http://www.vimeo.com/11993807
I am so excited to share this video fresh from our latest and greatest PechaKucha Night in STL a few weeks ago. HOK’s very own Tim Gaidis was one of the biggest highlights of the night with his 20 x 20 presentation revealing the big paradigm shift in his life as a designer. As you might imagine from the title, this had a lot to do with our alliance with the Biomimicry Guild.
We had 12 other wonderful presentations at PK Night, some of which you can find here. In addition to some great photography here, we also had the wonderful surprise of a sketch artist in our midst who captured another lively presentation and posted on his blog, here. …
You think I have flipped with my new addiction to the ‘open space’ of biomimicry. But below, a FastCompany article/series called ”Case Studies in Sustainability: The Designer’s Accord“ is yet another cool dose, this time with IDEO, an incredible thinking-powerhouse in their effort to redesign the internal structure of the USGBC. My dream is that HOK can muster the courage to look at how we are organized…and how we might become more resilient and organic…more nimble…inclusive…able to adapt and evolve with the speed of this new world economy.
A regenerative HOK would be our greatest contribution to sustainability.
Our clients clearly need this and I know if we listen carefully …
Here at HOK we work very closely with the Biomimicry Guild - heck, I sit right next to our resident “Biologist at the Design Table”, Taryn Mead. We’ve done many projects together, and they’re great collaborators – They’re always on board with whatever we’re planning.
It is only fitting, then, that we get on board with what they’re now planning – The Great TV Rebellion of 2010. Sponsored by the Biomimicry Institute, they are encouraging children (young and old) to get off of the couch and into the natural world for Earth Week. So – TAKE THE PLEDGE and turn off your electronic devices and go interact with …
In celebration of ‘the Fifth of November’, aka ‘BIM Day’ I thought I’d post some ideas of what BIM (Building Information Modeling/Management) might look like in the future. This could be 20 years or 30 years, or never, but we should never stop thinking ‘what if’. In fact, recently I’ve been thinking about the possibilities so much that I’m getting scared that I don’t really know nearly as much as I should.
At any rate, I’m going to post possible future-casting ideas for the way in which we could be using BIM in the future to harness the power of the ‘building in vitro’. Some of these ideas are simply and process software related, but a majority of the focus is …
A big thanks to Harvard Magazine for featuring our work with the Biomimicry Guild (check out previous posts we’ve done about those amazing folks here, here, and here). We’re so proud to have our very own Thomas Knittel, in our New York office, featured in the article and even to have received a little holla over at Planetizen.
Stay tuned for more on the HOK projects they featured in the future here on HOKLife… pretty great things are happening!
The Zero Emissions Building design team is using use life’s principles as one filter for potential solutions. During the July 31 charrette, HOK Sustainable Design Director Mary Ann Lazarus described sustainable design ideas from nature generated in a session that included her and Tim Gaidis from HOK and Dr. Dayna Baumeister and Tim McGee from the Biomimicry Guild.
Their suggestions for the larger design team included:
- Consider solutions that are locally attuned and responsive — derived from the local climate and place in St. Louis.
- Use cyclical processes and closed loops (waste = food, for example).
- Optimize rather than maximize. Get the most benefits possible out
…
Future alien technolgies travel back in time to bring us… Gaudi Stool.
It’s been a while but this was such a shocking discovery for me that it has forced me back into active blogging. Thanks, inspiration – I’ve missed you!
Taken from a great review blog of this piece of furniture…
A stool inspired by the wonderfully structurally insane churches of Gaudi and created by one wonderfully insane designer, Bram Greenen.
Future… have I told you lately that I love you? … well I SO do. Let’s hang out more!
What does it take to design a net zero emissions office building? Because few of our clients are currently considering carbon neutrality in their projects, an HOK team — with help from some wonderful friends — is designing one through a series of virtual charrettes.
In response to Architecture 2030’s challenge to the global architecture and building community, HOK has committed to designing all buildings to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030.
The idea for the charrette is the brainchild of HOK Chairman Bill Valentine, who wants the firm’s people to gain the knowledge and experience required to design zero emissions buildings. This vision is being turned into reality …
http://www.vimeo.com/992494
Two trains of thought. The city planned by the people, and the city planned for the people.
What do you think? Is one more democratic? Is one more successful and to whom? Is there a difference in the individual good and the collective good and do we view them differently? (think hard about that last one)
Maybe it’s both, I don’t know. But I have my assumptions. Maybe there’s just the ‘public’ and ‘planned’ framework that’s the most important part. Like New York City in the 1811?
