I just met a new awesome woman of HOK: the Planning Group’s fabulous Amy Roots, from HOK’s Toronto office.  No, I didn’t meet her because of a project or any official reason.  I met her because another awesome woman of HOK (Jeannette Thompson) decided that we should connect.  And we did! 

Amy’s about the same age that I am (we refer to ourselves as “tweeners” – not quite at the senior executive level, but well into our careers), and has been at HOK for about the same amount of time.  We giggled about how being in your early 30s is fantastic because it’s the “whatever” years.  Whatever you do …

Please welcome the incomparable Marjanne Pearson to Life at HOK as a guest blogger.
I had the great privilege of participating on a social media panel she moderated at this year’s SMPS Build Business Conference, and I’m honored to call her a friend. She’s better known as Chief @NextMoon on Twitter, where she inspires a whole bunch of us daily.

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First, I must admit that I love the talent-based reality TV shows. My favorites are “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Top Chef,” and “Project Runway.” (And I always cheer when someone reveals that he or she is a design …

The bobblehead created for Bill Valentine is an award that will travel worldwide to recognize offices and teams for advancing the HOK Sustainable Roadmap.

The Roadmap is taking sustainability to the next level at HOK globally. It was launched with a series of workshops at offices worldwide that generated ideas to reach the goals of the Roadmap. I previously blogged about the goals in an earlier post “On the (Sustainable) Road | Some Ideas from Tampa” (http://hoklife.com/2010/07/07/on-the-sustainable-road-some-ideas-from-tampa/), which briefly described some ways HOK is measuring and recording our progress. 

“Bill” has visited a few locations to award ideas that included incentives for becoming a new LEED® AP and creating a green scorecard for catering office luncheons and L-n-L presentations. …

Most architects with the prominence and portfolio of Gyo Obata are expected to publish some type of vanity book honoring their work and career.

Gyo wanted to mix it up a bit.

Rather than producing a standard puff-piece homage to himself, he decided to include the perspectives of his clients (what a novel concept). Active listening has always been a signature element of Gyo’s work, so the approach is fitting – and refreshing.

Published by The Images Publishing Group, Gyo Obata: Architect | Clients | Reflections features 30 projects spanning five decades – and stretching from St. Louis to Saudi Arabia.

The new book also includes …

Not all of you have been to Los Angeles office, and that’s a shame. We’re awfully friendly and remarkably good-looking in person. We do neat things here, like Parking Lot BBQs, pot-luck lunches, World Cup Match parties and (lest you forget), really creative work on some incredible projects. But don’t take my word for it, you can ask bobblehead Bill Valentine. He’s just left our office with a fistful of memories from our sunny state.
Bill(ette) visited us after the Los Angeles office secured the inaugural “Bill Valentine Award” for tangible action supporting HOK’s Sustainable Roadmap. HOK LA’s plan to encourage …

Summer is a fun time here in HOK San Francisco, what with the farmer’s markets, the street festivals, the kooky (read: foggy) weather, and most importantly, the summer interns! 2010 was a high-yield year for the internship program: We received 876 applications from across the globe, from both Graduate and Undergraduate degree candidates, from which five were selected. Who were the chosen few, you ask? This year’s interns are an engaging and diverse bunch, and since we consider our interns to be an essential part of “Life at HOK”, I bring you 5 for 5 2010: five questions for five interns!

1. Carrie N./ Urban Planning-Landscape Architecture/ Harvard University/ Graduate Student

   What is your background

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Last week Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker London gave a lunch lecture at HOK London about digital data and the city.

I had met Alexandra at liftconference this spring, where she was giving a short talk on her firm’s work (here a link to her talk). And immediately I thought: that’s a great topic for a lunch talk at HOK.

We provided Alex with a good audience – in spite of the sunny weather outside the boardroom was packed with people.

Tinker London

Alex is the founder of Tinker London, a digital and interactive design firm. She specializes in an area called “the internet of things” – a way of linking objects to the internet and get usable data out of them. …

Noun 1. village green – a village park consisting of a plot of grassy land

The village green is the very symbol of a perfect English summer. For those who aren’t from our shores, it evokes memories of peculiar warm beer, strange cricket matches and Morris men dancing round the maypole. 

It even has a place in literature. The romance of the village green and idyllic countryside have long been celebrated by great artists and writers including Virgil and Constable. But this important public open space has always been much more than a whimsical notion or just a place where “ye olde Englande” could maintain its quaintness for visiting tourists. It …

On-the-ground at World Expo 2010 Shanghai, HOK Global Director of Climate Action Stan Wrzeski is gearing up for the Monday workshop he will lead: Global Voice, Local Choices: Creating Low-Carbon Communities, in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Here is an onsite report:

It’s my third day here, and my body is just starting to adjust to the time zone and high summer humidity. You wouldn’t think so, but the long lines of people entering the Shanghai Expo grounds are actually cooled by a water spray beneath the metal canopy. I suggested to Paul Woolford and Kelly …

I’ve just finished a charrette for a master plan project in Southern California in which our LA office is collaborating with Chris Fannin, Director of Planning from our St. Louis office. One of the great intro that Chris brought up that I thought worth sharing here was raising the question ‘What is the google image of our project?’

