Ever watch VH1’s Best Week Ever?  Well, this week, I am having quite the opposite!  No, nothing is REALLY wrong and it’s really not the worst week ever … it was just a hard week  (this is where you get to make fun of me for complaining “my life is hard” – just like I make fun of my dog, when after a day of playing outside, he puts his head in my lap, gives me a pathetic look, and sighs really loudly – he too has a really hard life).

So what happened?  Well, the week started out off kilter because I had to work over the weekend …

The HOK Miami office participated in the 23rd annual Festival of the Trees event. It took place at the Coverings Showroom in the warehouse district of Miami, which has earned LEED CI. Over 600 guests attended the festival in which the trees are auctioned off and the net proceeds fund scholarships for FIU’s (Florida International Univ.) interior design department.

This year’s concept addressed sustainability through the reuse of materials in the design. HOK Miami was sponsored by the ICF Group representing Nienkamper, and Unika Vaev. They used extra metal beads from the materials library shimmer screen installation and recycled bottles to form the base. Lights were integrated into the base and lit up the bottles.

It was a great team building …

It was a truly an inspiring moment to witness Al Gore speaking to the 30,000+ participants at Greenbuild 2009. He began by mentioning that the “Green” movement is a non-partisan initiative and that he is a retired politician – possibly as a disclaimer or possibly to engage those still living in the mindset of 1999. The sustainable movement has evolved greatly in the in the last decade and this “disclaimer” voiced to me a rallying cry that speaks to all that make simple daily decisions based on creating a better tomorrow.

I wish I could relay the message as eloquently as Gore, so I have included a clip of his speech.

It shares a comparison of old building habits and practices that …

HOK's fearless Dodgeball leaders - Victor Martinez and John Witherspoon

The HOK New York Dodgeball team was semi-victorious this past week as we took on many ferocious teams from other companies around the city.  We are proud to announce that we won the third place spot at this year’s NYCSSC tournament. 

To learn more about the New York City Social Sports Club, click here: http://www.nycsocialsportsclub.com/

This was our awesome roster of Dodgeball All-Stars:
Victor Martinez
John Witherspoon
Reggie Williams
Kimberly Dowdell
Keith Jennings
Desmond Williams
Milena Lekovic
Dawn Mitcham 

Here is a brief email that John sent to the office earlier in the season …

Yesterday morning I organised our first office yoga session with the wonderful instructors from beyoco.

We had a nice little turn out; filling the boardroom with positive energies and flexible limbs to gear us up for the day. I’m hoping to start this small and eventually encourage a wider group of people (namely some men as it was all women yesterday!) as they see how we emerge zen-like from the class.

Our objective through practising yoga at work is to train our minds to de-stress, take a step back from our work, think more creatively and, of course, helps release tension in our bodies. There is hearsay (I can’t find any actual studies into this) that yoga at work …

St. Louis is serious about attracting and retaining start-ups, especially in the IT industry.  This week I had the complete honor and privilege to serve on a panel of very prestigious judges from various organizations in the region to participate in the first ever StartUp CUE.  The StartUp CUE is a friendly competition open to anyone with an idea, product, invention, concept or better way of doing… well, anything. As long as it solves a problem or improves someone’s life, it qualifies.

Judd Knight of Trainiac wears his product, a corporate learning map, as he takes 1st place

Participants were allowed 150 seconds to tell the audience …

It is thought that golf first started on our fair isle – apparently the earliest known reference to golf dates to 1457, when King James II of Scotland banned golf and football, on the grounds that they where keeping his subjects from their archery practice. The ban was repeated in 1471 by James III and in 1491 by James IV for the same reason…

Luckily for us, golf is no longer banned in the UK.  If fact British golf has seen a significant increase in new players in the past two years, according to figures from Sport England to the tune of over 59,000 new players.

Some of those may include the 15 HOKers who took part in the first HOK Golf …

It’s crazy how many social networking sites there are today.   First I had Friendster (yes, I’m that old), and then it was MySpace, and then Facebook.  This is in addition to Hi5, LinkedIn, MeetUp and the list goes on and on.

