One of the unexpected pleasures of doing research is the things you find out that you weren’t looking for. I was doing research on Strategic Alliances between Design Associations and was having a hard time finding much that was relevant. These associations are important to us in maintaining our professional status, but no one takes much time to do any specialized research around them. One of the strategies is to look for other areas that might relate and apply the research done for them to your work. I decided to look into Twinning for Cities, as often the effort to do so is run …
HOK Seattle’s Todd Buchanan (right) on the streets with fellow commuter Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn
HOK is once again participating in Group Health’s Bike to Work Month and in our second week of the challenge have an impressive 15 teams representing 10 offices, more than 80 participants and have already ridden over 3,300 miles! Washington DC is once again leading the competition in just about every possible category, followed by St. Louis and Seattle (more stats below). As the competition has ramped up there have been conversations amongst HOK colleagues around the world …
Here begins the HOK Asia Pacific edition of “Women Across HOK” – the first of many, we hope! The 70+ amazing women on staff in our 5 Asia offices come from 12 nations, comprised of Chinese, American, Indian, British, Spanish, Malaysian, Thai, Canadian, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Japanese and French/New Caledonian backgrounds. Now that’s diversity!
To start off, we have my compatriot on the intense front line of Asia marketing and business development – Jacqueline Holt, our “business generator” and Director of Marketing in Hong Kong (though rumor has it she was formerly MI-6).
Describe a typical day in your life
No matter how many hours I sleep, I usually feel fresh and tuned in in the mornings then walk to work – super slow motion. Everything stays calm and chilled …
Posted on behalf of several HOK St. Louis Blues Fans (by Chris Sams and Tony Raya)
You may have won the first battle, but you have not won the war.
In response to your previous post:
The two headed monster known as Halak and Elliott won the Jennings Trophy for fewest goals allowed. Oh yeah Elliott has 1 fewer shutout in half as many games as Quick.
Hitting a goaltender is not LEGAL in hockey. If Dustin Brown tries it though, he will be opening the Polak door. Ask Braun from San Jose below … you don’t open the Polak door http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fagmyLwwquw
I seem to remember the Sharks beating the Kings just before the playoffs in back-to-back games. How
Why the Los Angeles Kings are going to DESTROY the St. Louis Blues! (ahem.. St Louis office.. we are talking to you…)
We have Jonathan Quick! Everyone knows the playoffs can revolve around goaltending, and not only is our goalie a top Vezina Trophy candidate, his name is QUICK! I mean a goalie couldn’t have a more fitting name if his parents had named him, Jonathan “Brick Wall Between the Pipes”. Who do the Blues have in goal? Good question, cause he was riding the pine a few games ago.
Dustin Brown is going to crush Elliott, with a LEGAL hit. With all the crappy fights and horrible penalties of the first round, Dustin Brown has easily 2 or 3 of the
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces about 4.4 lbs. of garbage every day. That’s 29 lbs. per week or 1,600 lbs. per year. This amount of trash could cover the state of Texas two and half times and also fills enough trucks to form a line to the moon.
So this Earth Day (Sunday April 22),….and every day:
1. REDUCE: Think if you need it, or just want it…and if it comes without all the packaging or if you can get the equivalent USED or refurbished, which also saves $$$$!
2. REUSE: You know the saying, “One person’s trash is another’s treasure.” Donate things you no …
You may have heard that the Space Shuttle Discovery made its final flight today – from Cape Canaveral to its final resting place, at the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center (an HOK building!).
On its trip, the shuttle took a bit of a detour to fly over DC. Many HOKers managed to escape their desks to see the impressive sight flying over the Potomac River, just a block from the office (sadly, I was stuck in a meeting! Curses!). Check out amazing photos by Morgan Williams and a video courtesy of Javier Sanchez:
I took 10 days off from my school work (got ahead of things and was prepared to go like stink when I got back) in order to go to Nice for the Figure Skating World Championships. I have been before to the Worlds in some great locations like Washington, LA, Gothenburg and Moscow, but I think Nice was the best due to the beautiful location and the warm weather. It was sunny every day and approximately 21° Celsius (around 70° Fahrenheit). …
San Francisco has long been one of the world’s great tourist attractions, and this year it will have a great new set of offerings: 20+ tours developed for the Greenbuild Conference and Expo, plus many more that the USGBC Northern California Chapter will be able to offer in the future. The Greenbuild Host Committee recently put out a call for tour proposals – the outpouring of responses showed the embarrassment of riches that San Francisco has to offer for green building …
Thanks to HOK Director of Sustainable Design Mary Ann Lazarus, co-chair of the AIA IgCC Task Force, for this guest post.
