HOK is designing Porsche Cars North America’s new headquarters in Atlanta. The project includes a contemporary workplace for up to 400 people, a Technical Service and Training Center, and a Customer and Driver Experience Center with an integrated road handling track. The team is targeting a Silver or higher LEED rating.
“Our design goal was to capture the essence of the Porsche brand and performance,” said Todd Bertsch, director of design at HOK in Atlanta. “We have designed a movement-filled building with the same high-energy feel and performance as Porsche automobiles.”
“Our vision for our new U.S. corporate home is to create a bold and energizing environment where the physical elements are as memorable …
On Saturday, April 2nd, 2011, Paul Woolford, the design director at HOK San Francisco, presented one of most striking projects of this office – the restoration and greening of the San Francisco Mint, at the TED-x Presidio event. Paul spoke about the need for preserving national historic treasures, and discussed the importance of creating the most environmentally innovative National Historic Landmark in the United States, The Old San Francisco Mint, and the sustainable lessons learned that can be applied to all existing buildings.
Watch Paul’s presentation:
Guest blog post from HOK San Francisco’s Justin Kelly:
Leaders, visionaries, artists, and thinkers gathered on April 2nd at the Palace of Fine Arts …
As Mayor Daley begins the end of his career in Chicago, some in the city feel that there is unfinished sustainable business that the incoming mayor should reinvigorate. Recently, multiple environmental groups throughout Chicago had a unique opportunity to ask the Chicago Mayoral candidates about their green views and the programs that they would implement.
WHAT WOULD YOU ASK? The questions can be found in the link below. (Personally, I would want to know if the new candidate would enforce the recycling ordinance, which I know my landlords are blatantly disregarding. It would be nice to see them hit with a $1000 fine for once.) http://www.chicagorecycling.org/MayoralQuestions.htm
London have been the delighted hosts of the much-celebrated Bobblehead Bill (BB) over the past month. BB, as our guest has been affectionately known to us over the past few weeks, has been engaging, witty and full of energy, demanding (in a civilised manner of course…) that his time in our great city should be used wisely and well, so that he gets to see everything it has to offer.
BB particularly bonded with our own sustainability guru Shashi Narayanan, so much so that they did most of their sightseeing together. A selection of his sightseeing tours can be seen in the photographs below.
A new solution to transit woes that literally puts the bus above the automobile developed by Shenzhen Huashi Future Car-Parking Equipment. The idea is to make use of the space between regular-size cars and bridges, thus saving construction costs as well as minimizing congestion impact by allowing cars to drive underneath these jumbo buses.When completed, the straddling buses will run on “relay charges” of electricity and solar power. The road-straddling buses will use only 860 tons of fuel per year, Shenzhen Huashi predicts, which could reduce yearly carbon …
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).
Welcome to GREEN TEAM Asia Pacific! We are a small but diverse group hailing from Spain, the United States, and Singapore! Paula, Jennifer, Larissa, and Joyce comprise our dedicated team working to educate, encourage, and implement sustainable practices throughout HOK. We’re participating in the firm-wide sustainable road map by incorporating “green” into our daily routines.
We have recently commenced weekly LEED study sessions to help our colleagues prepare for the LEED Green Associate exam. We’ve equipped our office with all of the proper resources including LEED reference guides and practice exams to maximize our learning potential!
We’ve also made an effort to stock our kitchen with recycled paper and corn products as well as eliminating all …
It’s my third day here, and my body is just starting to adjust to the time zone and high summer humidity. You wouldn’t think so, but the long lines of people entering the Shanghai Expo grounds are actually cooled by a water spray beneath the metal canopy. I suggested to Paul Woolford and Kelly …
We’ve all seen the graphs, charts, PowerPoint’s, etc…, regarding how much power is consumed by buildings in the United States, and the numbers are really staggering. On an annual basis, buildings in the United States (Source: The National Institute of Building Sciences):
Consume 39% of America’s energy
Consume 68% of its electricity
Emit 38% of the carbon dioxide
Emit 49% of the sulfur dioxide
Emit 25% of the nitrogen oxides
Pretty sobering, and currently the vast majority of our energy is produced from nonrenewable, fossil fuel resources. Makes you wonder what you could possibly do to put a dent in those kinds of numbers. Well, it turns out there’s quite a …
We celebrated this sweet synergy with some delicious green and white cupcakes. Sharing guest-of-honor duties was the incomparable Joyce Saunders (MAL’s right-hand gal), who recently marked her own milestone (25-year) HOK anniversary.
This greened-at-the-hip duo has worked together to advance sustainability within HOK – guiding it from an intriguing idea, to a fringe movement, to a specialty group, to an integral part of our entire practice.
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 …
HOUSTON, TEXAS – The Green Workplace Booksigning Tour made its long awaited stop in the Lone Star State, after multiple stops in St. Louis, NY, WDC and Chicago. HOK along with Hines and Knoll sponsored the one night booksigning event which proved to be a lively yet intimate green evening. The event took place Wednesday, February 17, 2010, in the KNOLL showroom and in the lobby of the recently certified LEED Gold Williams Tower.
Leigh Stringer from Advance Strategies Washington DC, was the special guest to present findings and sign her book, The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment and …
This is my first time posting to HOK Life – hello to all!
