HOK designers in New York, St. Louis and Atlanta are using virtual meetings with their University at Buffalo (UB) client team to improve the design process for UB’s new School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
The seven-story medical school will bring 2,000 UB faculty, staff and students daily to downtown Buffalo and, at more than 500,000 square feet, will be one of the largest buildings constructed in Buffalo in decades.
Three days after Hurricane Sandy barreled into the East Coast last October, HOK’s project team was scheduled to have a meeting …
Way back in 2011 I wrote about a volunteer effort that involved some of us at HOK SF: documenting BART stations around the Bay Area to create “talking” tactile maps for the blind. Conducted under the guidance of Lighthouse for the Blind, this effort was a great learning experience in terms of how the blind navigate complex spaces that the rest of us take for granted (transit hubs, malls.. the list goes on). It was also a great look at how technology is being harnessed to aid the differently abled. These maps have raised symbols for important navigational landmarks like escalators and stairs overlaid on a simple outline of BART stations. What’s cool is that in addition …
The HOK Design Board recently held its annual meeting at the San Francisco office from April 26th – 28th. The weekend kicked off with dinner at the home of HOK San Francisco Design Principal Paul Woolford. Sessions Saturday morning covered topics such as HOK Product Design, Genius of the Biome, Living Building Initiative, and Mass Timber Construction. During the afternoon, each Design Board member and guest gave a 10 minute TED-like presentation on a particular project. The design board then took a tour of the California Academy of Sciences and its 2.5 acre living roof before having dinner at the famed Original Joe’s in North Beach. Sunday morning concluded …
Whether it’s waking up to a surprise spring snowstorm in Beijing or being served fried baby eel at lunch, what HOK’s Chris Fannin most enjoys about living in Asia is “responding to the unexpected on an almost hourly basis.”
Chris, who moved from St. Louis to Hong Kong in 2010, wears three hats for HOK. He is part of the management team leading the firm’s Asia Pacific practice, he leads the region’s planning practice and, with Suzette Goldstein, he is co-director of HOK’s global planning practice. As Chris moves between these three overlapping roles, he says each enriches the other. “We have …
“We’re just not using our space effectively” is one way clients typically sum up their pain points when we first sit down to talk with them.
“Well, walk us through your typical work day” will often be one of the first follow-up responses a workplace strategist will ask to begin to discover what’s working and what’s not in terms of how people use their space.
As we continue to look for more effective ways to improve the overall workplace experience, one tool we can use is measuring and analyzing space utilization. To gain better insight into how companies utilize their office space, there are several ways to approach these …
“Justin is a rare individual whose combination of deep technical knowledge and a sensitive eye uniquely position him as a special professional. His leadership brings visions to reality; his dedication improves the public realm.” – Paul Woolford, Design Principal, HOK in San Francisco
A licensed architect, Justin has been with HOK for five years. In both his personal and professional activities, Justin is motivated by engagement with the physical world. A love of materials and making things drove him to become a successful engineer, and further to …
For 20 weeks this past winter, HOK’s Chicago office was proud to host local high school students from all over the city as part of the Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE) Mentor Program, an integral community program that inspires students to pursue careers in design and construction. Beginning last October, HOK mentors, in partnership with Halvorson, Lend Lease and GSA, worked with students once a week for two hours to develop an original design project. The students presented their concept to peers and esteemed members of the community at a special awards ceremony at the UIC Forum (an HOK designed building) earlier this month.
We’re going to find out….. I am immensely honored to be selected by the AIA President as a member of the newly formed Sustainability and Health Advisory Committee. The committee consists of some amazing talent from around the sustainable industry. These individuals have all been my mentors and inspiration for the past 8 years and I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with them on the future of sustainable education and training at the AIA. Although sustainability is becoming more and more of a mainstream design process, as an industry, we are not achieving our goals and we have A LOT of work to do. I know that …
What are the visions guiding some of the world’s most progressive organizations? We can see their aspirations take physical form in the 2013 HOK Design Annual, which illustrates our design processes and products for 42 remarkable clients over 340 pages.