Did you all feel the earth shake last Wednesday, March 28? Why? Because that’s when the International Code Council issued the new International Green Construction Code (IgGC). So what? Code language usually isn’t that exciting, and typically sets the low bar for design. Well the IgCC is different in so many ways.
The IgCC is the result of many years labor by the ICC, AIA, USGBC, IESNA and others to define a new baseline of sustainability that will apply to all commercial construction. It incorporates as an option …
You’ve heard of the Sultan of Brunei? (Back when Bill Gates was a nobody, the Sultan was the richest man in the world.) In a sense, His Royal Highness was our client for a project to plan the entire city of Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city of Brunei, in Borneo. (You’ve heard of Borneo? One of the biggest islands in the world, full of dense rainforest, orangutans, world class diving, and Mount Kinabalu…)
Planning for an entire, 100-square kilometre city in the rainforest was, as you might expect, a great challenge. Besides the overt environmental aspects of design, we had to take into account concepts distinct to Brunei, like Melayu Islam Beraja: the national philosphy promulgating …
Shame on me for not sharing the fun that was Pi Day until now, more than two weeks late (but not quite 3.14 weeks late).
As usual Pi Day was a fun filled day of all things Pi. Lucky for us, the local Pi Pizzeria brought their Pi Truck downtown so that we could enjoy Pi through the morning, at lunch, and then concluding in the afternoon with Pi Awards!
This year, we mixed up the awards. As usual have two awards, one for “best in show pie”, and another for the “most recited digits of pi”. The awards, same as in the …
I think this post’s title has quite a few meanings. It says that two members of the HOK buildingSMART team visited Oslo, Norway recently. It also says that there was a buildingSMART convention happening there that same week. And it also indicates the general state of the construction industry in the region – they are definitely building SMART in Norway!
Greg Schleusner and I were invited to visit Oslo by our new strategic software partners – dRofus. Back in December 2011, it was announced that HOK and dRofus entered a 3-year enterprise license agreement to use their client-server database solution for integrated program management on a majority of HOK’s building projects. While members of the dRofus team have …
Greenbuild, the international green building conference and expo hosted annually by the US Green Building Council, will finally make its way to San Francisco this November. Greenbuild has been drawing 20,000-30,000 people for the last few years, and we expect that San Francisco will be the largest ever – depending on who you listen to, there may be upwards of 45,000 people. (Yikes!)
The conference theme this year is “@Greenbuild”, making reference to the mindboggling array of internet and technology companies headquartered in the Bay Area. The …
All of our courses at school, except one, have been individual work, although we have team discussions in class and are encouraged to participate in study groups. I like working with other people as it gives me another perspective and I always thought I was a reasonably good team player and team leader. My experience with our Team Project has changed some of my ideas about myself. It was a challenging course for a variety of reasons. We were actually part of two teams: one composed of a group of Design Managers and the other was management of a group of Graphic Designers from …
My main way of getting around Birmingham is by walking; it’s also my main way of keeping fit as I don’t belong to a gym here the way I do back home (partly due to the student budget, partly due to the fact that nothing is as great as my Aquafit class at the main YMCA in Toronto). Initially I just took all the sidewalks for …
According to the AIA, the Fellowship program “honors architects who have made a significant contribution to architecture and society and who have achieved a standard of excellence in the profession.” Bob becomes one of only about 3,000 members of the 80,000 AIA members to receive this honor.
Since joining HOK in1979, Bob has dedicated his career to transforming the design of U.S. courthouses, pretrial detention centers, correctional and local law enforcement facilities. His design leadership has helped make …
I was curiously Google-image searching the term “female architect” one afternoon and the results were stereotypical as expected; hard hats inside finished buildings, abundant rolls of paper, every face with a huge smile and the occasional Zaha head shot (go girl!). Another observation was that every female is young and attractive; this made me wonder where that portrayal was conceived?
Soon after, I came across an article in February’s “Architect” magazine (p.29) stating that “Only about 3% of executives in major American corporations – including architecture firms- are women (according to McKinsey & Co.).”
