When I was an art history undergraduate student, a professor once told me that, when he begins to read a paper, he always read the endnotes first. Those, he said, allowed him to comprehend the depth of research and analysis he could expect from the author. For those who don’t often work in words, the endnote—and even the footnote—can be an illuminating tool. Endnotes appear at the end of a book or chapter, and provide research citations, further reading, or complicating issues that the author feels are necessary to fully understand their text.
The common understanding of endnotes and footnotes stems from the phrase, “a footnote in history,” denoting that the content contained within these annotations are relatively unimportant in relation to the main text. But I must challenge that flattening notion. Annotations are, in practice, opportunities to embolden and elucidate main ideas. Endnotes, then, have something in common with architecture: The fundamental goal of each is transformation—the transformation of landscapes, communities, civilizations, through seemingly minor interventions.
I hesitate to elaborate on architecture as a ‘seemingly minor’ intervention because I understand the complexity and rigor of architectural practice. Though those tiny numbered citations and anecdotes appear after the main ideas have been presented to a reader, their existence can explode a thesis; they can anchor groundbreaking research in the work of predecessors; they can inspire the reader to explore the connective tissue of fieldwork. In so many ways, a building, too, is an endnote to the priorities, values, and visions of our communities. The architectural and design work completed by architects at HDR illuminate client goals, enrich big ideas with concrete manifestations, make tangible the firm’s values, and are rooted by precedent work.
In this year’s edition of Opacity, we followed a similar line: Endnotes, here, function to tell the stories of this year’s awarded projects, but also to communicate the jury’s priorities and concerns. Each awarded project receives its own set of endnotes that provide juror comments and precedent projects that jurors cite as potential references. Like the hand-painted illuminations found in early Medieval manuscripts, these endnotes help illustrate some of the conceptual, poetic, and didactic decisions made by jurors. We ask that you don’t approach the endnote as a secondary thought to the building itself, but as a companion to HDR’s wider vision for the firm.
finally, as my tenure as Opacity editor comes to a close, it has been a privilege to assemble this and the previous two Opacity journals over the past three years. f ittingly, in my last jury experience, many of the jurors were concerned with the notion of transformation— how projects are designed to grow, change and adapt, and how they might, in turn, transform their communities. Endnotes marks the final book in this series, but also a manifestation of HDR’s capacity to transform ideas into places; places into communities.
Until next time,
Anjulie Rao, Editor Opacity Journal
06
From left to right; Elizabeth Pagliacolo
Michelle Addington
Allison Grace Williams
Mark Lee
Nader Tehrani
OPACITY INITIATIVE
The Opacity Initiative is the “measure of our design conscience,” a way for HDR to revisit and understand our work from outside perspectives. It is a yearly design review in which outside experts from varied disciplines are invited to evaluate the firm’s work and offer their feedback.
This year, the jury convened at The Cooper Union in New york City. Each day, jurors reviewed and narrowed the field of submitted projects, evaluating them individually but creating thematic throughlines to understand the firm’s ethos and intentions. The vibrant city and campus fueled rigorous discussion and debate, resulting in a final selection that reflects the jurors’ priorities and excitements.
ALLISON GRACE WILLIAMS
JURY CHAIR
Francisco, CA, USA
FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP, NOMA Founder, AGWms_studio San
Allison has amassed an international portfolio of large-scale civic‚ cultural‚ and research works in 40 years of practice as a design leader with SOM, Perkins+Will and AECOM. She is best known for her inventive instincts and leadership that generated award-winning buildings that bridge culture, technology and the environment, and convey the values and traditions of audience and place. Allison’s most successful projects transcend the buildings themselves and as they age‚ continue to evolve a narrative on relevant issues.
In 2017, Allison founded AGWms_studio. Design consulting for clients, frequent lectures, occasional studio teaching, design competition and awards juries, pro bono activities, and making (art, building, and inventing) are the firm’s mainstay.
