Still hell hot in DC…still a good time to curl up somewhere cool and surf great posts on Work+Place. This week’s “best of” includes:
- Vision for the Workplace. A colleague asked me a funny question about vision sessions – essentially, who wants a crappy office? Sadly…some people do!
- Telecommuting. Catherine Haley exhaults the US government for encouraging employees to work from home (and wishes they’d do it more often for the sake of her commute among other reasons).
- Fonts? Susan Baerwald explains how Gothic can save the environment.
- Etiquitte. Sometimes you just need to tell people how to be considerate in the office - some snarky ideas via the New York subway system!
Check …
It’s August and if your climate is anything like that here in Washington, DC, it’s probably a good time to take your laptop (or iPad) and a glass of lemonade somewhere nice and cool and browse through the greatest posts on Work+Place. This week’s “best of” includes:
Check back soon for Episode VIII…and stay cool!
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. …
Nothing symbolizes professional success quite like the creation of a bobblehead likeness.
Obama’s got one. The Beatles have a set. LeBron even inspired one as a Cavalier and another to chart his migration to Miami.
It was only a matter of time before our own Chairman and resident “less-is-more” pioneer – Bill Valentine – inspired a similar tribute.
Bill’s bobble is actually a new award to recognize exceptional examples of sustainability in action. It will show up at HOK offices worldwide, honoring individuals and teams for tangibly advancing the HOK Sustainable Roadmap. Introduced in early 2010, the roadmap is a framework to take sustainability …
As a final hurrah for our Architecture in Schools Students, we took a “green tour” of the Washington Nationals Baseball Stadium. It was a fantastic way to get the kids excited about design, and about green. The tour focused on the history of “green,” green design of the stadium, green operations at the stadium, and also included a few fun bits for the kids: a visit to the press box, the Nats Clubhouse (aka locker room), and the dugout. Check out some pix from the event:
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A few notes on the show:
- Upside down sticker on the dual flush toilet – oops!
- The final picture in this set shows me (black shirt & jeans) with the girl who
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Now that we’ve whetted your appetite regarding our workplace expertise, it’s time to share some more of our favorite posts from Work+Place. Enjoy!
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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 …
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 …
You might remember a few months back when you heard that sometimes people mistake me and my Advance Strategies colleagues for telemarketers. Well, today, they would be spot-on!
A while back, I signed up as a member of the communications committee for the U.S. Green Building Council’s National Capital Region (USGBC-NCR). I haven’t done too much besides go to a couple of meetings and sit in on some conference calls. All that changed last week when the new chair contacted me and got me involved in marketing the RealGreen conference.
RealGreen is the chapter’s conference that fouses on “real progress and solutions to environmental concerns” and highlights “the region’s unique …
The Jean Canfield Government of Canada Building, designed by HOK in joint venture with Bergmark Guimond Hammarlund Jones in PEI, delivers on the federal government’s pledge to embrace new technologies, methodologies, partners, and means of delivering service to Canadians. Thoughtfully planned, the JC building has revitalized an underused neighbourhood, uses design to reflect the local flavour of the community, encourages employees and residents alike to use the space and sets the standard for environmentally-progressive government buildings.
The following video explores how the design team successfully met the federal government’s objectives of sustainability, supportive work environments, and connectivity, and highlights HOK’s integrated design approach to the project.
Click to …
When Anica is not doing the New York Times crossword, blogging on here, or teaching at Roger Williams University she is HOK’s very own globe-trotting ‘greenest greenie’ (as he Life@HOK biog says!). I say the first activity in jest, as although based in HOK’s DC office, this girl is so in demand and is so committed to our work that she is hard to pin down to being in one country for more than 24 hours! We love her dearly, her incredible passion for our work and how we can incrementally improve our world.
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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 …
Here’s another chapter in our ongoing 5 questions series with the women of HOK. Meet Barb Ciesla, Sustainable Design Leader and Vice President in Toronto. Barb has been with HOK almost six years now and we are glad to have her. She is a Scorpio and true to her zodiacal sign, she is “one intense little creature.” Barb is as smart as they come and won’t back down, especially when it comes to sustainability. Read more and you’ll see why.
