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 …
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 …
Congratulations to HOK in San Francisco’s Justin Kelly, who was recently named the 2013 Young Architect of the Year by the AIA San Francisco Chapter.
“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.
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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.
Read the 2013 HOK Design Annual on Issuu or download a PDF (45 MB).
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 …
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, …
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.
Bill Hellmuth, AIA, who joined HOK in 1991 and ascended to president in 2004, leads design projects worldwide. But he is especially proud of the local architectural contributions of HOK’s Washington practice, which is located in Georgetown’s historic Canal House. Under Bill’s leadership over the past two decades, the DC studio has designed more than 25 buildings across the city.
Why is contributing to Washington’s built environment so important to you?
BH: I am committed to cities. They are my focus. Washington is a high-energy city with great institutions and museums and terrifically interesting things to do. It’s a wonderful place to live.
I love being able to …
Any design project, even the simplest one, involves some sort of change for the occupants of a space. Sometimes it means moving them to a different location in the building. Maybe it means moving them across town. Perhaps, for good reasons, it means that their new work environment will look and operate differently than it does now. It is crucial to keep in mind that many people have a tough time when it comes to adopting a new environment. Change is hard and takes some mental effort to take on fully. Making any change – even when it might be better in the long run – is often resisted. Resistance to change is in our DNA.
It seems counterintuitive, …
When you visit your doctor to talk about what is hurting or not right, you may find yourself describing sharp pains, headaches or numbness. If your doctor is doing her job, she will then ask you follow-up questions about these symptoms to get to the root of the problem.
You are probably painfully aware of some symptoms. Others are less obvious and take some probing and testing to figure out. Having studied for many years and seen many patients, your doctor should be able to give you a reasonably accurate diagnosis of what is ailing you.
That’s our job, but for space. At HOK, we listen to our clients and evaluate their complaints. …
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 …
This is a short post I’ve written as a guest contributor for a friend at Otto. Check out other amazing posts on design and products at 3Rings!
There’s an intrinsic dilemma that all architects and designers carry with them: the struggle with the idea of control. We lose precious sleep over the often unknowable outcomes of our projects.
An ever-present but less contemplated thought is the impact of those outcomes. While this also can be “unknowable,” designers can draw on evidence and research to predict the impacts of projects with more accuracy. From a business culture standpoint, we crave predictability. Yet, it rarely leaves room for growth, …
Like a proud father, Kenneth Drucker, FAIA, notes that two of his New York team’s projects that began more than half a decade ago have opened in recent months: Harlem Hospital’s new Mural Pavilion and a replacement hospital for the University Medical Center at Princeton.
While keeping an eye on all of the projects coming out of HOK’s New York studio, Ken is also designing a headquarters for Korean energy company Samchully in Seoul and the Singapore Chancery infill building in Manhattan. He recently began design of a new ambulatory care center for New York-Presbyterian Hospital on a prominent Upper East Side site. Finally, he just returned …
HOK recently participated in an important research initiative with CoreNet Global, a corporate real estate research and networking organization. We were one of a few service providers that had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of corporate real estate executives about global trends and their predictions for the years leading up to 2020.
This nine-month “CRE 2020″ study enabled us to discuss and truly understand the critical issues our corporate clients are wrestling with – and what they are doing to prepare for the future.
While HOK’s team provided guidance for all eight work streams, three experts from HOK’s consulting practice led teams of industry peers to author individual reports:
• Leigh Stringer – Sustainability
• …
For those of you who filled out the World’s Largest Workplace Survey on Facebook, thank you! It’s still open and collecting data, but since it’s been open a while, we are excited to share some initial results and pair it with some of our other research.
In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, about 6 months ago we launched what we called the “World’s Largest Workplace Survey,” to capture the widest possible swath of honest opinions about how people feel about their work environments.
Rather than approaching people through traditional phone or web-based surveys, HOK used Facebook to make direct connections in an informal, confidential way. We chose this tool because there are 800 million people on Facebook – more …
Thirty-four-year architectural veteran Russ Drinker, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, joined the leadership team in HOK’s San Francisco office on Sept 4. as a new senior vice president and management principal.