This has not been an option to look at architecture until few years ago when google maps go mobile, which was planned to run on any Java-based phone or mobile device with free navigation that will definitely have a major impact on the navigation industry. And this is even a bigger question for …

I live in Seattle, I work in LA…virtually.

After a few months of physical travel, which was necessary to become engrossed in the project and become one with the team, it became reasonable to work from a distance. HOK has many tools available to make this possible, including its Advanced Collaboration Rooms (ACR) which allow video converencing and whiteboard communication across offices.

However, we still had a problem. There was no reasonable way to quickly and spontaneously sketch ideas and solutions to each other. You see, this is an important part of the everyday workflow of designing a building. All day long, we architects and designers stroll …

The HOK Miami office is making a difference in response to the Haiti earthquake that will reach thousands in the disaster stricken communities.

Last month while listening to NPR on the way home, Sam Ward realized that Haiti was becoming a forgotten tragedy and started looking for a new angle to help and decided to approach his collogues for ideas. In order to make this more than a design exercise they needed to work with an entity that already had the infrastructure in place to institute their design, whatever that may be.  They started emailing governmental agencies, US and Haitian, about how they could get involved.

They came across an article about …

I invited Dr. Cindy Frewen Wuellner, FAIA, an accomplished architect, educator, researcher and blogger, to share some insights on the value and potential of online communities like ours. Prepare to be inspired, challenged and enriched…

How do you build your professional reputation? There’s an old way and a new way.

In the old way, you work for a star firm, build expertise, cultivate relationships, get recognition, awards, advancement, grab a couple of friends, and bolt for the door. Voila, the birth of a next-generation firm where you can spread your wings, design, lead, and develop your expertise.

The cost to the mother ship is enormous. They lose their best people. Project knowledge vanishes, …

Recently our Chicago Healthcare team has been working hard on a really amazing project. Agatha Wieczorek kindly provided this write up:

The Indu and Raj Soin Medical Center will be a new Kettering Health Network facility on a 22 acre site near Dayton, Ohio. This 285,000 SF green field hospital is being designed and constructed with full BIM integration. HOK, along with major consultants including THP (structural) and Heapy (MEP), are working collaboratively in Revit to promote the most productive and streamlined process. The concept of integrated project delivery has been in place from the start of the project, in March/April of last year, and has helped to keep this fast track project moving on schedule. The groundbreaking took place in …

St. Louis Sustainable Practice Leader Tim Gaidis seems to have confused Bike to Work Day with Bike AT Work Day. Here he is trailing Brok Howard, who just joined the Interiors group and clearly is a conscientious bell-ringer, on a tour around the office. Not visible in the video is Sustainable Design Specialist Mary Ostafi, who was holding onto Tim’s wheel and gliding in his slipstream. No HOKers were harmed in the making of this film.

Kim Passmore, Seth Teel, Eric Schneider (RCGA), Jim Alexander (RCGA), Mark Rosen, Tim Gaidis and obviously not Photoshopped Abdel Ferhi

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A few weeks ago I got to take a trip down to Orlando to check out Coverings 2010, the uber-international Stone and Tile trade show.

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Now I must admit, I had no idea what to expect from a trade-show on tile, even as a designer I would think there’s really only so much you can know about ceramics and porcelains. Even after ‘Day 1’ I was relatively unimpressed (probably b/c I was looking to be totally impressed), however after sleeping over ‘Day 1’, and thinking about the possibilities then I was much more impressed by ‘Day 2’, even on the trip back into ‘Day 3, 4, 5, etc…’

Below is a list of my takeaways for the week, some …

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 …

Rain’s in the forecast and so what better excuse do I have to post-pone that massive amount of yardwork I would love to be doing to bring you a bit more….Freno!  Matt showed me the video he and Javier, another co-hort from Planning who also sits next to Matt, created showing the features of this product. I’ve embedded the video below, but for those of you more literary types, here’s the deal in print.

To touch on what we covered in the last post, Freno is what we call a segmental wall system, it’s basically a kit of 3 concrete parts that are precast just like building blocks in a variety of arrangements to accommodate any site’s installation …

Today I have the honor to bring to you some lesser known facts about one of HOK’s most world renowned architects.  A senior vice president in HOK’s Tampa office, Yann Weymouth is capable of supernova design – he worked with I.M. Pei on the famous Louvre glass pyramid in Paris, among other high-profile museum projects, including the entirely new, waterfront building for the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Chances are, you have experienced one of the places that he designed and now, once you read this interview, you will be one step closer in your six degrees of separation from one of the generation’s …

It turns out the 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day intersects with the 30th service anniversary of our very own Earth Mother: Mary Ann Lazarus.

We celebrated this sweet synergy with some delicious green and white cupcakes. Sharing guest-of-honor duties was the incomparable Joyce Saunders (MAL’s right-hand gal), who recently marked her own milestone (25-year) HOK anniversary.

This greened-at-the-hip duo has worked together to advance sustainability within HOK – guiding it from an intriguing idea, to a fringe movement, to a specialty group, to an integral part of our entire practice.

