadline for entries to the BD&C 19^th Annual Reconstruction Project of the Year Awards to July 15^th. The awards honor exceptional renovation, preservation, and adaptive-reuse projects completed after Jan. 1, 2001. BD&C is most interested in the innovative and technical aspects of projects’ design, construction, and development. All commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings are eligible, and the winning projects will be published in the October 2002 issue.

 

July 15: Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture Design Awards 2002. Any architect, architectural educator, or architecture student anywhere in the world may submit real, academic, and/or theoretical projects. Other BSA deadlines: AIA New England Design Awards, July 29; Honor Awards, August 19. Visit BSA Design Awards, or contact 617-951-1433 x221 or bsa@architects.org for the Calls for Entries.

 

FIRM NEWS

 

BBG-BBGM Bows in Beijing; Designs Luxury Mandarin Oriental in Washington DC

 

Brennan Beer Gorman/Architects and Brennan Beer Gorman Monk/Interiors (BBG-BBGM) are expanding their practices with a new office in Beijing, China. Jeffrey Williams, AIA, will oversee the operation. Mr. Gong Zhang, a native of Beijing, will serve as General Manger for the new office, which is located in the heart of the Chaoyang central business district. BBG-BBGM has worked successfully throughout Asia for the past decade.

 

BBGM has designed the 400-room Mandarin Oriental, Washington DC. The massing and site program for the nine-story luxury hotel follows the suggested guidelines of the master plan development for the 10.4-acre Portals site. The project team includes interior designers Hirsch Bedner Associates (interior design), Abiouness Cross and Bradshaw, Inc. (structural engineer), and Engineering Design Group (MEP engineer). Construction began earlier this year and the hotel is scheduled to open in spring 2004.

 

“The hotel will emphasize its relationship to the waterfront, and will contribute significantly to the revitalization effort proposed for the waterfront area,” says BBGM Managing Partner Mark Boekenheide, AIA, ASID. A pedestrian bridge will connect The Portals site to public parkland and the marina. The signature roofline, tower elements, a layering of façade embellishments, and a copper mansard roof complement the materials and color palette common to the overall development plan. Amenities will include a restaurant designed by Tony Chi & Associates; a 15,000-square-foot fitness center; indoor pool and spa; meeting space; and an 8,300-square-foot ballroom. Most of the hotel’s 400 guestrooms will feature views of the Jefferson Memorial, the Tidal Basin or the U.S. Capital.

 

FTL Design Engineering Studio Solos Again

 

Todd Dalland and Nicholas Goldsmith, principals of FTL Design Engineering Studio, a New York City-based 25-person consulting design and engineering firm specializing in lightweight and deployable structures, have announced the re-establishment of the firm as an independent practice. Since 1992 the 25-year-old firm has been part of a joint practice with Buro Happold Consulting Engineers. 

 

To help assure continuity at the firm, Dalland and Goldsmith recently named Bill Lenart, former Senior Design Manager and 11-year veteran of the firm to the role of Managing Principal. Mercedes Gonzalez who was the firm’s Financial Manager with seven years of tenure assumes the role of Managing Principal as well.

 

FTL has earned a reputation as a best-of-class collaborator for projects that leverage new technologies, enhance sustainability and push the creative edge of design. The firm works with leading architectural firms as well as directly for industry and government on projects as varied as performing arts centers, ferry terminals, traveling exhibits and a structure in outer space for NASA.  

 

Current and recent projects: Traveling Exhibition for Harley Davidson with Pentagram; Deployable Module on the new Space Shuttle for NASA with Honeywell; Deployable Classroom with Richard Dattner & Partners Architects; the Concert Shell for the National Symphony Orchestra with the Architect of the Capitol, Washington, DC; and the World Trade Center Fireman and Policemen Memorial at Battery Park.

 

Looney Ricks Kiss Architects and Ferguson Smith Architects Join Forces; LRK in Celebration

 

Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Inc. (LRK) and Ferguson Smith Architects, Inc. have merged their Nashville architectural practices, and will be known as Looney Ricks Kiss/Ferguson Smith Architects (the firm will continue to operate as LRK on a national basis). All current LRK and Ferguson Smith employees will stay with the merged firm.

 

After working with clients in Florida for more than 15 years, Memphis-based LRK has opened an office in Celebration (Orlando). Gregory Dungan, AIA, will serve as Director of the Commercial Services Section, and Mark Jones will direct the firm’s Residential Services Section. LRK recently received design awards for two projects in Florida: a Pillars of the Industry Award from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) in the Best Luxury Multifamily Development for Echelon at Cheney Place in downtown Orlando; and a Silver Award for the Best Attached Home up to and including eight units per acre in the “Best in American Living” national award competition for the Celebration Townhomes.

