HOK St. Louis Senior Project Manager and SVP Dennis Laflen, a 42-year veteran of HOK (he joined the firm when he was 19), just passed the LEED Green Associate exam! To celebrate this momentous occasion, St. Louis Sustainable Design Leader Tim Gaidis, who has been leading the office’s LEED credentialing charge, composed a new version of the classic Christmas poem. Thanks to Tim for letting us share his office-wide email with the world and to Megan McClure for the Photoshoppery. Most of all: Congratulations Dennis! You are an inspiration.

Here’s Tim’s poem…
From: Tim Gaidis
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 6:44 PM
To: _NC STL …

This classroom and laboratory building at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana, encourages cross-disciplinary innovation by serving both the business and engineering programs interdependently. The design provides dedicated classroom and laboratory space for each program, as well as a shared central atrium.  Check it out on Flickr….

Here in the St. Louis office we pride ourselves on our abilities to indulge in food, have fun and most importantly, give back to the community.

Since 1973, the St. Louis HOK office has held a campaign to raise funds for the United Way of Greater St. Louis, and this year was no different. However, this year’s campaign, which ran from October 4th – 14th and was dubbed Embracing the Past | Supporting the Future, was different in one extraordinary way: a record-breaking amount of funds were raised. Only eight years ago in 2002 we raised a mere $21,535.50 (which was still 119% of our $18,000 goal). This year, thanks to an amazing committee and the open minds, stomachs and wallets …

St. Louis Sustainable Practice Leader Tim Gaidis seems to have confused Bike to Work Day with Bike AT Work Day. Here he is trailing Brok Howard, who just joined the Interiors group and clearly is a conscientious bell-ringer, on a tour around the office. Not visible in the video is Sustainable Design Specialist Mary Ostafi, who was holding onto Tim’s wheel and gliding in his slipstream. No HOKers were harmed in the making of this film.

Kim Passmore, Seth Teel, Eric Schneider (RCGA), Jim Alexander (RCGA), Mark Rosen, Tim Gaidis and obviously not Photoshopped Abdel Ferhi

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Building management here in HOK’s office at Metropolitan Square in St. Louis just gave us new access cards. HOK Brand Sheriff Kelly Bathe, a colleague in the Marketing and Communications group, was the first to point out that the pattern on the card, which is some sort of building logo, looks a little like the Dharma Initiative logo from the brilliantly trippy ABC show Lost.

Now I have to get back to work in the Orchid station before the Smoke Monster gets me. Lost wraps up its sixth and final season on Sunday night.

HOK’s future generation of architects, engineers and designers jumped in hands-first to help a worthy cause. The HOK St. Louis Diversity Task Force is sponsoring a back-to-school supply drive (August 17-21), collecting school supplies for two St. Louis community schools: Lyon-Blow Middle School and Wilkinson @ Roe Early Childhood Education Center.

To kick-off the event, the team hosted a special “KIDZ” art event where employees’ children helped decorate the supply drive boxes with some good old-fashioned hand painting.

“Thank you so much for making this a super fun event,” said Laura Zimmerman, of the HOK St. Louis accounting group. ”My son Robert had a great time, and I think my mom (Robert’s grandma) had just …

HOK St. Louis is working to help the Animal House Fund raise $4 million required to build a new 20,000 square-foot animal shelter for the city of St. Louis. It’s a tough task, but we can do it!! 

In 2001, a 10-year-old boy was attacked by a pack of dogs in a St. Louis city park and later died. Serious concerns suddenly were raised about whether the city’s animal care facilities had proper staffing and adequate resources.

When the current “Animal Regulatory Center” was built in the …

Most of us have had the awkward experience at a grade school dance where everyone lines the walls and looks at his or her own feet.  If we haven’t gotten to experience it first hand, we’ve surely seen it joked about on television or in movies. This timid experience was recently part of HOK St. Louis’ Arts and Education Campaign! The final day of activities was wrapped up with a Happy Hour and Square Dance!

HOK St. Louis employees spent all day eagerly awaiting the moment that they got to use their well rehearsed excuse to NOT dance!  Some of these excuses were:

“I’d be too embarrassed to dance with everyone …

You may think you don’t know HOK Planning Group landscape architect and urban planner Mark Vogl, but you do. Sort of. He’s one of those unassuming, quiet people in your studio who you don’t often talk to because he or she is so intensely focused on doing amazing work for clients. And then when you do happen to engage him or her at the coffee machine, you realize you can learn a whole lot by listening.

“What inspires me personally is the legacy we can leave for our kids,” says Mark. “We talk about creating great places and a great quality of life, but I think what is really important in design is the confluence of the built environment with the natural environment. …

They may not look like what you would first imagine. 

They may not look like anything TV makes them out to be. 

But they are . . .

the St. Louis HOK Biker Gang!
 
  

[It may be necessary to say "the St. Louis HOK Biker Gang!" in your best dramatic theatrical voice over; go ahead, try it again, I'll wait]

[l-r: Seth Teel, Jason Kerensky, Paul Wilhelms, Derek Prior, Brett Kostial, Tim Gaidis]

[l-r: Jon Cohen, JoAnn Brookes, Bruce Brunner, Derek Prior, Seth Teel,
Brett Kostial, Matt Snelling, Jason Kerensky, Tim Gaidis, Mark Rosen,
Paul Wilhelms, Steven Crang,

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It’s fair to say RecycOlympics was a huge success in HOK St. Louis, as it came to a close in the final medal rounds.

You’ll see in the “podium” photo above, some participants walked away with quite a bit of bling.

From top left: Rocco Danna, Gold – Coffee Cup Marathon, Silver – Paper Airplane Javelin, Silver – Business Card Tower Building, Silver – Recycling Bin Basketball, Bronze – Rubberband Archery; Michelle Pinkston, Gold – Business Card Tower Building; Eric Romano, Gold -Rubberband Archery, Gold – Airplane Javelin, Silver – Coffee Cup Marathon, Silver – Business Card Tower Building; Jeff York, …

Majestic music has been bellowing throughout the floor at HOK St. Louis today to commemorate the first-EVER RecycOlympics!!! In honor of Sustainability Awareness Month and the firm’s upcoming “Go Barefoot Day”, HOK’s celebration for Earth Day, we are having special activities and events to raise awareness about reducing waste that goes into our world’s landfills.

RecycOlympics is the brainchild of our sustainability crew in St. Louis, and our team went all out on the event. All proceeds raised from employees who participated will go to Earthshare.

Today’s events included rubberband archery, airplane javelin, recycle bin basketball and business card tower building. Of course all materials used are recycled! I think HR might have a heart attack if they see people …

Matt Snelling from the Planning Group is the office’s resident Scorsese. His latest creation? Not The Godfather: Part IV, but a very cool video for the Opening Ceremony of the first-ever HOK RecycOlympics, a Sustainability Awareness Month fundraising, IOC-sanctioned event with proceeds going to EarthShare. RecycOlympics events highlight the office’s efforts to reduce waste and are inspired by last year’s Wii bowling tournament and The Office television show. The preliminaries will go down during lunchtime on April 10, with the final eight competitors vying for Gold on April 16. Ready steady go!

 
Cast: Matt Snelling, Julie Hick, Barry Sutherland, Chris Trowbridge, George Clooney
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