Always a leader in sustainable design, today HOK announced development of a new green building rating system (look out USGBC!): Checklist for Gingerbread Green Homes (CGGH).

Developed by an interdisciplinary team of HOK’s finest (John Cantrell, Weronika Cichosz, JoAnn Brookes, Lori Selcer, and Julian Tablada), CGGH helps gingerbread artists create the greenest ginger-person homes. This effort was inspired by Toronto’s LEED Platinum house developed for Habitat for Humanity last year (featured on Treehugger, Inhabitat, and Notcot).

Toronto’s delicious creation followed green building principles found in the USGBC’s LEED rating system. HOK’s new CGGH takes green ginger construction a step further, examining the total process from ingredient …

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 …

Early in 2007, architect (and Life at HOK blogger) Colin Rohlfing, sustainable design director in HOK’s Chicago office, accepted a challenge from long-time HOK St. Louis sustainable design principal Bill Odell.

Odell, one of the lead designers on HOK’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) team, asked Rohlfing to organize the sustainable design effort and to manage the LEED coordination and documentation for the 6.5-million-square-foot KAUST campus and town center projects—arguably the most ambitious delivery effort in the firm’s 54-year history (it was designed and built in just three years).

Two-and-a-half years and a lifetime of experiences later, Rohlfing, 28, recently learned that the team’s hard work on KAUST had …

Roughly two years ago (Thanksgiving 2007) I started a blog called TheGreenWorkplace.  Not long after, several other HOK folks were blogging along with me, including Jodi Williams, Anica Landreneau and Emma Wharton, three talented bloggers for Life at HOK.  After just a few months and lots of web traffic, we knew we had something.  In January of 2007 we decided to make it a book, and after writing a few chapters and hiring an agent (Lauren Abramo), we landed a book deal with a great publisher, Palgrave Macmillan.  Special credit goes to the HOK Advance Strategies team in DC for helping write and research:  Jodi Williams, …

Ingredients:

2 Progressive Architectural Firms
1 Experienced Contractor
1 Innovative Client
A Boatload of Acronyms (BIM, IPD, LEED, etc.)
Lots of Teamwork
A Dash of Design Brilliance

Process:

Blend together all ingredients into a seamless, highly efficient, unbelievably gorgeous space. 

Outcome:

PLATINUM, baby!

View a video produced by DPR to showcase the project’s Integrated Project Delivery (and featuring comments from our own IPD Innovator).