Building Design & Construction articles from November 2004

Building Design & Construction archives from November 2004

The Federal role in sustainability.(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... With Greenbuild III just around the corner, it's a good time to take a look at a group of people who have dedicated themselves to furthering the sustainability movement--the staff members throughout the Federal government who, in many cases,...

Halkias on sustainability.
November 1, 2004... BASICS Sustainability is a term used to describe humanity's desire to sustain economic growth and environmental health for the long term--presenting a delicate balance. Architects create habitats for people to live and work in--environments...

Pelli brings his vision to Tulsa with events center.(News & Trends)
November 1, 2004... Cesar Pelli, whose design credits include the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia--at the time of their completion in 1998 the world's tallest towers--is the architect for a 530,000-sf events center in Tulsa, Okla. It marks Pelli's first...

'Green spaceship' an icon for sustainable school.(News & Trends)
November 1, 2004... Soon after moving into the Lake Zurich (Ill.) Elementary/Middle School in January, students christened the building the "green spaceship" because of the curving green copper panel exterior at the main entrance. Making the name even more fitting...

$250 million Sprint Center Arena.(Projects awarded)
November 1, 2004... A consortium consisting of HOK Sport+Venue+Event, Ellerbe Becket, 360 Architecture, and Rafael Architects has been awarded a contract to design the $250 million Sprint Center Arena in Kansas City, Mo. Selection of the Downtown Arena Design...

Public health laboratory.(Projects awarded)
November 1, 2004... The Wilcox Group of Little Rock, Ark., and Lord, Aeck & Sargent of Atlanta are architects for a $23 million state of Arkansas public health laboratory in Little Rock. Nabholz Construction Corp. of Little Rock is the general contractor for the...

A 72-classroom facility.(Projects awarded)
November 1, 2004... Johnson Fain of Los Angeles is architect for Central Los Angeles Area New High School 10, a 72-classroom facility in a 19-acre redevelopment area just west of downtown. The Clark Construction Group's Costa Mesa, Calif., office is serving as...

Shrinking fees hurt design quality.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... I read with interest your October 2004 editorial "What owners want from CMs." Getting feedback on owner perceptions and wants is valuable for all professionals. I was however disappointed to read that the first and most critical response...

Team approach 'effective'.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... The deterioration in the quality of documents produced by A/E teams has been an unfortunate reality for some time. In order to avoid poor documents, it is incumbent upon owners to issue contracts to A/Es that require documents to reflect a...

Retail leads nonresidential building recovery.(Industry Data)
November 1, 2004... Commercial construction spending accounted for 31% of the total year-to-date gain in nonresidential and multifamily construction through August. The quick rebound in spending on new and renovated multifamily housing, retail, service, and...

Materials costs ease but no reversal yet.(Industry Data)
November 1, 2004... Materials costs for nonresidential buildings are now almost 12% higher than the nearly steady price levels that prevailed throughout 2000-03. Most of the increase occurred from February to May, when suppliers were caught short of inventory....

Coastal cities stay strong as multifamily market peaks.(Industry Data)
November 1, 2004... Multifamily construction spending will peak late in 2004 and then decline about 8% through the end of next year. The expected spending decline will be more a result of the completion of the large number of units started earlier in 2004 than the...

Cost comparisons per square foot in select metro markets.(Industry Data)
November 1, 2004... Cost comparisons per square foot in select metro markets Hospital, 2-3 story Hospital, 4-8 story '04 '03 % chg. '04 '03 % chg. Atlanta 149.34 139.19 ...

Rapid prototyping: the next wave in architectural modeling.(Information Tech)
November 1, 2004... The famous (and hilarious) LIFE magazine photo from 1952 shows a movie theater full of people wearing cardboard glasses enjoying the 3-D experience. Since then, advances in computer tehcnology have made it much easier to view 3-D images. But...