During a brief tribute, Vice …

Today is Earth Day and HOK offices everywhere are celebrating through participation in “Lights Out: Go Barefoot Day.”  Beginning at 10:00 am, and for four consecutive hours, we are working in the studio with the lights out! The Tampa office is located on the 18th floor of an office tower therefore we coordinated with building management to manually shut off our lights to work under natural light conditions.

Coincidentally, a few designers were able to attend a Lutron lunch and learn presentation on office daylighting and the integration of dimming and shading.  Juan Figueroa explained that 39% of energy use in an office is for lighting and shared this graph that illustrates how much it costs to generate ONE watt and …

In honor of the impending Earth Day, and to celebrate National Landscape Architecture Month, let’s talk rain gardens!  I’ll pause for oohs and aahs.

Here in the Planning Group we’re always trying to come up with an ideal way to deal with rainwater on-site rather than piping it.  We’ve tried infiltration fields, bioswales, rain gardens, etc etc.  These all work when you have plenty of space, permeable surface, and the option to alter topography on sites.  This, as you can imagine, gets a bit difficult when you’re in the middle of a city…in the middle of a street…

Urban rain …

CAIRO, EGYPT – As part of the Medical Tourism Association, Todd Fitz, Director of Healthcare Consulting and Cagri Kanver, Advance Strategies Senior Consultant, both from the HOK Chicago, traveled across the globe to inform and educate conference participants at the Egyptian Wellness and Medical Tourism Summit which took place March 31st to April 1st. The Egyptian Wellness and Medical Tourism Summit aimed to discuss a variety of issues effecting the Wellness and Medical Tourism industry since Egypt has always been a hotspot for hosting state of the art spas and resorts as well as medical facilities providing exceptionally effective wellness programs …

On April 22nd, HOK will celebrate its 3rd annual Go Barefoot Day in honor of Earth Day.  This year we are focusing on lighting – how much we use, its energy and carbon impact and appropriate lighting levels.

The first part of this campaign has already begun – every HOK office is undergoing a lighting audit to determine Lighting Power Density (LPD) – how many watts per square foot we use.  HOK’s Lighting Group is performing this audit and will share the results on Go Barefoot Day.  I think we’ll all learn a little about lighting design!

The second feature of this campaign is more of a cultural experiment – all HOK …

In my ’spare’ time over the past few months I have been co-authoring a book…a really big book! Before I left my previous employer, I was approached by Eddy Krygiel and Phil Read to join forces and completely rewrite Mastering Revit Architecture (published by Wiley). You don’t know what sleep deprivation really is until you try to take on a new job, maintain a family and write (1/3 of) a 1,000 page book. Despite the seemingly endless late nights pounding away at the laptop, I am really excited about the compilation of content. Eddy, Phil and I have seen just about everything in the BIM world over the past 10 years and we poured as much of it as we …

I met Abbey on my first day at HOK.  She sat across the [low] wall from me and…had just a few months earlier swiped the job I’d been coveting for about a year!  Turns out, Abbey was a much better candidate for that particular position  and I ended up in a position that was perfect for me.  Gold star to HOK!  Anyway, you should know that Abbey’s a superstar urban planner for the HOK Planning Group.  Not too long ago, she and her hubby abandoned DC for her home state of Texas    A  fantastic mom to her newborn baby (and also her not-so-newborn kitty), and all around great person, Abbey is a  fabulous,  funny, brilliant colleague – the DC crew misses her tremendously …

Every year HOK holds an event (pending copyright, so it’s super official) to celebrate Earth Day. We call it “Go Barefoot Day” and it all revolves around decreasing your environmental footprint. I’m not going to spoil the update from corporate, BUT I will share the cool events that we have planned for “Go Barefoot WEEK” in Chicago. I would like to highlight the effort that we are having on Friday with other design firms in Chicago (Gensler, OWPP / Cannon, Goettsch Partners and Perkins and Will). Competitors on paper, but allies when it comes to the sustainable design movement around Chicago and the world.

Thanks to all the wonderful members of the HOK Chicago sustainable design group that made this upcoming …

It has been a while since I have posted, but not for lack of something to say. I’ve been buzzing around the world most of the last few months. It’s a pace that has that crazy effect of being completely exhausting and strangely exhilirating. I’ve learned that it’s the people that keep me going. And it’s seeing projects like this, of the first village in Lavasa, coming to life. 

Just a couple weeks ago we were meeting with our Lavasa partners, and I really mean partners – …

Heralded as “Giant Firm, Big Heart” by Building Design and Construction Magazine (blogged about here), and recognized by Crains NY for “Best Places to Work” (blogged about here) two years in a row– HOK is indeed trailblazing what it takes to be an employer of choice . 

It’s no surprise that these “Best Places to Work” accolades make my Human Resources heart go thumpity-thump. Even more resounding is the feedback I hear from staff.

Kaleena Brzozowski, interior designer extraordinaire at HOK says, “HOK provides a great environment to not only work with and learn from great talent, but also produce wonderful friendships in the process.”

What does altruistic leadership have to do with …