So I recently received an email for Architzer, which is basically yet another social networking site, but this one is geared towards Architects and Engineers.  I’m not sure how useful it is yet, but I obviously signed up for it.  I closed down my Friendster and MySpace accounts a long time ago.   More recently, I was having a little bit of a Facebook crisis, so I suspended that account too.  Architzer may just fill the void left …

For the second consecutive year, the Toronto studio participated in Habitat for Humanity’s Gingerbread Build. The design inspiration for this years house was the 2010 winter Olympics with a sprinkle of Dr. Seuss’ Who-ville.

The base is a sugar covered “Whistler” mountain with a competative skier making her way down the slalom course. At the finish line the Olympic mascots, including Quatchi the Sasquatch, Sumi the Thunderbird and Miga the Sea Bear, cheer her on! The house mimics a home from Who-ville painted in all 5 official Olympic colours and they’ve even included an Inukshuk marker at the top of the mountain to represent a guiding light for all our Canadian athletes!

GO CANADA GO!

All gingerbread houses will be auctioned …

This year, HOK’s Toronto studio participated in the 11th annual design/build competition; Canstruction. The event was in support of the Daily Bread Food Bank, which provides food to thousands of family’s in the GTA.

The design was inspired by Inukshuks, which are stone structures created by Inuit people across the Canadian North and are used for navigation, as marker for hunting grounds, or as a food cache. The design team cleverly coined HOK’s structure Canukshuk.

The Canukshuk leads the way and gives hope to those braving Toronto’s urban tundra – a sign that we can all meet the demands of our journey in the city and in ourselves.  The cans/stones of the Canukshuk sit so precariously, yet are perfectly balanced – it …

Last week’s video expedition at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Phoenix netted dozens of Green Aha! recordings. Courageous individuals from Japan, Argentina, London, Saudi Arabia and all across North America disclosed their personal epiphanies, moments of truth and shocking recycling tales. Our booth crew (Julie, Chris and yours truly) was joined at the conference by HOKLife bloggers Nico, Niall, Colin and Anica (as well as a couple dozen other HOK co-workers).   

Below is a short video compilation of what we gathered. Check out a complete selection of Green Aha! moments on YouTube and Life at HOK….

Central / Mid-Levels Escalator

Ah, the joy of an escalator commute!  No stop lights, no traffic, I don’t even have to wait in line to swipe my transit card. My commute to work in Hong Kong begins with walking a little less than a ¼ mile before hopping on the Central – Mid Levels Escalator.

The escalator is 2,600 ft (800m) long with a vertical climb of 440 ft (135m). According to Guinness World Records, the twenty escalators and three moving sidewalks combine to form the longest covered escalator system in the world. The escalator runs downhill until 10 am and then uphill until midnight. (An important fact …

With a little encouragement from Rachel Peine I am posting a picture from my breakfast this morning.  You see, in this design intensive industry, when an item is not available to us, we create one…

I used a piece of scrap paper to make a funnel so that I could chocolatize my milk with chocolate powdery goodness!  [Really chocolatize is a word, consult the special edition of my dictionary, not yet on bookshelves].

Americans probably spend about 40-60% of their time in their homes and about 5% of their time driving.  (I’m totally estimating these statistics, btw)  So why is it that our cars have more advanced technology than our homes?  That’s where Seth Frader-Thompson’s invention of the year (no. 4) comes in.  It’s a computer that monitors and regulates the energy consumption of your home.  It’s basically a thermostat on steroids.  This has so many benefits that it’s amazing it hasn’t been available for 15 years now.  We’ve had the technology to do this, but we’ve never cared.  But there is a trend for people to be more connected with what we consume.  Today, not only do we know where and …

So this is a very quick report from your very own London roving reporter….

We have a new addition to the breakout space in our office – an ENORMOUS new Walter Knoll sofa.

It’s called Circle and is made up of four parts – two of its parts making up a semicircle, all of them creating the round sculpture. This is what Walter Knoll say: “The slope of the back and the seating area make up an unbroken flow from sitting upright to lying in relaxation. The height is the one thing that remains constant. The closed or the open circle, consisting of only three parts, allowing access, creates its own space: seating in the inner circle. Change the configuration and …

Our first crop of Green Aha! moments harvested at Greenbuild ‘09 range from:

the Simple…

to the Illuminating…

to the Downright Quirky…

Even our very own Barb got in on the action, accompanied by a special “prop.”

Keep checking out our Green Aha! feed from Phoenix on YouTube and Life at HOK.