Allison is an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, was the 2021 Joseph Esherick Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, and served two cycles as visiting committee chair at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. She has served as a juror for the COTE Top Ten Design Awards, the Architecture at Zero Design Competition and was a member of the interdisciplinary jury for the Chouteau Greenway Design Competition in St. Louis, MO. Allison currently serves on the AIA College of fellows Jury and the board of directors for Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. She delivered the keynote address at NOMA’s 2019 Conference in Brooklyn, Ny, and was awarded The Norma Sklarek Award in Architecture in 2018 by the AIACC.
AGWms_studio’s current design collaborations include a pavilion, performance venue, and follies in fair Park Community Park in Dallas, TX (with MLA).
Dear HDR,
Thank you for the opportunity over the past three Opacity juries to lead the review of your firm’s extensive interdisciplinary design portfolio. Your willingness to open your portfolio to this type of constructive, external critique is testimony to your commitment to a regimen of holistic design excellence.
The first jury I participated in during my tenure was conducted virtually due to COvID-19 safety parameters, the second at the Harvard GSD in Cambridge, and the third in New york City at The Cooper Union. Over these three years as your chair, I orchestrated the jury deliberations that reflected on the unprecedented intersection of the three immediately-relevant global issues of climate catastrophies, health emergencies and continued social, racial and environmental inequities, particularly in this country. The juries explored how the profession, and HDR specifically, is engaging these issues within its practice (both with baby steps and bigger policy initiatives) and in its design process to include them as critical components of true design excellence. Our discourse, therefore, frequently migrated and meandered beyond the details of a well-executed building to understand the work from a standpoint of its mission‚ its context, and its impact. We asked ourselves: Is the work contributing to new and innovative solutions for more equitable, sustainable, and beautiful spaces?
The composition of each jury was unique, with practitioners, university deans, and journalists. I found that the more diverse the jury, the more comprehensive our dialogue became. And yet the desire to find relevance with these burning issues threaded throughout my three-year stint as chair. I think that is good and hope it will accelerate and enrich the design process going forward.
The extensive portfolio of work bridged across design at all scales and engaged multiple disciplines including landscape architecture, interior design, and urban design. There was admiration for small regional projects that engaged local materials, familiar regional vernacular, community serving programs. In general, there was less recognition of large projects that resided far from “home” that often struggled to make a critical paradigm shift to result in fundamental innovation. The jury questioned whether a well-executed building alone should be recognized for design excellence if it does not move the bar forward …and up… or if it is not addressing broader relevant cultural issues. We found this often more difficult grasp in the large-scale work outside the U.S., particularly hospitals.
We saw the extraordinary influence that the German studios have brought to the portfolio. The level of craft, technological precision, integrated climate and resiliency driven design processes, as well as some aggressive efforts to resort programmatic relationships, have produced palpably new configurations in the built work. The jury is hopeful that these influences will weave their way into work across the firm.
f inally, on a personal note, it has been an honor to work with HDR on Opacity. It has been a rare opportunity to convene with such high-caliber juries and to deploy my own almost 40-year corporate design leadership experience in reviewing, critiquing, and admiring your evolution toward design excellence.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Allison Grace Williams, fAIA AGWms_studio Principal
MICHELLE ADDINGTON
Dean, School of Architecture
The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX, USA
Michelle Addington is dean of the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. She formerly held the Hines Chair in Sustainable Architectural Design at the yale University School of Architecture. Prior to teaching at yale, she was on the faculty of Harvard University's GSD for 10 years.
Originally educated as a mechanical/nuclear engineer, Michelle worked for several years as an engineer at NASA/Goddard Space flight Center and for E.I. DuPont de Nemours before studying architecture. Her teaching, research, and professional work span across these disciplines with the overarching objective of determining the strategic intersections between the optimal domains of physical phenomena with the practical domains of spatial, geopolitical, economic, and cultural systems. Her books, chapters, essays, journal papers, and articles address topics ranging from fluid mechanics to the history of technology and smart materials. Michelle has consulted on projects as diverse as the Sistine Chapel to the Amazon rainforest.