 

ON THE BOARDS

 

Heery Part of Team Selected for Oak Ridge Development

 

As part of an innovative public-private partnership, UT-Battelle Development Corporation selected the Colliers Keenan development firm of Columbia, S.C., to design and construct the first three facilities of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)’s modernization plan. Heery International is providing the architectural and interior design, as well as structural and civil engineering.

 

The 376,000-gross-square-foot development, estimated to cost $65-70 million, will house high-performance computer operations and research capabilities that support the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Heery’s design will include multiple sustainable design features and state-of-the-art strategies that will enable the project to apply for Silver Level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. “Heery, as part of the building team that also includes CH2M Hill, Haskell, and Stanley Jones, is working to obtain Silver Level LEED certification,” said Heery Vice President and Atlanta Area Direct Glenn Jardine elaborates: “To support this effort, unique program elements include a 30 percent water use reduction, using building materials from local and regional resources, and carbon dioxide monitoring. In addition, we will be cutting construction waste by at least 50 percent by recycling products such as asphalt and drywall.”

 

“Humanizing elements include the central garden, which has trellised seating areas for relaxation, collaboration, and serious thought,” says Heery Design Director Gordon Smith. “The three main building blocks are linked by Main Street, a two-story circulation and interaction space that includes seating areas with network connections, planting and a main seating area with tables and chairs.  The idea is to develop a place that invites casual interaction as well as more intensive collaboration away from the lab or office.  Additionally, researcher's offices are close their laboratories. The building team includes CH2M Hill, Haskell, and Stanley Jones. Construction began in February, and scheduled to be completed in August 2003.

 

Little & Associates Architects Commissioned for Sara Lee Expansion

 

Sara Lee Corporation’s Branded Apparel division has named Little & Associates Architects as the architect for the $35 million expansion its Oak Summit campus in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Little designed the existing 255,000-square-foot facility in 1994, which occupies over 23 acres of the 100-acre campus. The expansion will add a 5-story, 200,000-square-foot building on each side of the original phase, and will increase the development to about 50 acres and 650,000 square feet. Construction is slated to begin later this summer, and will be completed in the fall of 2003.

 

EXHIBITION ALERT

 

Last week, the Queens Historical Society opened a new exhibition in Kingsland Homestead, its Flushing headquarters, entitled “The Twentieth Century Borough: One Hundred Years of Modern Architecture in Queens.” The show, which runs through March 2, 2003, presents compelling vintage photographs and images that explore the changing facets of Modernism over a century of growth. Queens saw two waves of explosive growth in the last century that have come to define the physical make up of the borough. The two decades after World War I, followed by the two decades after World War II, saw the borough transformed from a collection of independent towns separated by acres of farmland to a sprawling arm of the metropolis. “It is the story of a wholly twentieth century borough shaped by social, political, economic, and technological forces and expressed in the planning and architecture of New York City’s largest borough,” writes exhibition curator and architectural historian, John Kriskiewicz. Highlights include: Queensborough (59^th Street) and Triborough Bridges; experiments in prefabricated housing at Forest Hills Gardens and low-cost housing by Metropolitan Life; Queens Museum of Art; the 1939/40 World’s Fair; Lefrak City; terminals at Kennedy and La Guardia Airports; the New York Times Printing Plant; and Museum of the Moving Image.

 

The National Building Museum just launched its first online exhibition, “Building America.” The virtual show explores America’s built environment by presenting achievements in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, engineering, construction, and design. The lively and user-friendly site uses video clips (check out the clip of the1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse), audio components, and interactive elements. Timeline highlights include not only images and brief descriptions, but many link to the Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) Collections, or to Web sites of the projects shown, like Boston’s Big Dig, St. Louis Gateway Arch, R. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House, and even Elvis Presley’s Graceland!

 

HONORS

 

The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) will present it's Annual Awards which honor individuals, groups or projects that have contributed to make New York a more livable city at it's 109th annual meeting this afternoon. This year, the committee could not help but consider the Annual Awards in light of the events of September 11. Thus, the first awards are a tribute to all of people who volunteered their time, energy, and spirit to help others: The 9/11 Volunteers. According to the selection committee, “They are the thousands of individuals – friends and neighbors – who gave of themselves in order to help others in desperate need of support. They are our unsung heroes, and the Society salutes them.”

 

Other honorees include: The Daffodil Project - A living memorial of over a million daffodils blossomed throughout the city in response to Sept. 11 (and involved over 10,000 people for the largest planting effort ever). Brooklyn High School of the Arts - As the first high school in the country to include historic preservation in their curriculum, BHSA will help to shape the next generation of artisans, architects, contractors, artists, historians and preservationists. The Brooklyn Cyclones - After 44 years, professional baseball finally returned to Brooklyn when the Brooklyn Cyclones played their opening game on June 25, 2001; sold-out games have brought renewed pride to the Coney Island community and helped to spur its revitalization.

 

Editor’s note: E-mail news and .jpg images with Subject “WhoWhatWhere” to: kristen@ArchNewsNow.com