Congratulations to the St. Louis Science Center, which is celebrating the 50^th 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 started a holiday tradition when they tied an enormous bow around the planetarium’s roof. The prank was a hit; the Science Center now features the decoration every December. In a nod to that tradition, the building is currently sporting a golden bow to mark the 50^th anniversary.

Below is a vintage shot we pulled out of our archives. Be sure to check out the Post-Dispatch’s gallery to see more great photos from the past 50 years.

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 New York, but Atlanta is on its way to becoming one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. We love this community.”

What do you enjoy most about being an architect?

TB: I love our clients. I get to work with scientists, educators, corporate executives — brilliant people who are changing the world. It’s exciting to share in their mission.

Practicing architecture is this incredible collision of solving technical problems, exploring philosophical ideas and expressing creativity. We have the opportunity to affect what our communities look like, how society operates and how people live. We can blend beauty and poetry to create these high-performance buildings that have a positive influence on the world. These challenges thrill me every day.

I love the energy that our young architects and designers bring. They are our daily vitamin — the Red Bull that energizes us.

How do you share in your clients’ missions?

We kick off projects with visioning sessions to uncover our their goals and aspirations, learn about what they do every day and talk about the environments they imagine for themselves.

As we design a building, we need our clients’ facility teams and the end users to keep participating in the process. We want them to be ambitious about their goals and to challenge us every day.

What is a typical day like for you?

My days are all different. But there are those special times late at night, often at the dinner table at home, when I have a pen and a roll of tracing paper in hand and a deadline in front of me. I can quietly work through all the issues and find the inspiration to inform a project. Designers live for those times.

How do you know when you find the right solution?

When I sketch, I’m relying on the proven connection between hand and brain. My hand doesn’t work on autopilot but, after 25 years, it works in a very natural way. As I’m drawing, my mind is stimulated and I begin to get a feeling about the right direction.

We know we have the right solution when we can explain a concept to a room full of clients who will occupy the building and they are as excited about it as we are. The real test comes after a building has been operating for a few years and the client is still psyched about it.

I was recently watching a young soccer player on ESPN explain that all the hard work between games that we never see is what leads to their victories on the field. Creating a great building is like that – it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work. There is no single creative burst or big idea that provides all the answers. It’s a long, challenging process that demands a commitment from every team member to resolve thousands of issues.

What were the challenges for the design of Porsche’s North American Headquarters and Customer Experience Center in Atlanta?

Porsche is a client with a distinct design signature for its products: performance expressed in an elegant, understated language. A project driven by performance and simple beauty is right up my alley!

HOK won this commission through a design competition. Porsche provided a three-page design brief and we had three weeks to design a building. We spent the first week engrossing ourselves in Porsche’s brand. We didn’t allow ourselves to think about the program or the site or begin to contemplate a design solution. We thought about what it means to be Porsche — the essence of its brand and design. We studied the history of Porsche and Ferdinand Porsche’s philosophy for designing automobiles.

Next, we spent a week brainstorming, charretting and challenging each other. To consolidate the team’s energy, we dedicated one room in our office to Porsche. People talked, sketched and referenced written material. In the end, we developed a design solution that solved the technical challenges while capturing Porsche’s poetry.

Porsche’s North American HQ and Customer Experience Center in Atlanta

Can you describe the design solution?

The architectural language is representative of the simple, yet refined and performance-driven aesthetic of Porsche.

It is an incredible brownfield site at the edge of one of the world’s busiest airports. The site is at the intersection of multiple modes of transportation: highways, trains, rail lines, buses and airplanes. It is the perfect location for Porsche’s headquarters.

Porsche has a challenging program that is seeking to create a single home for all its communities. They are bringing employees from traditional office buildings to this unique headquarters that celebrates their automobiles. There’s a training center where Porsche mechanics and technicians will learn about their automobiles. There’s a customer experience center where people will learn to really drive the cars in all conditions. Our design solution provides a single, integrated home for all these communities.

From the moment they arrive on site, the design keeps all the users connected to Porsche’s automobiles on display inside the headquarters and out on the track. The corridors have glass walls with views to the track and airport.

The performance track actually passes under the building. As the automobile moves through the track and under the building, people feel a powerful connection to Porsche’s brand.

In addition to creating a high-productivity work environment, our design addresses energy efficiency and sustainability. This includes the building’s solar orientation and giving Porsche’s people access to lots of daylight.

Tell me about the University of Florida Lake Nona Research Center.

This is a new building that opened last fall on the University of Florida’s satellite campus in Orlando. It is part of the Lake Nona Medical City, which includes the Burnham Institute and several other healthcare institutions and research organizations. The site is a confluence of organizations aspiring to improve people’s health.

The building’s unique attribute is the blend of undergraduate teaching and learning space with state-of-the-art research. We wanted the undergraduate students to see and get excited about the cool research going on inside the building. Our solution combined these activities under one roof while providing a bridge between the university and other Lake Nona research institutions.