So last night was CANStruction NYC Built Night and I’m a bit crazed from lack of sleep, so this post may be lame.  I’ve participated in CANStruction for the last 5 years or so at different levels of involvement, but I’m always there for build night.

This year HOK NY built a watch for the message of The Time to Give.  As usual the evening started out in good spirits while building the base for the Can Watch to sit on.  There was a lot of joking around and camaraderie, and we were feeling good when we took our dinner break.

We then proceeded onto the ‘watch’ part of the design and that is when …

HOK’s chairman and most vocal sustainable design advocate is blogging Greenbuild 2009 for Contract magazine.

In his first post for Contract, Bill reflects on his journey to Phoenix, writes about seeing the automated people mover designed by HOK being constructed at the Phoenix airport and describes taking the light rail train to his hotel.

In his next post, Bill gets excited about a new LED downlight from the expo and zeroes in on zero carbon and building retrofits as the big themes for Day 1…and much more.

Related: HOK is recording lots of green-ahas!

Picking up from a morning HOK LA’s kitchen coffee chat with Aneirin Owens, who was on the way travelling to Doha for NDIA project, we started talking about what an ideal long flight aircraft seating should be. As much as we both love the branding and high tech concept of Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic, we thought the new Upper Class Suite seating designed by Pearsonlloyd is arguably not too ideal.

Ideal for full body resting, but would you rather be facing the aisle with service and passenger traffic while you are sleeping?

When …

Mark di Suvero - Pyramidian

So I went to Storm King Art Center over the weekend because it was a beautiful 68 degree day in November and my friend had access to a car for the weekend with free gas.  Storm King is a 500 acre sculpture park about an hour outside NYC in Mountainville, New York.  They have works from many famous sculptors including Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, Andy Goldsworthy, Isamu Noguchi and a new installation from Maya Lin.  There was also a piece from Roy Lichtenstein.  I just thought I’d share a few pictures I took …

I just read about this demolition project. This is terrible!! People of the City of Houston have had to work extremely hard to keep what we have left of the old River Oaks Theater and what pieces of the Alabama Theater we have and thankfully so far, so good. But now to hear that Chicago… Chicago of all places is failing to protect what precious architecture they have… it’s incredibly sad.

Gropius bites the dust

Halloween in the Toronto studio is always an extravaganza – never a lack of effort that is for sure! This year was no different; in fact some might say that this was the best year yet! Perhaps my opinion is biased since the Marketing team went all out, but judge for yourself.  : )

Marketing Team as the cast of ‘Star Wars’ – left to right:
Jessie Mendes – Luke Skywalker
Gabriella Adorjan – Darth Vader
Lia Oh – Wicket the Ewok
Kim Stockton – Princess Leia
Wendy Tam – Clone Trooper
Jessica Rowen – R2-D2

The accounting team also decided on a themed group costume and ended up winning the contest! Not only did they dress-up, but they performed a …

I couldnt find them, but I could have sworn Maya Research’s video’s for Architecture and Information were posted on the hok life blog before.

At any rate, I love this one about an ‘information ecology’. It’s a term coined by Maya to describe teh way we have to think about living inside of information, instead of just viewing it. That is the way they describe our mindset will have to be if we want to have the next big breakthrough developemnt of the internet, information, and knowledge. Take a look and let me know what you think. Be sure to check out their website too for other interviews and studies on stuff they are doing for …

Most (probably all) of you have heard of Gary Hustwit’s films Helvetica and Objectified. Well this post is merely to inform you that Objectified is now out for purchase on iTunes!! Go buy it, your life will thank you. Ps- During the Atlanta screening of this film, Gary was here and mentioned that he is working on another design documentary already, but didnt say what about, or which industry. What will it be? Fashion? Interiors? Architecture?

This is a report on the zero emissions building design charrette that took place on September 17. HOK and The Weidt Group participants in San Francisco, Toronto, St. Louis, Berkeley, Calif., and Minneapolis saved carbon emissions from air travel by using Cisco Telepresence Technology, Polyvision THUNDER Express, WebEx and HOK’s Advanced Collaboration Rooms to meet virtually.

The team designing the a zero carbon emissions office building has made lots of progress since my last ZEB post. With the final meeting fast-approaching and an affordable carbon-free solution on the horizon, it’s time to crank out some posts to catch you up on what they’ve been up to.

Finally, a Focus on the Building …