HOK President Bill Hellmuth talks about one of his favorite projects: the Sheraton Timika Eco-Hotel in New Guinea, “where the neighbors are the people who ate Michael Rockefeller.” 

We recently came across evidence that Nora Akerberg, senior project manager in HOK St. Louis’ Interiors group, also worked on the Sheraton Timika project:

Here’s Nora’s description of the photo: “It was 1993 and we were in the town of Agats, which is located in the Irian Jaya province of Indonesia on the island of New Guinea. My five friends were enjoying a lazy afternoon chewing their betel nut. We had just come up the river after sourcing some small villages for local artifacts for the Timika hotel project.”

Previous edition of …

Not to be outdone by Chicago, HOK WDC hosted a book-launch party for our own Leigh Stringer and her fabulous book The Green Workplace on Tuesday, October 6.

The event was held on the green roof of 700 Sixth Street, one of DC’s first LEED C&S Platinum buildings (designed by HOK, of course).  The building’s developer, Akridge, gracefully allowed HOK to use the roof deck (and downstairs lobby when the fall wind and a few sprinkles picked up), as well as providing tours of the space on the fourth floor (currently tracking LEED CI Gold!).  Food was …

We’ve been talking a lot about The Green Workplace recently, which is great for the greenies…but did you know that HOK also published our Monograph this month?!

The Monograph is the brainchild of Bill Hellmuth, HOK’s president, and was brought from a twinkle in his eye into a 416-page tome designed by talented HOK WDC Director of Graphics Jim Doussard.

A “coming of age” book, this document shares gorgeous photography and fascinating stories about HOK projects from across the globe.  Some numbers for you list geeks out there:

• 18 months to complete
• 3 continents (published in Australia, printed in China, shipped to WDC)
• 105 projects
• 416 images
• 2400 headshots

…

As Blake told you, the WDC team is kicking butt in the bike-to-work challenge.  Today we had over 20 riders for National Bike to Work Day:

Front row, l-r: Jack Baker, Claire Whitehill, Pamela Sams, Jodi Williams, Julie Steele

Middle row, l-r: Daphne Kiplinger, Bokki Son, Jacalyn Chnowski, Vincent Ng

Back row, l-r: Pierre Lee, Chris Ryan, Bill Hellmuth, Bill Stinger, Walter Urbanek, Aaron Altman, Kyle Sullivan, Tim O’Connell, Sasha Strickland (Missing Morgan Williams).

It was enough that our bike racks were full….

So some people had to take advantage of the “executive parking.”

(That’s Bill Hellmuth, …

Cris Fromboluti not only has a really fun name, he’s one of the DC office’s premiere project managers and a fun guy to boot. I sat down with Cris for about an hour to run through our five questions. I knew Cris had a lot of great stories, but was not at all prepared for what was in store. You’ll notice there are only four questions, but I think Cris’s story comes through without the fifth.

Q: How did you come to HOK?
A: When I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, I originally went to work for S.O.M. in Chicago. After …

Yiselle posted on her DC colleague Bill Hellmuth yesterday, so it seems like a good time to bring to life HOK’s president here with a new edition of Inside the Designer’s Studio.

Bill believes HOK is just beginning to scratch the surface of its possibilities:

In this clip he touches on a theme from the Washington Business Journal story – working locally and internationally:

Here Bill points out that no other firm has such a wide range of project types:

And then Bill talks about one of those current projects – OQYANA World First, a fully master-planned elite island community development off the coast of Dubai:

Previous edition.

Today, my very good friend and colleague Mide Akinsade, sent me an e-mail article from the Washington Business Journal featuring Bill Hellmuth with an image of a project we are working on (right). Exciting!! So as I thought about how to blog about it, I found Bill on the cover of the ”OnSite Greater Washington’s Real Estate Quarterly”, a supplement to the Washington Business Journal.

The article by Deborah K. Dietsch is titled “On top of the world”, and she writes: “As president and design chief of HOK, Bill Hellmuth is transforming the world’s architecture one building at a time. His approach? Sustainability, modernism – and …