One more thought. In the scheme of things, ‘What would nature do?’ Develop a framework or organize a system that builds its own framework? Instead of the ‘overlay’ for the greater good, it could …
I can’t believe it has already been a week since our incredible visit to Helena, Montana, with our friends at the Biomimicry Guild. Never…ever…ever…ever did I think I could be more moved by the potential for the Alliance. I wish all our HOKers and everyone else reading this could have been there to plug in. Maybe we need a good virus!
One of the best discussions we had was about how nature extracts elements from water and reuses everything. We brainstormed new green industry opportunities for river cities — and talked specifically about how to extract critical elements from the Missouri River.
I don’t know if it’s an eerie coincidence or divine …
I’ve mentioned HOK’s commitment to Design Resilience in the past, and it is with this in mind that I’d like to recommend a quick view of the commencement address given by a landscape architecture student to the Graduate School of Design at Harvard this spring. He gives a spirited talk entitled “The Harvard Elm Crisis” in which the loss of the school’s historic elms is woven into a parable about why we must strive for biodiversity and design resilience into our beloved places. Seems …
I have the incredible fortune to be in Montana right now with a unique ensemble of biomimicrists, a planner, an architect and an engineer, all of which despite their diverse backgrounds, are birds of a feather. As part of HOK’s alliance with the Biomimicry Guild, we’re here cooking up some big ideas for our clients today and tomorrow. It is so exciting to be a part of this convergence that is forging a new path, based on some very old principles, for a more sustainable future. One thought for the day which came from Gerry Faubert “…designing uni-functional buildings is like designing a city with only one-way …
It’s a very exciting time around the Planning Group, we’re always on the go! As such, we recently took some time to mentally escape from the day-to-day and explore the “Art of the Long View.” Inspired by Peter Schwartz’ book of the same name, we partnered with our friends at Magellan Consulting to research what we felt were the top 10 forces shaping our world between now and 2050. We’re calling this the futurity series. As we re-imagine the role of the design community in our global economy, this material has served as food-for-thought for some amazing conversations across HOK.
So what did we learn? Though we’re still chatting, the idea of resiliency has undeniably emerged as …
It is an exciting time to do what we do. In a couple weeks I will be back in India with our Lavasa team seeing first hand this series of communities taking shape. Each time we go, the collaboration with our clients and partners at the Biomimicry Guild and Buro Happold is enriched with new ideas for a more sustainable future and new breakthroughs for how we can incorporate nature’s genius into solutions for the built environment. There is an energy now in the design community that you can’t help but be excited about. Just check out the …
So being a big fan of fractals and digital fabrication, I think this little project is most interesting. It’s unfortunate there isn’t a better view of the smaller twigs forming the surface of the table but what a shibby concept. This is sweet design of the 8-bit caliber but I definitely approve and wish that projects like this would get more notoriety because with better skills at fabrication I believe we could incorporate many of these concepts into buildings themselves to yield less waste and better material efficiency.
They may be tiny and seemingly irrelevant, but Tardigrades just might have a few things to teach the “more evolved creatures” reading these words. Commonly called water bears or moss piglets, these segmented animals are so fascinating because they can survive the most extreme conditions: freezing, boiling, drought, radiation, etc., etc.
In short, they’re resilient.
Confronted by the extreme conditions of a global recession, we all might benefit from studying the wisdom of these 1 mm organisms, as well as other geniuses of nature and design.
We have created a …
We’ve read about it. We’ve implemented it into our projects. We even have an exclusive alliance in relation to it. On Thursday morning, with Janine Benyus (co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild) in town for a lecture series at Washington University, biomimicry took over the HOK St. Louis office.
In advance of the arrival of the esteemed Benyus and her studies in the world of biology, several members of the St. Louis office created a biomimetic product gallery to entice other colleagues in the design studio to contemplate bio-inspired design. Items included PAX Fan prototypes, Stocoat Lotusan self-cleaning paint, Columbia Forest Products PureBond hardwood plywood, even a Speedo Fastskin FSII brief (the …
Time magazine named her a “Hero of the Environment,” TED invited her to speak at its influential conference…and HOK St. Louis welcomed Janine Benyus to our home to share her wisdom on biomimicry (the science she pioneered).
HOK is working with Janine and her Biomimicry Guild team to integrate nature’s genius into the planning and design of buildings, communities and cities worldwide.
Keep your eyes peeled for our overzealous photographer, who peppers Janine’s comments with FLASHES and makes his official cameo appearance at about :55.
http://www.vimeo.com/3771653
After enriching all of us with her genius, Janine visited Washington University to inspire the next generation of architects, planners and urban designers.
In 2003 I traveled to Aspen on an adventure to attend the International Design Conference in Aspen to listen to some of the most intelligent individuals I’ve ever had the privilege of hearing. Some of the names there were Gregg Lynn, Natalie Jeremijenko, John Maeda, GRAFT, UN Studio’s Ben Van Berkel, and Imaginary Forces. There was a lot that went on that weekend, but I wanted to focus on two of those names for this post; Gregg Lynn and Imaginary Forces.
