The surprising selection of Barack Obama as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize has catapulted the international awards program to the forefront of worldwide consciousness.
Capitalizing on the Nobel attention, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay posted a mini-poll on his website asking people to vote for prominent local citizens he “nominated” for Nobel prizes in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Economics, Medicine and Peace.
HOK Founding Partner Gyo Obata is one of five nominees in the Physics category for his design of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium. Completed in 1963, the thin-shell and hyperboloid structure is located on the St. …
Every six months we like to get our global team of HOK Life bloggers together to exchange helpful blogging tips and banana muffin recipes and and to continue charting our plot for global domination. Last week about 30 of us assembled around a virtual table, connected via WebEx. This included a group of 10 who gathered in our underground blogging bunker in an undisclosed St. Louis-area location.
Rachel and Jaki ran the show. They take punctuality very seriously, and actually locked and barred the door of the secret lair, aka “The Thunder Room,” at exactly 10:00 A.M. CST. Sorry, Mike, a meeting with Gyo is no excuse. We’ll fill you in later on what you missed….
In the UK press there has recently been much buzz around ‘passive houses’ (PassivHaus in their origional German). After a bit of research I have found the source of this was a talk given by the leader of the PassivHaus Institute, Wolfgang Feist, when he visited London in November last year.
The term ‘PassivHaus’ refers to a specific construction standard for residential buildings which have excellent comfort conditions in both winter and summer. These principles can be applied not only to the residential sector as the name suggests, but also to commercial, industrial and public buildings. Like LEED or BREEAM, PassivHaus is a voluntary standard for buildings to meet. In Western Europe these standard is …
A great sign for Canada/US relations, is the news that Obama will visit Canada as his first official International visit as President. Watch the CBC report here. The relationship was strained at times during the Bush years, but that is about to change. I think I speak for most Canadians when i say that we are just as excited as you about what changes are in store.