From three flame-shaped towers in Baku to a high-tech lab in DC, a striking new broadcasting house for the BBC in London to a bio-inspired orphanage in Port-au-Prince, the projects in this book offer a glimpse into – and optimism for – our world’s future.
Ted Davalos, Senior Vice President and Director of Architecture for HOK in San Francisco, celebrated his 34 years of service with HOK at his retirement party on Thursday evening, April 18, with 100 of his colleagues and guests at the Thirsty Bear restaurant in San Francisco. The event was also attended by his wife, Pam Davalos, and their son, Brett. In Ted’s tenure with HOK, he was responsible for some of the more notable projects designed and produced by the San Francisco office. These projects include NOAA Pacific Regional Center, Pearl Harbor, HI; Levis Plaza, headquarters for Levi Strauss, San Francisco, CA; the Genetics and Plant Biology Laboratory on the University of California …
Thanks to Leila Ray in our Chicago office for passing along this guest post on Cagri Kanver’s involvement at the MIPIM conference in Cannes, France.
HOK in Chicago’s Cagri Kanver attended this year’s MIPIM conference as a guest of honor of the Turkish Delegation. MIPIM is the leading real estate event for the property professionals worldwide and was held this year in Cannes, France. At the conference, Turkey was recognized as the 2013 Country of Honor and had a dedicated Turkish Pavilion, conference program and events. Besides its growing economic power, Turkey has a dynamic real estate sector and is attracting the attention of large and powerful international investors. HOK’s work on the …
Congratulations to the St. Louis Science Center, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium today! This hyperboloid structure, designed by HOK Founding Partner Gyo Obata, opened on April 16, 1963, in Forest Park.
“The strength comes from the shape,” HOK architect Roger McFarland said in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article. “Think of an egg; it’s tiny but strong. It’s a beautifully simple concept. But once you start looking at the construction photographs, you realize how difficult it is to build something so simple.”
In 1966, architecture students from Washington University in St. Louis unknowingly …
Last month I had the opportunity to hear Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, discuss his book and research behind word-of mouth and social transmission. In a very interactive presentation, he shared a summary of the key techniques that help information spread via his STEPPS framework — 1. Social Currency, 2. Triggers, 3. Emotion, 4. Public, 5. Practical Value, 6. Stories.
While much of what he presents is geared for individuals responsible for marketing and advertising, I think that there are principles that we can leverage when discussing the workplace. Particularly when preparing employees for a new work environment, there’s an opportunity to transform aspects such as …
A few weeks ago Stephen from Office Snapshots stopped by our office to show us his website. Similar in idea to Apartment Therapy, Stephen’s website focuses on interesting new office spaces around the world. The HOK folks who were part of the presentation thought the website a great place to scope out new trends and directions in office design, since no such online repository really exists currently (and if you know of any such sites, do let us know). We also offered some suggestions on how this website could be improved from our perspective – material tagging, searchability by designers and floor plans were some of them.
As many smaller to mid-size companies evolve into global organizations, the way we collaborate with one another also needs to evolve. We continue to see a plethora of technology based solutions being rolled out to enable more global collaboration. I personally rely heavily on the hardware, software, apps, and the ubiquitous 24/7 access to get the job done, whatever that job may be at any given time. But lately I’ve been working with more remote teammates and I realize that while we definitely have good technology to collaborate, we sometimes forget the human element to how we effectively communicate with one another. No matter how good your technology, the effectiveness of simple …
Thanks to Dominick Gallegos in our Chicago office for passing along this guest post on Senior Designer David Genc’s recent speaking engagement at the 4th Annual Bisnow Chicago Multifamily Summit.
Several of HOK Chicago’s interior designers and architects recently attended the 4th Annual Chicago Multifamily Summit, hosted by Bisnow. To kick off the events covering the future of residential development, HOK Chicago’s David Genc, a Senior Designer and Residential thought leader, delivered the opening remarks to more than 450 of the foremost real estate owners, developers, and financiers from Chicago and abroad.
