I’ve posted before of my love of all things tetris-y/lego-y/videogame-y.  When talking with fellow designers of about my age, I find that our early exposure to pixels in all sorts of venues is the great equalizer, the one thing we all seem to have in common.

It is with that in mind that I post the following video.  C’mon, we’ve all looked at some buildings and thought “oh, I know exactly what pieces of tetris fun would fill that sucker in…”

One of the tenets of life at HOK is to be involved in our local communities to the greatest extent possible. Even in the realm of technology, several of our team members are organizers of regional user groups. For example, David Ivey and Andre Baros run two separate groups in Chicago, David Light has organized the London Revit User Group and I am the president of the New York City Revit User Group.

The NYC Revit User Group meets monthly at Pratt’s Manhattan Center on 14th Street – a short stroll from HOK’s office on 18th Street. If you’re not in the New York metropolitan area, don’t fret! We broadcast our meetings via webcast for free! 

We recently …

World, meet Marta.  She’s our Human Resources Manager in New York, by title, but in practice, she is so much more.  As she describes it, her role in a nutshell entails helping make sure we find, hire, support, develop and care for an office of wonderfully talented people.  Emphasize that latter part about the wonderfully talented people, because that’s Marta. Born and raised a New Englander, Marta is a blueberry-pie-making-diva, artist and nature lover with a zest for life.   In her words, everyone should “Make time for what feeds your heart and awakens your sense of wonder.”  Words to live by for sure. Here’s more from her interview. 

Q: What made you …

I love this video from the 99% Conference put on by Behance back in April. I actually tried to get up to NY for this one, but I couldn’t get away from work, and we know times are tough.

At any rate, the point of the 99% conference is really about Thomas Edison’s old quote “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!” This is really a conference NOT about Ideas, but rather ‘making ideas happen’.

Seth Godin, who’s been on some earlier posts by my favorite blogger here, here, and here, really has some great things to say about the …

I’m not going to bore you with some miracle ‘weight loss’ plan, because that’s not really my style. But I am going to tell you about this other thing called ‘eating whatever you feel like’, as long as it is located with a 100 mile radius of your house.

I heard about the 100-mile diet last summer, and recently read another article about it in this month’s NOW Magazine. So I thought I would share some of my experiences I’ve had with the idea.

One thing I love about Toronto is the St. Lawrence Market. It’s a 100-year old farmers market, in an old building, and the old part of town. Local farmers …

While having a delightful breakfast with a couple of friends at the City Bakery here in New York City, one of my friends, Karin Giefer (Arup) mentioned that I was an hoklife blogger and the other friend, Ilana Judah (FX Fowle) asked me about the topics of my blog posts.  I began the response by describing one of my personal favorites, “Dude, Where’s My Car?”  The conversation about letting go of my beloved car keys prompted Ilana to excitedly tell us about a really cool concept that has taken off in her home town, Montréal.  It’s called Bixi and it is a bike sharing program that features 271 stations stocked with shared bicycles that are strategically concentrated near Montréal’s activity nodes.  …

Two trains of thought. The city planned by the people, and the city planned for the people.

What do you think? Is one more democratic? Is one more successful and to whom? Is there a difference in the individual good and the collective good and do we view them differently? (think hard about that last one)

Maybe it’s both, I don’t know. But I have my assumptions. Maybe there’s just the ‘public’ and ‘planned’ framework that’s the most important part. Like New York City in the 1811?

One more thought. In the scheme of things, ‘What would nature do?’ Develop a framework or organize a system that builds its own framework? Instead of the ‘overlay’ for the greater good, it could …

(Apparently it is needed to have a check-in next to the police)

If you didn’t notice by my Washington, D.C. post, I went to New York again. I’m not important enough to have any reason to go there other than vacation. So one could probably assume I’ll probably move there at some point in my life. Now I’m not going to give you every reason why I like it there so much, but one of them really is the people of New York.

For all of the hype that I write about Toronto, I have to admit the people here really are the ‘glass half empty’ type. Always ready to criticize, but when …

Washington, D.C. is like Disneyland. I was there one day and all I saw for the first hour and a half was two attractions (Union Station, U.S. Capitol), a bunch of concession stands, and a whole lot of grass in-between. No one ever told me that it took two hours to walk from one end of the ‘Mall’ to the other. On TV, it always looks so inviting and small. But when you get there it’s the complete opposite. It was the hottest day of the year (so far), and they blocked off anywhere that might have a little bit of shade to walk under. So imagine me, walking up-hill, both ways, …

Great article on home and lifestyle consulting boom for the Eco-Savvy.

Article Here

Tom Polucci, Clay Pendergrast, Rick Focke, Harry Lassiter, Sabine Bartzke, Sharon Paculor and I are hanging out in a conference room in NY with Contract Magazine, specifically, Editor Jennifer Busch and Art Director Steven Betts.  HOK is helping to create and coordinate all of the content for Contract’s July issue this year, and our theme is COLLABORATION.  We’ve got a mock up of all of the articles up on a wall and are looking at broad themes.  Summary of discussion so far…

…

In honor of Earth Day, I thought that it might be fitting to discuss a topic that many struggle with, including myself, sustainability and sacrifice. Like many New Yorkers, I don’t have a car. Only five months ago, I happily drove a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee. What’s with the downgrade to the 1 Train? The short answer: Reality.