As a pre-teen growing up in a 150-year-old Victorian farmhouse surrounded by an apple orchard in Saratoga, California, Russ built tree houses and forts. By the time he began studying architecture at the University of California in Berkeley in 1976, he had graduated to designing and constructing 2,000-square-foot solar homes.
“I had no business doing this, but I designed and built a custom house while an undergraduate at Berkeley,” said Russ. “It taught me about designing buildings from the inside-out and about sustainability. And I …
Twenty-year architectural veteran Stan Chiu, AIA, LEED AP, an industry leader in lean design and integrated project delivery (IPD), joined HOK’s Los Angeles office on Sept. 4 as a new senior vice president and management principal.
After earning his B.A. from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1992, Stan was awarded a fellowship to study in Japan, with a focus on comparing traditional and contemporary creative processes. He worked for a black-cape architecture firm in Tokyo and also as a carpenter on an island off Kobe, Japan.
“I have always been interested in the creative process,” said Stan. “Especially how a …
Some of my greatest pleasures in life come from visiting buildings that I helped to design. There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing your labor of often many years come to fruition and be used as you intended. I also love to drop in on HOK projects that my colleagues here worked on, even if I wasn’t directly involved.
I had a great opportunity for this on a recent trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where my HOK Healthcare colleagues designed the beautiful Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital. Now several years old, it looks like it could have opened just yesterday – it’s clearly well-loved …
Senior specifications writer Terry Mattison is celebrating 50 years at HOK – and counting.
Members of the St. Louis office gathered on August 30 to celebrate with Terry, whose 11-page resume includes a staggering 341 HOK projects. That number likely would double if it included the projects he has unofficially touched by providing advice on building materials. Terry, who still arrives at the office by 3:00 a.m. on most days, joins an elite group. HOK’s other two half-century employees are Co-Founder Gyo Obata and Chairman Emeritus Bill Valentine, who retired last spring.
Vice Chairman Clark Davis kicks off the festivities
“A lot of things have happened while Terry …
HOK’s Robin Ellerthorpe in his Grand Rapids, Mich., home office
Sue Shellenbarger’s recent Wall Street Journal piece on “‘Working from Home’ Without Slacking Off” reminded me of the question so many clients ask about the benefits and drawbacks of home working.
HOK gets drawn into the conversation because when our clients’ employees work at home full- or even part-time, they typically lose their assigned seat in the office. With more and more people working outside the office, large portions of office buildings can sit empty for long periods and there can be less of a reason to be there. Heck, with everyone away from the office, will there even be people to …
The London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony was yesterday and I’m really glad that I was in the UK this year and able to enjoy all of it, from the torch run through to the Paralympics still to come. Back in 2005 when it was announced that London would be the host city for the 2012 Olympics I emailed a friend in the London HOK office and asked if I could sleep on her living room floor and come and see the games. She’s back in …
Lightwork. I can’t think of a better single word to describe what we do every day at HOK Lighting Group, the five-person lighting design team based in St. Louis. 2012 has been a very busy year for us. It is more than half over, so I wanted to share some of the highlights (pun is unavoidable in our profession). I also welcome you to follow me on Twitter (@LightworkPDZ) for continual lighting related announcements, observations and chatter.
The St. Louis Interiors and Lighting Groups have expanded and revitalized our workshop to include multiple lighting mock-ups including the HOK Product Design/Neoray recessed indirect …
For the third year in a row, the Design Futures Council and DesignIntelligence have ranked HOK as the most-admired firm in the world for its leadership in sustainable and high-performance design. This is indeed an honor and a privilege.
“HOK is a firm often cited for making a difference. … HOK is recognized for breaking new ground with clear, practical and inspirational leadership. HOK staff is admired for its compelling case studies, engaging thought leadership, and insights that lead to making wise decisions to benefit the planet’s future condition.”
James Cramer
Co-Chair, Design Futures Council
Founding Editor, DesignIntelligence
We owe much of our leadership status to our clients. It is our clients who bring their vision …