This is a very modern building, with a design driven by ideas of energy efficiency and sustainability. To link it with the main University of Florida campus in Gainesville, which is a beautiful, traditional campus with brick as the dominant material, we introduced a high-performance, terra cotta rain screen.

University of Florida Lake Nona Research Center in Orlando

What is your project for Georgia Regents University?

We designed the new Medical Education Commons at Georgia Regents University. It is a commons building for the Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry and other departments, and it is under construction in Augusta.

The building will support new teaching pedagogies and learning strategies that complement and replace the traditional lecture format. Our design emphasizes the social nature of a commons building. It has lots of state-of-the-art classrooms and simulation labs that support experiential learning. Yet the spaces that surround and connect these classrooms are as important to the learning process.

These medical students spend long hours in the classroom. The design provides a café and lots of nice, informal and touchdown spaces where students can gather and work together.

There are 13 learning communities that act as a home away from home for 20 to 40 students. Each has a lounge area with a small kitchen, a private conference room and casual seating to support aspects of student life that aren’t about work and books.

Georgia Regents University Medical Education Commons in Augusta, Georgia

How do you create environments that help your teams design great projects?

As design leaders, it’s our job to create a safe zone where clients and team members can drop their preconceived ideas, suspend reality and contemplate the possibilities.

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.

This post, written by HOK President Bill Hellmuth, originally appeared on the U.S. Green Building Council‘s blog.

What do a 5.5 million-square-foot research university in Saudi Arabia and a 6,000-square-foot orphanage in Haiti have in common? Inspired by sustainable architecture on two vastly different scales, their bond will soon help hundreds of children begin their journeys home.

The HOK team that designed the LEED-NC Platinum King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) campus in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, earned a $50,000 award. Instead of dividing this money among the team, Science + Technology Director Bill Odell and other project leaders set out to donate the $50,000 to a needy cause.

I’m delighted that HOK’s team decided to donate their money to the USGBC’s Project Haiti Orphanage and Children’s Center in Port-au-Prince. Since June 2011, an all-volunteer HOK IMPACT team has worked on their own time and in partnership with the USGBC to design this special project, which replaces an orphanage destroyed by the 2010 earthquake.

KAUST was the first of what has grown to a list of 16 LEED Platinum projects designed by our people. We anticipate that Project Haiti, a net-zero energy project targeting LEED Platinum and inspired by principles of biomimicry, will be added to that list. Our hope is that this donation that began with KAUST – a high-tech example of next-generation sustainable design – plants seeds that will advance a new generation of safe, sustainable design in Haiti, where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Our team’s $50,000 donation comes one month after HOK Chairman Emeritus Bill Valentine quietly made a $20,000 personal gift to Project Haiti. Bill has devoted his career to helping others, so we were delighted but not surprised. He allowed us to make his donation public for one reason: because it could influence others to donate. When we factor in these donations with our people’s pro-bono design time, direct expenses and other individual donations, HOK’s total contribution to Project Haiti exceeds $300,000. Every team member says they have received much more than they have given.

We thank the USGBC for this opportunity to make a positive impact, both in the developing world and in the world of sustainable design. The most exciting news is that the USGBC has nearly raised enough money to begin construction this spring, which would enable the orphanage to open one year later.

We’re almost there! With your help, the USGBC can close the funding gap. Please give today and contribute to planting Project Haiti’s seeds of hope.

With the ceremonial guard at Gyeongbokgung Palace in northern Seoul

The incredible cast of HOK people working on this project includes Ken Drucker (NY), Josh Schroeder (Hong Kong), James Mallory (NY), Phillip Luse (NY), Seung Lee (NY), Neil McClelland (NY) and Claire Whitehill (NY). I would be remiss to forget our fearless “programming document translators” out of DC: Sunhwa Son and Jeong Hwa Jo.

Thanks to this project, we learned that HOK has 14 fluent Korean speakers, mostly in New York and Washington, DC, but also in Los Angeles and Chicago. HOK also has employees, not all of them sitting in Asia, who are fluent in several Asian languages. This includes speakers of Chinese (41), Japanese (14), Malaysian (4), Tagalog–Philippines (5), Taiwanese (1), Vietnamese (1) and Bahasa–Indonesia (2).

During this last trip, Ken Drucker and I ran into Larry Malcic (London) and Chris Yoon (London) pitching on a project for a different company. Yes, it is a small, small world.