Q: Why is sustainable design so important to you? – I got to a point in my design career where, although I was loving what I was doing, I didn’t …
HOK is turning the tables at Greenbuild ‘09. Instead of adorning our booth with OUR story, we’re creating a platform for telling YOURS. That’s right, it’s Open Mic Night at next week’s big conference and expo in Phoenix.
During the show, we will be inviting individuals to share their Green Aha!, the moment they first realized the importance of living and/or working “green.”
We will broadcast those inspiring tales at our booth, as well as uploading them to a YouTube Channel so others can share the experience. The most profound Aha! moments will win a free signed copy of The Green Workplace.
See you at Booth #3442. I’ll be the guy …
HOK has come a long way since making sustainability a core value in 1993. As Chairman Bill Valentine says in this new video (see if you can spot the Life at HOK bloggers): “We are not there but we are making giant strides.”
This is a report on the zero emissions building virtual design charrette that took place on August 26, 2009. HOK and The Weidt Group participants in San Francisco, Toronto, St. Louis and Minneapolis used Cisco Telepresence Technology, Polyvision THUNDER Express, WebEx and HOK’s Advanced Collaboration Rooms to communicate.
In this meeting The Weidt Group’s Chris Baker and Vinay Ghatti pushed the team closer to a zero emissions office building design by talking the group through a whopping 89-page Strategy Report describing the potential energy use, carbon emissions and cost implications of hundreds of specific energy conservation strategies.
The report documented the results of DOE-2 building simulations for each …
This week we received word that our 50th project received LEED certification, and what better way to celebrate than with a big ole pretzel from Gus’ Pretzel Shop, a south St. Louis tradition since 1920. HOK’s 50thproject to be certified was Herbalife at LA Live, which earned the LEED-CI Certified rating. This makes the 15th project this year alone to receive certification (plus two BREAAM certified projects). And we now have 942 employees LEED accredited. Keep up the good work!
[Information and post content via Chris Trowbridge]
The Zero Emissions Building design team is using use life’s principles as one filter for potential solutions. During the July 31 charrette, HOK Sustainable Design Director Mary Ann Lazarus described sustainable design ideas from nature generated in a session that included her and Tim Gaidis from HOK and Dr. Dayna Baumeister and Tim McGee from the Biomimicry Guild.
Their suggestions for the larger design team included:
- Consider solutions that are locally attuned and responsive — derived from the local climate and place in St. Louis.
- Use cyclical processes and closed loops (waste = food, for example).
- Optimize rather than maximize. Get the most benefits possible out
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I had the good fortune to sit down with Amory B. Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist, is a consultant experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. The Rocky Mountain Institute is working with the HOK Chicago office on a project for the University of Chicago. We discussed economics and the importance that it plays in the sustainable design process.
Flickr Video
To reference his bio, “He has lately led the redesign of over $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors for radical energy and resource efficiency. He has briefed nineteen heads of state, held several visiting academic chairs written twenty-nine books and hundreds of papers, and consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide. …
Colin Rohlfing is director of sustainable design in HOK’s Chicago office. He took time out from his effort coordinating the sustainable design messages and LEED documentation for one of the largest projects in the firm’s history – KAUST - to talk to us about sustainability. And he has a pointed message for our video crew.
Previous edition.
Riccardo Mascia talks about sustainable design as a common value that binds all of HOK. “We’re going to leave all these buildings and this environment to the next generation and it would be unconscionable of us to think otherwise.”
Previous edition.
Just came across the Green Building Resource site at Harvard University. This struck me as one of the most comprehensive sites I’ve seen from any university regarding green building practices. I like it because it provides a great model for any organization to consider when establishing green building guidelines, higher ed or otherwise. Harvard has put an immense amount of work into creating a transparent display of their ongoing greening of the campus.