I’ve talked some about SEED magazine in my posts and especially their collaboration with MoMA for the ‘Design and the Elastic …
Please welcome Jason Zah,” he hesitated.
“Zah-bah,” this was getting ridiculous.
“Zah-ru” I just shook my head, “cha.” Completely wrong
I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Someone suggested this as a way to get over my fear of interacting with people. I honestly thought it was just a way for other people to laugh at my insecurities. The only thing funny about me is the way I look, and I was supposed to go up there to try to sell this idea.
“Jason couldn’t make it, so they asked me to fill in. I’m Justin.” They were like vultures, waiting for fresh meat.
“I really didn’t prepare anything. They just found me out in the hall…ha…ha?” My sense of humour wasn’t going to cut …
I’m not even going to try and lie. I hate foie gras. I don’t like the smell, the taste, the texture, or the idea. All around I just think it’s a pretty disgusting food. (I’ve even tasted it at the most coveted of restaurants in Atlanta)
Having said that, I watched this lecture anyway from Dan Barber about his experience with a farmer of Geese in Spain. I don’t want to give too graphic of a summary about how foie gras is typically produced (it involves force feeding) but this video was rather interesting in that this farmer of geese allows them to gorge themselves (instead of force-feeding) by pampering them with a huge farm …
Here in DC, a few of us really love Biomimicry. In light of our partnership with the Biomimicry Guild, we wanted to share this love with our office. Earlier this week, we did :)
My day began with a LEED team meeting for a project in DC. It went well; this team is really on it. Half an hour before the 12PM presentation on Biomimicry was supposed to begin, we’re sitting in the same conference room we needed for the presentation. After everyone finished a good run
…
I know. I promised to try and frequently blog and post pictures from Greenbuild. I failed. Not for lack of effort. More like lack of time. Maybe next year.
As I look back on this trip, the most amazing thing about this event is the people – a people inspired by change. Everyone is cordial, welcoming and friendly. Everyone’s looking for answers to the growing questions surrounding sustainable design. Many answers are provided.
With my first trip to Greenbuild in the books, I’d like to walk you through it from my perspective as an exhibitor and not an attendee.
Monday, November 17, 2008
6:20 am – Flight leaves for Boston via DC. Much coffee needed.
11:15 am – Flight lands in Boston. Tim Gaidis and …
I just wrapped up a long week at GreenBuild, the penultimate green building conference in the U.S., possibly the world. Yes, I am exhausted, but also invigorated. Big props to the USGBC for a superb conference that was extremely well organized, even in the face of about 30,000 attendees. Also, for having the adorable, lovely and giant-hearted Archibishop Desmond Tutu speak at the opening plenary. Often at conferences we get the rockstars with the bigtime resumes and egos to match. Desmond Tutu was a breath of fresh air: he described the audience as ‘the cat’s whiskers’ and echoed the buoyant feeling of the crowd, optimistic about the future of green under a new U.S. Administration (shout out to Obama). …
Just wanted to make sure that we put this out there for the “powers that be” since I don’t think it’s been directly linked to on this blog.
A while back, HOK announced its partnership with the Biomimicry Guild all over the place, but it’s still worth shouting from the rooftops!
HOK has announced an alliance with the Biomimicry Guild that is intended to help integrate nature’s innovations into the firm’s planning and design solutions. To jumpstart the process, 21 HOK designers from all over the world recently convened at Biosphere 2 outside Tucson, Arizona, for a weekend immersion study in biomimicry. The Biomimicry Guild’s Dayna Baumeister and Taryn Mead led the session, which was designed to introduce the concept of bringing nature’s wisdom into every phase of the design process.
One common misperception for people being introduced to biomimicry is that designers will simply use nature as inspiration to shape a product’s form. The goal for this weekend was to provide hands-on experience using life’s principles to inform …
My weekend Biomimicry Workshop at the Biosphere 2 in Arizona.
This was the view from our dinner table the first night at the workshop, with a prickly pear margarita in hand, my first night in Arizona.
As a closet biologist (attribute given to me by the Biomimicry Guild), I find nature incredibly fascinating. Before commencing my studies at the UPR’s school of architecture, I studied general sciences with an emphasis in genetics, physics, and geology. So you can just imagine how crazy my first year projects were. I used formulas like v=d/t to build a “habitable space” that when moved would “gain” time and thus travel through the space/time continuum. I used the second law of …
…Sunset. More than 20 of HOK’s green-minded designers convened at Biosphere 2, just outside of Tuscon, AZ for a weekend workshop in Biomimicry. Tonight, we were all awestruck by the color and sheer majesty of the sunset over the mountains of the desert southwest.