I thought I’d dive in (ha) by sharing an update on the condition of our oceans in just the century since the invention of plastic (the history of plastic can be found here)…
The picture above shows an actual sample of the ocean near an area of the ocean affectionally called “The Garbage Patch.” Many think that this is like a floating garbage pile – a physical location of trash. Instead, it’s more like a rich depository, a sample of the incredible concentrations of plastic that now pervade our entire planet. Natural waste has collected here since there was a here …
I found this website this morning about Sourcemap, a framework developed by the MIT Media Lab for individuals to share information about the locations of sourced product components and where their assemblies take place. I think this is a fantastic idea considering that individuals can start to take control of where their company’s source products. In 5-10 years, there will be no excuse for “not knowing” what went into that new bed, or that computer you just bought.
“Sourcemap is an opensource project that, like Wikipedia, relies on volunteers to grow and fine-tune the database. The hope is to develop a sourcemap for every product and service out there. It is supply chain …
If your holiday travel plans will take you through the city of Indianapolis, you’re in for an uncharacteristically uplifting experience. The Col. H. Weir Cook Terminal at Indianapolis International Airport (the first from-the-ground-up terminal constructed in the U.S. since 9/11) is light, airy, dramatic, fun – and a showcase of sustainability.
During a recent visit to Indy, I brought along my camcorder and recorded some perspectives of the building and its occupants.
When I wrote about Eric Lewis my prior TEDx post, I was supposed to continually update you with video’s from the conference/gathering here in Atlanta. However, I’ve been waiting to write about the lecturer’s so that I could include video footage which was taken by Unboundary.
Ciannat Howett is the director of Sustainability for Emory University and has done quite a bit for the development of the way Emory operates everything from buildings, to courses, to social events. She is a wonderful speaker and you should definately check out this video.
I love it when she talks about the expectations of the students and reveals that it’s much less about Emory marketing, and more about Emory Education and defining …
It’s been a banner week for sustainable accolades. First, ENR dubbed us the top green design firm, and now a Design Intelligence survey anointed our firm as the #1 sustainable role model.
Published in the magazine’s July 6 issue, the ranking is based on 2008 revenue from projects seeking LEED, BREEAM or other environmental certification.
In the sector rankings, HOK emerged first in the “Education” sector; second in “Commercial Offices;” second in “Sports, Entertainment & Civic” and third in “Government Offices.”
“Right now is a great time to be entering the design profession because we are going through another revolution,” says HOK Sustainable Design Director Mary Ann Lazarus, AIA. ”We need to include young voices in the mix…we need to have our assumptions challenged.”
Greening a building is hard. Greening an entire organization is even harder. At last count, HOK had more than 900 LEED accredited professionals and 39 LEED certified projects (with 150+ pending). Those results don’t come from spreading magical green pixie dust across the firm. They come from blood, sweat, tears and an unwavering commitment to sustainable design. One of HOK’s earliest and hardest-working green pioneers has been Mary Ann Lazarus, who literally, along with Bill Odell and Sandra Mendler, wrote the book …
Alright! We’re 8 days into the Bike to Work Challenge and HOK is showing it’s pedaling power. I knew we had a healthy competitive spirit, but check out these stats. With 90 riders across the firm, we are ranked 16 of 557 organizations in terms of number of miles ridden. That’s the top 3% of participating organizations. Additionally, we are ranked 1st in out-biking all participating architecture firms.
Within HOK, the DC office (24 riders) is carrying the lead with 796 logged miles, followed closely by the St. Louis Office (8 riders). The Chicago Office (9 riders) is leading a near five-way tie for 3rd.
Thank you, Jim Rice, for pointing us to this video.
With the Bike to Work Month Commute Challenge kicking off Friday May 1st HOK has already shown great enthusiasm with teams from across the firm and around the globe stepping up to meet the challenge. Leading the way is the Washington DC office with three teams signed up so far, including our very own Bill Hellmuth. Way to go DC! As of this morning we have 8 offices and 11 teams participating, with several other teams still forming. If you would like to join the fun it’s not too late. Teams can still form well into the month. For more information see the previous …
So being a big fan of fractals and digital fabrication, I think this little project is most interesting. It’s unfortunate there isn’t a better view of the smaller twigs forming the surface of the table but what a shibby concept. This is sweet design of the 8-bit caliber but I definitely approve and wish that projects like this would get more notoriety because with better skills at fabrication I believe we could incorporate many of these concepts into buildings themselves to yield less waste and better material efficiency.
This is the second annual Houston Lights Out event. Last year HOK was invited to participate by involving our building manager, Hines, and creating a poster design for the poster competition and for all of our assigned buildings that were participating in the event. So we were asked again this year and we have put out another hopefully winning poster. Last year we got second place and this year we would really like to sink first! So please follow the link below and vote for HOK!
I thought this video would be a great closing message for Go Barefoot Week (we do a week vs. a day here in Chicago). I saw it when I was in college and have never forgotten it.
Certain HOK-ers (ahem, John Gilmore ) have been bragging about HOK’s very cool new collaboration technology: the Advanced Collaboration Room, which combines Cisco Telepresence Technology and Polyvision Thunder Express. Well, John, you are no longer the only cool kid in town! The WDC office became the fourth HOK office to open it’s ACR for business. St. Louis, San Francisco, and Toronto already had them…next on the list are Houston, Los Angeles, and London.
After a few solid weeks of construction, the ACR was ready for …
Boring commutes got you down? Well then add some fun and excitement by putting your green pedal power to work during May’s Bike to Work month and the Group Health Commute Challenge. This event is sponsored by the nation’s largest bike club, the Cascade Bicycle Club based in Seattle, and has grown tremendously in the last 5 years with over a thousand teams participating in 2008 – check out the stats. This is a terrific event that promotes sustainability and good health. If you are interested in joining a team or being a team captain it is quick and FREE to set up. So far several HOK teams have formed and are ready to …