Considering buildings alone, they have 13 LEED Certified and 38 pending certification. These help support their Office for Sustainability in its efforts to “engage the entire Harvard University Community in achieving all of its sustainability goals.” You can see absolutely …
For my first post on our blog, I’ll start with a question of inspiration: Does it get better than GreenBuild?
When you are a sustainable design professional, in the realm of all the conferences you could attend throughout the year, probably not.
Each year we gather in a different great city (now tens of thousands strong). We go to meet, greet, say hello again, share our work and pontificate the potential of our impact on this industry (or should I say these industries – we touch hundreds both directly and indirectly). Two weeks ago I was packing my bags in preparation for
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This recently released green building impact report gives a little heft to the LEED rating system and its effects on the built environment. There is a lot of criticism that LEED doesn’t go far enough (and how great is it that LEED and the USGBC have made us literate enough in sustainable building that we can criticize!) and that it is insufficient to meet today’s significant environmental challenges.
For those critics out there, the ones who ridicule the bike rack and shower credit, I say take this:
- Nearly 400 million vehicle miles traveled have been avoided by the occupants of LEED buildings, thanks to efficient locations and the myriad of alternative transportation
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I know. I promised to try and frequently blog and post pictures from Greenbuild. I failed. Not for lack of effort. More like lack of time. Maybe next year.
As I look back on this trip, the most amazing thing about this event is the people – a people inspired by change. Everyone is cordial, welcoming and friendly. Everyone’s looking for answers to the growing questions surrounding sustainable design. Many answers are provided.
With my first trip to Greenbuild in the books, I’d like to walk you through it from my perspective as an exhibitor and not an attendee.
Monday, November 17, 2008
6:20 am – Flight leaves for Boston via DC. Much coffee needed.
11:15 am – Flight lands in Boston. Tim Gaidis and …
HOK has announced an alliance with the Biomimicry Guild that is intended to help integrate nature’s innovations into the firm’s planning and design solutions. To jumpstart the process, 21 HOK designers from all over the world recently convened at Biosphere 2 outside Tucson, Arizona, for a weekend immersion study in biomimicry. The Biomimicry Guild’s Dayna Baumeister and Taryn Mead led the session, which was designed to introduce the concept of bringing nature’s wisdom into every phase of the design process.
One common misperception for people being introduced to biomimicry is that designers will simply use nature as inspiration to shape a product’s form. The goal for this weekend was to provide hands-on experience using life’s principles to inform …
The new Colonel H. Weir Cook Terminal at Indianapolis International Airport will open on November 11, just in time for the holiday travel season!
It’s always fascinating to listen to designers describe their ’Eureka!’ moments. HOK’s lead designer for the terminal was Ripley Rasmus in the St. Louis office. Here, Ripley remembers how he conceived the “big idea” for this striking building, which the design team began working on back in 2002:
Flickr Video
This is the “Civic Plaza” that Ripley talks about in the video clip:
Ripley describes this great civic space, 200 feet in diameter, as “the threshold to Indianapolis. It is devised to move people and as a stage set that allows Indianapolis and …
…Sunset. More than 20 of HOK’s green-minded designers convened at Biosphere 2, just outside of Tuscon, AZ for a weekend workshop in Biomimicry. Tonight, we were all awestruck by the color and sheer majesty of the sunset over the mountains of the desert southwest.
If you’ve worked at HOK for awhile or for a little, you are probably aware of our focus on sustainability in both our projects and practices. On Thursday, October 23, the outside world recognized our achievements as a firm once again. Several HOKers were present at the St. Louis Business Journal’s Heroes of the Planet Awards ceremony, where we were declared the winner in the Sustainable Employee Programs category. Here’s a link to a brief snippet about it (sorry, have to be a subsciber for the whole thing). Mary Ann Lazarus, firmwide Sustainable Design Director, and Tim Gaidis, Sustainable Champion in St. Louis, were on hand to receive the award. …