I wasn’t so shocked; it’s a man’s world we’re infiltrating, and only for the last few generations. However, the …
Last night, HOK’s own Sheila Cahnman starred in a panel discussion at the National Building Museum. The panel, sponsored by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, was convened to examine how the building industry is responding to the great recession and how it has and will change after the prolonged economic downturn.
Note: my photos are not very good – the only decent one of Sheila is where she is listening to Cathleen speak! Sorry Sheila!! You were beautiful and brilliant.
First, a bit about the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation: Beverly Willis herself is an architect by training (FAIA) and a founding Trustee of the National Bulding Museum (one of the most beautiful spaces in a city full of beautiful buildings …
I’m feeling quite cheerful as it appears that spring is here, or maybe I should say almost here. It depends on the day, as sometimes we have 16° C (60° F) and then it might be down to 10° C (50° F) the next day; either way, it’s been warmer than Toronto. Just a few weeks ago I was enjoying a little bit of crunchy snow in the Cotswolds and now there are crocuses on the lawns of Aston University. All the buildings are planting their spring flowers …
Can the St. Louis creative community rise to the toughest challenges city leaders face? We’ll find out tonight at the Contemporary Art Musem at the GOOD Ideas for Cities STL event. Doors open at 6:00 and the program begins at 7:00 pm. With more than 600 RSVPs on Facebook, it promises to be quite the night. Moderated by the super fantastic Alissa Walker, writer and protagonist of the GOOD Ideas for Cities program, seven creative teams will reveal their ideas in short 5 minute presentations followed by an equally short Q&A.
From the archives: Just came across this 1956 photo of HOK founders George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata and George Kassabaum in the Welek Fabrics Building in St. Louis.
HOK is pleased to announce the release Problem Seeking: An Architectural Programming Primer, 5th Edition (Wiley).The book, first published in 1969, has become the industry’s standard resource on the process of programming, both for architects and clients. The new edition, authored by William M. Peña and HOK’s Steven A. Parshall, features exciting and practice-tested approaches to the programming process today, with new strategies for effective group action, and new settings in which to explore programming concepts.
It is supplemented with more than 175 helpful illustrations and diagrams and provides updated technical information and faster, easier access to explanations, examples, and tools.
The first edition of Problem Seeking was based on …
It’s been a really busy week for us at school, our last week before we start ‘Independent Study’ until we finish our degrees. We have a couple of presentations to the rest of the class ahead of us, but the next one is still six weeks away. To make up for it, this last week was a bit crazy. We had a team presentation on Tuesday that was worth 30% for one course and submitted the final assignment that was worth 100% for another course on Thursday. That was actually plenty, but on top of …
Last week our ACE Mentorship team visited our project site in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. Originally San Francisco’s industrial and shipbuilding district, this area is now home to huge (abandoned) warehouses and historic buildings, which are hemmed in by new development and chic loft-style apartment buildings. In a nutshell – gritty meets pretty.
Our team enjoyed walking around the grungy urban site, and students were encouraged to observe transit routes, views to the bay, and potential for redevelopment. The site allocated to my group was blocked on all sides by various private sites: storage units, recycling yards and parking lots - so we only saw the buildings on-site from …
Yes, that’s right, HOK is Kind of A Big Deal! Why do I say this (other than the obvious fact that I am employed here and might have a vested interest in saying so?). Well, some of you may know, I spent the last week visiting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with some of my favorite HOK people: Bill Hellmuth, Suzette Goldstein, and Colin Greene**. While there, we thought we would swing by a bookstore to see if we could find any cool local architecture books. Lo and behold, what did we find??
Yes, that’s right….several copies of the HOK monograph (as well as several HOK Asia books) located prominently …
Check out New York City Public School 48Q, a beautiful new Pre-K through 8th grade facility built under the New York City Schools Green Rating System. It’s poised to set a newer, “greener” vision for the urban school district…
More than once in my life@HOK have I had to refer back to meeting minutes…and more than once in my life@HOK has it saved my tush! The other day, I was giving some advice on how to write the most useful meeting notes and I shared the list with my husband. He decided he was going to print it out and use it as a reference. In order to save a piece of paper, I thought I would post them on the blog for him (and you too).
Without further ado:
The overall purpose of meeting notes is for someone who wasn’t at the meeting to be able to read them and understand …
