Building Design & Construction articles from March 2009

Building Design & Construction archives from March 2009

Atelier ten: Learning From the White Ant.
March 1, 2009... Dave Barista Patrick Bellew is very keen on termites. Not just any termites. Barossa termites. The blind wood-munching critters found in Africa are best known for building massive, finely engineered nests that can reach 20 feet in...

Best AEC Firms toWork For.
March 1, 2009... Staff Past Winners 2006 FreemanWhite Hnedak Bobo Group McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. Shawmut Design and Construction Walter P Moore 2007 Anshen+Allen Arup Bovis Lend Lease Cannon...

Building Communities for Nearly 80 Years.(BLDD Architects Inc.)(Company overview)
March 1, 2009... Jeff Yoders For nearly 80 years, BLDD Architects positioned itself as a community builder, not only in the marketplace, but also within the firm itself. The design firm--with 74 employees in Decatur (its home office), Bloomington,...

Boosting Business with Employee Training and Development.
March 1, 2009... Jay W. Schneider Despite a besieged AEC industry, DES Architects + Engineers of Redwood City, Calif., sees plenty of opportunity out there. The 37-year-old firm remains profitable and busy, but leaders recognize that, with their workload...

Seven Decades of Leadership.(HKS Inc.)(Company overview)
March 1, 2009... Robert Cassidy Harwood K. Smith would be proud of the tiny architecture practice he founded 70 years ago, in Dallas. In the intervening years, HKS, Inc., has grown into the third-largest A/E firm in the U.S. (BD+C Giants 2008) and...

All in the Family.(Robins and Morton Group)
March 1, 2009... Jeff Yoders Sixty-four-year-old Robins & Morton has grown from the small Robins Engineering Company of Birmingham, Ala., into one of the top healthcare general contractors in the nation. Today, R&M has offices in Birmingham, Huntsville,...

Small engineering firm's great passion for green.(Rumsey Engineers Inc.)
March 1, 2009... Jay W. Schneider "I've been with Rumsey for almost four years now, and I've turned away millions of dollars in business. From the standpoint of being in a small firm, that's been a bizarre experience," says Clifton Lemon, VP of marketing...

University of Chicago breaks ground on subterranean addition to library.(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Staff The University of Chicago, along with structural engineer Halvorson and Partners and architect Murphy/Jahn, both based in Chicago, celebrated the recent groundbreaking for the Mansueto Library. This subterranean addition to the...

Florida to get two schools in one.(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Staff Work is under way on the new Combination School for Hillsborough County Schools in Valrico, Fla. The project consists of two separate schools on a 32-acre site designed to share common functions to reduce the required floor area and...

'Vertical courtyards' will spur occupant interaction at Taiwan's planned Chinatrust Bank HQ.(Chinatrust Commercial Bank)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Staff Inspired by Chinatrust's corporate philosophy, which emphasizes a family-like relationship between the bank and its clients, the design for the company's new headquarters in Taiwan incorporates a series of vertical courtyards that...

Congress to AEC industry: Drop dead!
March 1, 2009... Staff Seven hundred eighty-seven billion smackers, and just scraps for the U.S. nonresidential design and construction industry. That's what the stimulus plan amounts to. Bucket loads for roads, bridges, and water projects--peanuts for...

Sustainable Design: What Do Europeans Know That We Don't Know (But Should)?
March 1, 2009... By Jerry Yudelson, PE, MBA, LEED AP U.S. and Canadian Building Teams that fail to figure out how to use the kinds of technologies and innovative design approaches already in place in Europe are going to fall behind competitors who do. ...

Hopkins Architects: Ceilings That Do Double Duty.
March 1, 2009... Dave Barista "The most consistently depressing thing in U.S. buildings, almost without exception, is the ceilings." Mike Taylor doesn't mean any offense by his blunt observation. It's just that the British architect has seen far too...

Ingenhoven Architects: Seeking Optimal Balance.(Company overview)
March 1, 2009... Robert Cassidy Ever since founding Ingenhoven Architects in 1985, at age 25, Christoph Ingenhoven has been guided by the philosophy of Nachhaltigkeit . This is an old German term that once meant "protecting and maintaining a forest on a...

SmartBIM Library 3.2 launched, QTO coming.
March 1, 2009... By Jeff Yoders, Senior Associate Editor In the world of high-quality, parametric BIM content, the founders of SmartBIM (formerly Tectonic Partners) have been working on simplifying the use of building product objects in Revit since BIM...

Novel Materials, Tried and True.
March 1, 2009... By C.C. Sullivan and Barbara Horwitz-Bennett England's Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, Madrid's Royal Palace, and Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral all share a couple of interesting traits. They are still standing today. And they are...