Culture Shocks

While in Seoul, I have experienced many culture shocks:

• I was the only blonde for miles yet never felt uncomfortable or like I stood out.
• The streets are spotless in Seoul, yet this is a city of 10 million people. I can tell you that New York City, which is roughly 8 million people, is significantly less pristine.
• People on the streets are very well-dressed and well-spoken. They have a great fashion sense and few are overweight.
• Women are a minority when it comes to senior positions in many organizations. Yet Korea is about to elect its first female president.
• Though the sense of hierarchy is strong, collaboration and agreement of the whole is essential for decision making.
• Handshakes involve one hand on an elbow and the other hand shaking to be more “honorable.” Bowing has many forms for different situations: slight bow, 45-degree angle bow, nodding bow, etc. This takes practice to get right. I still look clumsy trying.
• We didn’t see a lot of bikes but public transportation is good.
• Most of the street signage was in Korean and English. Stores were very international. In some areas, from the outside we could have been in New York City … OK, maybe Koreatown.
• Gangnam is an actual district where people actually dance Gangnam style.
• Being a pescatarian is not normal. People looked at me like I had two heads when I tried to explain that I eat only fish and vegetables. There are few Korean dishes that don’t involve pork, chicken or beef. I would have been in trouble if I didn’t eat fish.
• Coffee shops – and not just Starbucks – are EVERYWHERE. We learned from Chris Yoon that coffee shops are considered a “draw” for buildings and coffee shop owners are given a break on rent. I suppose the logic is that once you’re in a building for coffee, you’re more likely to buy earmuffs, chocolate or a chair.
• A Korean massage is not relaxing.

Jogyesa Buddhist Temple in Seoul

The Korean Workplace

Working on this project for Samchully has taught me about how people work in Korea. I’m probably biased by our excellent client, but here’s what I have learned so far:

• The chairman makes all the decisions. There is a clear leader, though he takes advice from many people.
• Impromptu space is not necessary – it was value engineered out on day one! Collaboration occurs more formally and in conference rooms.
• Work at home is not officially supported. Mobile work is supported and the technology is excellent. Yet because people are often working in groups, the office is the most convenient place to be. Also, being in front of the boss is important. If you’re away from the office, you’re probably on a trip with your boss.
• Employees wear uniforms. There is a summer and a winter uniform, keeping the answer of “what to wear to work” pretty simple. Many companies also have a song. One of our clients sang Samchully’s song for us. It sounded like a university fight song.
• Open offices, even for senior-level people, are acceptable. Bench seating for staff is typical. I saw lots of people in open offices – more than we typically see in a US office, where people are more mobile. That said, you could hear a pin drop. There weren’t any loudmouths using a speaker phone. People were super-considerate.
• Food is central in business and personal life. Sharing meals with people is critical for negotiating and for building trust. As the locations of many impromptu meetings, the cafeteria and café spaces are particularly important.
• Conference spaces are bigger than those in the US or Europe because the average size of meetings is larger.
• When meeting a client, it’s important to allow for time for the “after meeting.” This is when additional negotiations and important bonding happen. I realized that our typical conferencing ratios did not apply!

If asked to name the single most impressive thing about my visits to Korea, I would say the extreme hospitality of the people. We were respected for what we do and treated like royalty. Who could ask for more?

Gyeongbokgung Palace in northern Seoul

Thanks to our builders and strategists:

Builders:
Jasmine Brown, Deinte Dan-Princewill, Alex Lara and Leming Yang.

Candy Strategists: Lauren Flemister, Ashley Craig and Sara Bullington

…and those who came to support and vote!

Follow the link below to explore more on the built pavilion:

http://www.architectmagazine.com/lighting/a-skyspace-in-houston.aspx

A Skyspace in Houston – Lighting – Architect Magazine Page 1 of 3

James Turrell’s latest project is an architectural pavilion that frames an artwork—and an artwork that accomplishes an architectural feat.

This public-private partnership will create a mixed-use development, which includes a residential tower, retail and restaurant facilities, more than a thousand underground parking spaces, and the science and technology museum, home to the largest planetarium in Texas. The Austin Planetarium will enhance Austin’s Museum District, which is currently comprised of the Bob Bullock, Blanton and Texas Memorial Museums. It will also strengthen the connection between education and government in Austin, acting as another link between The University of Texas and the State Capitol.

“The project will make the sciences accessible and the mission of the Austin Planetarium visible to the community,” says Peter Ruggiero, Design Principal for HOK. “Along with our client, HOK is committed to ensuring that cultural institutions such as the Austin Planetarium contribute to the vitality of cities and act as catalysts for positive change.”

The Austin Planetarium is expected to draw more than a million visitors to the Museum District annually. It will showcase how science and technology work together across disciplines through interactive exhibit areas. More information can be found at the following link:

http://www.austinplanetarium.org/

Planetarium View from North Congress Avenue

Austin Planetarium Tower View from MLK Boulevard

After winning a global design ideas competition, HOK has been selected to design the new medical school on the University at Buffalo‘s downtown campus.