David delivered a message on how residential design will have to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly diverse demographic while building …
I’m reading The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz and have just finished a chapter that describes how people react to choices differently, depending on whether they perceive them to be a loss or a gain. It struck me as useful on multiple levels when it comes to providing choices to our clients and to the people who move into the spaces we design.
Loss Aversion
Schwartz references a study by Kahneman and Tversky who have done research on framing and how it affects our ability to evaluate options and make decisions… called prospect theory. The idea with prospect theory is that people feel a “loss” more strongly than a “gain” when compared with the status quo. According to this framing research, …
Another successful HOK Structure’s Pi day has come and nearly gone as I write this. As always it was an enjoyable event for all; we brought pie, we ate pie, we recited pi. This was the St. Louis Structural Engineering group’s sixth annual event to celebrate the mathematical constant pi, an irrational and transcendental number represented by the Greek letter “π”.
To celebrate, we hosted an event inviting colleagues in our office to bring in a pie and participate in a “Best In Show” pie contest (and of course to eat pie) in addition to hosting the “most recited digits of pi” contest. Winners were awarded with …
If you’re in New York City on March 19, please join us at Inscape NYC for a Workplace Salon discussing the Yahoo! No-Work-From-Home Memo. HOK will help moderate the event and participate in a debate on both sides of the argument. We’ll be joined by folks from Gensler, Credit Suisse, BrightSpot Strategy and Perkins + Will.
Workplace Salon: The Yahoo! Debate
March 19, 2013 from 8:00-9:30 a.m.
Inscape NYC Showroom
414 W. 14th Street, 6th floor
RSVP by March 15, 2013 jfeuerborn@inscapesolutions.com
The audience will be polled on which side they most agree with before and then again after the debate. Let the …
When he was six years old, Todd Bertsch, AIA, moved with his family to Atlanta from Pocatello, Idaho. Through what he calls “serendipity,” Todd never left. He earned his architecture degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has spent his entire professional career in Atlanta. In 2008, he joined HOK as design director in our Atlanta office.
Todd and his wife, also an architect, live with their 11-year-old daughter in a house they designed together near Piedmont Park in Atlanta’s vibrant Virginia Highland neighborhood.
“I have seen Atlanta undergo a tremendous transformation over the past 30 years,” says Todd. “It is still young compared to Paris or …
It was a little more than one year ago that I wrote about kicking off the 2012 session of ACE Mentor. The clock ticked, seasons changed, calendars were flipped …and here we are in 2013, with an exciting new year for ACE! A lot has changed over the last one year for us ACErs. Olive and Andy, ACE Team 3 leaders from years past have moved onto bigger things (Olive is now Regional Leader for SF, while Andy’s helping build a hospital!)
Which means there are big shoes to fill – and trying our best to do that are Jose (HOK), Jamie (Flack and Kurtz) and myself (HOK)… the three new leaders for ACE Team 3. Also new this …
It all started with a phone call and a deadline. It was May 2012. Active Voice was moving into their new office space in the SOMA district of San Francisco within a month, and would HOK SF help them create an optimal space “so Active Voice can thrive, grow and make the world a better place”?
It was a challenge right up our alley, so of course we said yes! But then – what does Active Voice do? From their website : Leveraging the unique power of documentaries, feature films and digital media, Active Voice creates opportunities for people to connect and take action around shared values – strengthening community ties, …
As an addition to the original Moscow Chancery designed by HOK more than 20 years ago, the 241,000-sq.-ft. New Office Annex at the US Embassy in Moscow is one of the first embassies built under the new Department of State Design Excellence Program. It is scheduled to open in 2016.
At the request of our clients, Roger Schwabacher, AIA, and director of graphics Jim Doussard in HOK’s DC office recently designed and installed this display in the main lobby of the US Department of State’s Overseas Buildings Operations headquarters.