Feiner on sustainability: GSA's Chief Architect talks about the relationship between sustainability and toilet paper and unveils his secret for determining whether a Federal building is any good.(Sustainability)
November 1, 2004... As Chief Architect of the U.S. General Services Administration, Edward A. Feiner, FAIA, oversees an inventory of more than 350 million sf of Federal space for courthouses, office buildings, national laboratories, border stations, computer...

New shade of federalism: Federal building design is turning over a new 'green' leaf with the incorporation of sustainable techniques and innovative technology into three mega-projects.(Sustainability)
November 1, 2004... The General Services Administration's great architectural awakening came 10 years ago, with the implementation of its Design Excellence Program. In recent years, sustainable design has become a primary component of design excellence in GSA...

Gold rush: developers of two leased projects for the GSA never thought twice about stopping at LEED Silver when they could go for Gold.(Sustainability)
November 1, 2004... Although they serve vastly different functions, two recently completed GSA leased buildings share a common characteristic. They were initially designed to meet Silver-level requirements of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy...

Beyond borderline: a bilateral team builds a sustainably designed border station that deftly straddles the line between the U.S. and Canada.(Sustainability)
November 1, 2004... About 200 miles southeast of Calgary along Interstate 15, the Port of Entry facility in Sweet Grass, Mont., and Courts, Alta., is one of the busiest border crossing stations in North America, processing 1.3 million travelers and 413,000...

A sneak peak at the Top 10 Green Products.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... A space-saving elevator system and carpet-cushion backing manufactured from recycled safety-glass film are among the winners of BuildingGreen's 2004 Top 10 Green Products awards. The Brattleboro, Vt.-based publisher of the GreenSpec product...

Carpet made for beamer drivers.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... Carpet line designed by BMW's design consultancy catches the essence of the German automaker's reputation for sleek aesthetics, technological innovation, and quality craftsmanship. The MotorSport Collection is available in broadloom and tile,...

Green on top.(Products at work)
November 1, 2004... Roofing membrane that incorporates post-consumer recycled crumb rubber tops the 115,000-sf Rogers High School in Elk River, Minn.--one of the first projects completed under Elk River's high-performance school initiative. StressPly EUV...

Greening the ceiling.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... Ceiling panels made from melamine are free of off-gassing and do not shed fiber as they age. EuroFoam panels also feature 87% light reflectance to optimize lighting efficiency in open-plan spaces, such as offices, hospitals, and schools, and...

Insulated roof panels "LEED" the way.(Products at work)
November 1, 2004... More than 19,000 sf of polyurethane foam insulated panels form the roof of the new Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection office building in Washington, Pa. The 4-inch-thick, CFR-42 panels contributed to the building's LEED-Gold...

Clearly green.(Products at work)
November 1, 2004... To reduce heat load in a 90-foot-tall, 7,600-sf glazed atrium at Grand Valley State University's Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences, architect Design Plus specified a curtain-wall system and interlocking sunshade assembly. The combination of...

Recycling program reaches milestone.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... Since June 1999, more than 20 million sf of old acoustical ceiling tiles have been diverted from landfills, thanks to the Armstrong Ceiling Recycling Program. The five-year-old program invites Building Teams to ship old ceiling tiles from...

Smart vapor retarder.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... Vapor retarder made from polyamide film changes permeability according to the relative humidity, varying from less than one perm at 20% relative humidity, to more than 10 perms at 70% relative humidity and over 20 perms at 95% relative...

Soy on the roof.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... Designed to LEED-Gold standards, the 50,000-sf home for the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago will feature several soy-based products, including roof coating and insulation. ELMS soy-based roof coating is highly reflective, thereby...

Green resource.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... Literature from PPG walks architects and specifiers through each of the six LEED categories and explains which PPG glass, coatings, and paint products can be used to earn specific LEED credits. The "Glass, Coatings, and Paint USGBC LEED...

From cars to curbs.(Green Products)
November 1, 2004... If the next parking curb you drive up to suddenly brings back fond memories of your last car, there's good reason. A Canadian manufacturer of recycled products has released a new line of parking curbs, multipurpose posts and bollards, and...