Located at the center of the region’s emerging bio-sciences corridor, this new transit-oriented medical school development will anchor a lively, urban mixed-use district on campus and bring 1,200 students, faculty and staff downtown. To foster collaboration and interdisciplinary care, the new academic medical center will create connections that allow students, faculty, biomedical researchers and clinicians to move easily from classroom to bedside to lab.

“Building a new medical school is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our university and region, and a critical step in evolving the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus into an academic health center on par with those of Pittsburgh and Cleveland,” Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said in a statement.

“UB has world-class aspirations for the architecture, design and planning of the medical school and site,” said Kenneth Drucker, FAIA, design principal for the project and design director for HOK’s New York office. “The project presents an exciting opportunity to transform the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and make a bold statement for architecture and urban design in Buffalo.”

The design will target LEED Gold certification. Groundbreaking for the medical school is scheduled for fall 2013 and construction is expected to be complete in 2016.

Read about the project in The Buffalo News and Buffalo Business First.
View the Flickr set containing design competition renderings and plans.

StopWaste.org won the Top Ten Award for green building policy

The US Green Building Council’s California Council spent yesterday in Sacramento unveiling our Top 10 List of State and Local Green Building Policies as part of the yearlong “Road to Greenbuild.” I’m a longtime green building nerd and live in one of the greenest cities in the country, and yet even I am impressed with the wide array of inspiring and visionary policies and ideas. The USGBC page also lists some of the top LEED buildings in California, including One Bush Street, aka, the Crown-Zellerbach Building, home to HOK’s San Francisco office and LEED EBOM Platinum.

• The “Most Visionary” local award goes to Los Angeles for adopting one of the first big green building ordinances, helping to kick off a city-wide green building movement.
• The “Most Collaborative” local award goes to the city of Palm Desert’s Energy Independence Program for reducing building energy use by 30 percent. Palm Desert has an extremely high level of “community involvement and pragmatic, local invention, encompassing everything form cool roofs and pavings to water-efficient golf courses with bamboo tees.”
• The “Most Creative” state award goes to Assembly Bill (AB) 811 for establishing creative financing to promote renewable energy generation – city officials and willing property owners can “enter into contractual assessments to finance the installation, generation and distribution of renewable energy sources.”

There’s a special place in my head for the “Most Market Transforming” local award, given to StopWaste.org for their green building program. I worked as a green building consultant for Kema back when I first moved to California in 2002-2003, and we were contracted to help implement StopWaste.org’s green building program. At least at that time, much of the program was funded by landfill tipping fees – the idea was that if we significantly raised the cost to dump waste into landfills then there would be more incentive to stop doing so, and during this market transition we would also raise much needed funds for green building grants. My favorite part of the story is that StopWaste.org used to be the Alameda County Waste Management Authority, and the joke was that they were not part of the Alameda County government, they weren’t involved with waste management, and they had no authority. You can imagine why they changed their name to StopWaste.org! StopWaste.org continues to put out great resources – my personal favorites are the publicly available LEED documentation for the LEED CI Platinum certification of the StopWaste.org office building and the rebates of up to $5,000 that projects can receive for specifying green materials.

Congrats to all of the California policy trailblazers, and to the advocacy programs in the eight USGBC California chapters for helping to get us here!

What does Taproot do? From their website: “Taproot is a nonprofit organization that makes business talent available to organizations working to improve society. We engage the nation’s millions of business professionals in pro bono services both through our award-winning programs and by partnering with companies to develop their pro bono programs.”

It was appropriate, then, that our San Francisco office donated pro bono time toward this good cause. Read on as designer Emily Fettig answers some questions about this cool project.

What was the inspiration or impetus for the design solution?
The client was in desperate need of organizing and reprogramming their space to meet with the changing work environment. The space was cramped with the furniture solutions that they had in place, and the mis-matched panel and office furniture prohibited collaboration. 

Were there any unique constraints or client considerations you had to keep in mind? How did you address them?
The main constraint was finding enough work space for each employee and still giving them adequate collaborative and meeting space. We had a vision session with the employees and interviewed them about how they used their space in the past; and how they would like to improve their new space. It was a great opportunity to recreate a mindset among the staff and start to develop a way of thinking about working in an environment with lower workstation panels and more open collaborative space.

Given HOK’s commitment to sustainability, what strategies or elements did you incorporate toward energy conservation and green design?
Reuse was our main goal. Given the space and restrictions from the building, we only had furniture and light to play with. Taproot’s old furniture was donated and we were able to reuse office furniture from a Chicago showroom to redo the entire project. The panel systems were much lower than the previous configurations, and this allowed more natural light to move across the space. The space already had ideal natural light, so we enhanced the reflectiveness by brightening up the walls and keeping the furniture surfaces neutral and light. The overall feeling after completion was light, airy and uncluttered.

Want to know more? Here is a feature on the project from Architectural Record‘s ’Building for Social Change’ series.

Thank you Emily, and kudos to the team!