Here’s the long answer: As a native of the “Motor City”, I am more than attached to car culture and all of its benefits. Moving to New York (after DC) forced me to grapple with the actual drawbacks of having a car. The truth is, having a car in New York City is often times more of a hassle than its really worth. When …

On Tuesday, dozens of women participating in the Bottomless Closet NYC employment assistance program received a special gift from HOK New York. HOK men and women alike accepted our challenge to donate their gently used clothes, shoes and accessories to women in need of interview and workplace attire. Organized by HOKW, a New York office committee focused on women’s issues, the clothing drive yielded a huge contribution to a great cause. HOKW’s 1st Annual Spring Cleaning Clothing Drive was advertised just one week before the donation deadline. After the seven day clothing drive concluded, HOKW was proud to have collected seven full boxes of donated goods.

All of the …

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 …

HOK New Yorkers are actively engaged in cultivating the next generation of architects. Since last October, several young architects in our New York office have volunteered their time, talent and energy to mentoring local high school students enrolled in the ACE Program. ACE, an acronym for Architecture, Construction and Engineering, was founded in 1994 with the mission of increasing awareness of career opportunities in the construction industries.

Each year, teams are formed with a variety of mentors representing different trades within the building professions and high school students expressing interest in learning about the business of creating buildings. In the beginning of the 8-month program, students are exposed to fundamental concepts inherent to design and construction work.  Each trade usually gives a presentation about …

Chuck Siconolfi directs HOK’s Health Care practice, which accounts for about 20 percent of the firm’s work. That’s a lot.

In this clip Chuck talks about designing healing environments:

Here he describes how thoughtful architecture can help make health care more affordable:

And, finally, click here to complete your Chuck Siconolfi YouTube trilogy by watching him explain how “we can take a view on the future and be wrong but still have the building be right.”

Previous edition of ITDS: Dhaval Barbhaya

I think a lot of people know that I am quite the sports fan. It’s really the only positive that many of us have right now, and being that we have offices all over the continental United States and Canada. I thought it would be an appropriate time to take a look at how they are doing. Especially since most are at the half way point in there seasons, or almost at the end.

Atlanta Hawks (NBA) – Dreaming of the days of Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb
Atlanta Falcons (NFL) – Did better then expected, but can’t seem to get out of the shadow of a former player.
Atlanta Thrashers (NHL) – The owner is a crook, and the fans don’t know they exist.
Atlanta …

Need to create an introduction animation for one of your Manhattan projects? All you need is 10 minutes now.

A more complete 3D buildings of New York City on Google Earth is now available.

Here is what it looked like when you have the ‘3D building’ layer on:

as of January 2007

as of December 2008

Read more…

When I was in New York, the Letterman show asked the audience to fill out these cards describing an event in our lives, for a new segment on the show where Dave interviews us on-air about our experience. I wrote a few scribbles down, submitted it, and low and behold, they asked me to write more about my story before being selected. This post is serving a dual purpose: the first is to get on the show and the second is to post on this blog.

The short story of it all: I bought a laptop in Texas and brought it back to Canada with me. After the first few weeks, it broke down and the only

…

I’ve always thought that if my life were to be documented in a movie, it would be a tragic-comedy, very similar to the movie ‘Stranger than Fiction.’ My recent trip to the big city New York, really didn’t help with the string of bad luck that seems to go everywhere with me.

I guess you can say it started with going through security at the airport this time. On my way to St. Louis a few weeks ago, they found wire cutters on me. Not as bad as the guy ahead of me with a blowtorch, but needless to say, my allergies caught up with me this time. My nose started bleeding as I was walking through security. It was though …

Inspired by John’s mention of Paley Park earlier today, I found myself yearning to watch what could easily be called the “manifesto of the urban landscape architect,” aka – The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H Whyte. A wonderfully scientific view of urban open spaces, this wonderful video should be in every design office’s library – and it IS in our office library here in St Louis (the librarian, Susan Baerwald, could have that to you TOMORROW hok’ers).  We showed this last year for the whole office and it ROCKED some worlds! I have people who still come up to me often and comment about how they see what’s going on in this video in everyday …

It looks like the ultra non-brand retailer, MUJI, will be opening up a ‘To Go’ store in the JFK airport in New York, similar to the one that they opened in Hong Kong.

I hope it does well. It would certianly seem so in New York, but I want one in Atlanta. I might just have to fly to JFK to visity the new MUJI store AND the new renovation to Saarinen’s terminal, which is now inhabited by JetBlue!!

I feel a trip to JFK coming real soon… MUJI TO GO

Image Courtesy: Core 77