The green building movement, one year later.(Progress Report on Sustainability)
November 1, 2004... A year ago, we described sustainable development as "the most vibrant and powerful force to impact the building design and construction field in more than a decade." Nothing has happened since to diminish the validity of that statement. If...

A year of progress for sustainable development.(From the Editor)
November 1, 2004... No sooner was the soy/vagetable ink dry on the 100% post-consumer recxc]ed paper of last year's "White Paper on Sustainability: A Report on the Green Building Movement," than it was clear to the editors of this publication hoax much more we...

Progress report executive summary.(Executive Summary)
November 1, 2004... This Progress Report on Sustainability follows our 2003 "White Paper on Sustainability" with analysis of new developments in the green-building movement; detailed reviews or' sustainability in hospitals, schools, and homes: and suggested...

BD&C readers' involvement in sustainability on the rise.(BD&C Reader Survey)
November 1, 2004... A year ago, the editors of BD&C asserted, "Sustainable development is the most vibrant and powerful force to impact the building design and construction field in more than a decade." A survey of our own readers showed that four out of five...

Green building on the move in '04.(New LEED Programs)
November 1, 2004... Two thousand four has been a remarkable year for the green-building movement. The past year has witnessed the birth of three new entities in the U.S Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. In addition to...

Green buildings and first-costs--the controversy that will not die.(First-Cost Controversy)
November 1, 2004... A key issue that seems to have a life of its own is whether green buildings in general, and LEED-certified buildings in particular, cost more to build than non-LEED structures. We wrote extensively on that topic in our 2003 White Paper, but...

Rethinking green building laws at the state and local level.(Green-Building Laws)
November 1, 2004... State and local green building legislative programs began sprouting up in the late 1990s, spurred by the advent of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED green building rating system. The development of LEED for New Construction, coupled with...

Progressive districts promoting high-performance schools.(Green Schools)
November 1, 2004... K-12 schools, coupled with the university construction market, represent the single largest sector in the nonresidential construction industry. Construction spending for educational facilities is expected to reach nearly $83 billion in 2005....

Green building comes home.(Green Homes)
November 1, 2004... While this Progress Report is directed primarily at the nonresidential construction market, the $355 billion single-family housing market, coupled with $44 billion in multifamily housing, cannot be ignored. Homes represent well more than half...

Healthcare--the lost sheep of sustainable design.(Healthcare)
November 1, 2004... Hospitals and healthcare facilities would seem to be the most logical candidates among all building types to embrace sustainable design. Because they must operate around the clock, 365 days a year, and are packed with energy-gobbling high-tech...

Canada's 'Green Globes' program offers online auditing tool.(Green Globes)
November 1, 2004... In Canada, a growing number of government agencies, industry organizations, and private firms seeking a more simplified approach for assessing and rating the environmental performance of buildings have adopted the Green Globes online auditing...

Construction waste recycling programs gain traction.(C&D Waste)
November 1, 2004... After a slow start, recycling construction and demolition (C&D) waste is becoming a well-established practice in the green building industry The trend received a substantial boost from two developments this past September. The first was an...

The great USGBC trade association debate.(Trade Associations)
November 1, 2004... Since its founding in 1993, the USGBC has excluded trade associations from membership out of fear that trade associations, with their financial clout and lobbying influence, would overwhelm the fledgling organization and undermine its mission....

The road ahead for green building.(The Road Ahead)
November 1, 2004... Building Teams can look forward to significant developments from the USGBC in the next year or so. The Council's first task: Take LEED-NC 2.1 and, without omitting or adding credits, review each credit's performance, based on feedback from...

Progress report action plan.(2004 Action Plan)
November 1, 2004... The editors of Building Design & Construction offer these recommendations to our 76,011 subscribers in the $358 billion North American design and construction market--the men and women responsible for building more than 20,000 commercial,...