Senior-friendly Green Project Takes Top Prize in MBI's Student Design Contest.(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... Staff Tasked with designing a high-performance, modular community center for seniors, 12 architecture students recently competed in the Modular Building Institute's fourth annual student green building design competition. The competition...

Study shows 30% above ASHRAE energy efficiency difficult to reach in buildings, 50% unreachable.
March 1, 2009... Staff NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, last month released a report that demonstrates the levels of energy efficiency that standard office buildings can reach while remaining economically feasible. Although...

RSMeans cost comparisons.
March 1, 2009... Staff [TABLE OMITTED]

Building materials prices slide for fourth straight month.(Statistical data)
March 1, 2009... Staff The materials cost index for nonresidential buildings fell 0.4% in January, the fourth consecutive monthly decline, according to BD+C economist Jim Haughey. The February to September 2008 price spike from the worldwide commodity boom...

Old carpet made new.
March 1, 2009... Staff Carpet contains post-consumer yarn made mostly from nylon reclaimed from competitors' products. Zip Stitch's backing contains 10% post-consumer recycled content. Hemp is spun with recycled nylon to create a plush, wool-like aesthetic...

EPDM panels create cool roofs.
March 1, 2009... Staff As the widest white EPDM membrane sheet in the industry, 25-foot-wide RubberGard EcoWhite EPDM membrane panels reduce labor and materials costs. The reduction of overall seaming required also enhances watertight integrity,...

Hit them with your best shot.
March 1, 2009... Staff DensArmor Plus Impact-Resistant interior panels offer resistance to surface abrasion, indentation, and hard body impact thanks to an additional embedded fiberglass mesh. Fiberglass facers, rather than paper facers, reduce remediation...

All warm-edge spacers are not created equal.
March 1, 2009... Staff Non-metal spacer system for insulating glass units provides improved energy efficiency, durability, and comparable structural strength to stainless steel and other metal spacers. Super Spacer TriSeal's flexible foam construction...

Air sanitizer for HVAC ducts.
March 1, 2009... Staff Air-sanitizing agent continually sanitizes the air in HVAC ducts in commercial, medical, and residential spaces. ARIA is dispensed into a space as an invisible vapor that sanitizes the air by continuously killing airborne bacteria...

7 breakthrough acoustical products for green buildings.
March 1, 2009... Staff For all the praise green buildings receive these days, many of these projects fall woefully short of expectations when it comes to acoustical performance. Why? In many cases, acoustical performance is an afterthought on green...

First cost, client pushback biggest barriers to adoption of high-efficiency lighting systems, say BD+C readers.
March 1, 2009... Staff When it comes to implementing high-efficiency lighting systems, such as LEDs and T5/T8 fluorescents, first cost and pushback from clients are viewed as the most significant barriers to adoption, according to a February 2009 survey of...

Save energy by illuminating stairwells and corridors only when they are occupied.
March 1, 2009... Staff Infrequently occupied areas such as stairwells and corridors can be energy hogs because the lights are needlessly left on 24/7. Occu-Smart bi-level light fixtures can reduce energy costs by illuminating these spaces only when...

8 tips for specifying and installing glulam beams.
March 1, 2009... Staff The popularity of glulam beams has skyrocketed during the past decade, particularly in the hospitality, religious, and education sectors, where appearance, sustainability, and long spans are often desired. But working with...

Can't go to the rainforest? Bring the rainforest to you.
March 1, 2009... Staff Resilient flooring allows designers to create the look of exotic tropical woods without impacting the rainforest. Tropical Woods features a five-layer backing system that resists dents and scratches and a 40 mil wear layer that is...

Standing-seam solar roof.
March 1, 2009... Staff Roof system integrates photovoltaic technology with the durability of a standing-seam roof system. Thin-film solar laminate is fused to the surface of the metal panel substrate to create a lightweight, durable roof system. PAC Solar...

Save money, stay warm with insulated metal wall panels.
March 1, 2009... Staff Insulated metal wall panels are an affordable concrete alternative at roughly half the cost of concrete blocks. Kingspan API Granitstone lightweight panels are combined with the architectural appearance of sprayed stucco for a...

'Capital requirements don't take a holiday'.(Joseph I. Mulligan)(Interview)
March 1, 2009... Staff Joseph I. Mulligan, III,AICP, is the City of Boston's Deputy Director for Capital Construction, where he oversees $300 million of capital-funded projects. Prior to joining Mayor Thomas M. Menino's administration, he was a project...

Transsolar Climate Engineering: Moderating The Design Process.
March 1, 2009... Robert Cassidy In 1987, a group of building experts from 15 countries, under the aegis of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, toured 45 commercial buildings worldwide to investigate what kinds of building systems reduced energy...