What did you observe in terms of sustainability in this year’s jury? What did you see here and what wasn’t discussed?
MA: By far, the most common approach was the use of mass timber. It was good to see that it has filtered enough into quotidian practice that people are feeling very comfortable using it. But there are deeper questions that we have to ask. We like the kind of solution that allows us to, for example, account for the fact that we have energy generation in our building. It allows us to go ahead and operate our building the way that we’ve always operated it.
But this is the part that we designers have to think about: swapping some concrete and steel for mass timber is a drop in the bucket in everything associated with construction. If we’re designing a building that still requires a massive amount of concrete, not only in foundations, but in the parking lot, the waste systems, the sewage— all of the associated infrastructure—that’s still going to be concrete. So I think that's the starting point of focusing on embodied energy: I love seeing that. But they gotta keep asking the question about embodied energy in the larger scale.
You were very drawn to the healthcare facilities, particularly those that emphasize compassionate care. Why is that such a passion for you?
MA: I’ve always wondered why it is that we have the HvAC systems that we do today; they’re bizarre. As someone who deals with fluid mechanics and heat transfer, it’s as if the decision was made to use the most inefficient and ineffective way to deal with the body’s thermal exchange: an H vAC system. I’ve always wondered how we ended up there. It turns out, it has to do with different medical theories throughout history. I started looking at medical facility designs, understanding how people believed disease moved in the air or how people became ill— and how that manifested in building design.
I increasingly paid attention to attempts throughout our field to bring innovation into medical facilities, but also to a growing recognition of the fact that how we engage as people with medical facilities is not the old standard. It’s no longer a dichotomy between binary health and illness; it’s all part of a very intertwined series of steps, and much of the way that we engage with what we consider “help” will be that daily experience of our bodies—the environments that we put ourselves in.
You noted in deliberations that university campuses can conflict with surrounding communities’ needs. What do architects need to do to be more attentive when building new structures in places where residents might not have a lot of power? MA: It did come up in the conversations here and it was treated as a binary: Either you care about form, or you’re all about the client. for me, it operates in thinking about ourselves as stewards of public space.
One of the most profound things I’ve ever heard came from an 18-year-old student in Austin, a place that is building at a huge rate. We had a group of students who have been trying to preserve historic Hispanic cemeteries that had fallen into disrepair. They discovered a 130-year-old Hispanic cemetery that was being used as a dump for construction waste. And I’ll never forget this student who turned to me and said, “Does it make me a bad architect if there’s some times when I think we should not build?”
I said, “No, it makes you a great architect, because what we do is in the service of the public, what we do is in the service of the public realm.”
Our buildings only matter in terms of how they shape that public realm. So when we start losing sight of that, if we start to think about it as a formal object that exists just to serve a particular client, we’re missing the point.
MARK LEE
Chair, Department of Architecture
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Founder, Partner
Johnston Marklee & Associates Los Angeles, CA, and Cambridge, MA, USA
Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized internationally with over 50 major honors and awards. The firm’s work spans 13 countries and resides in the permanent collections of several museums. Recent projects include the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, TX; a renovation of the MCA Chicago; the design of the new Dropbox global headquarters in San francisco, CA; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios in Culver City, CA. Publications on Johnston Marklee include House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House (Birkhauser, 2016), 2G N. 67 (2014‚ El Croquis N. 198 (2019), and A+U N. 614 (2021).
Together with partner Sharon Johnston, Mark served as co-artistic director for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Tell me about the culture of critique within architecture firms as opposed to academia?
ML: The culture of critique is much more prevalent in institutional academia because there’s a certain hierarchy in academia—teachers and experienced visitors critique the students. In a professional setting, it’s somehow lacking in a way, because typically there’s competitive aspects between professionals. So the culture of critique, especially a critique that is more supportive, I would say, is not that prevalent.
It’s interesting for me to say this, because our jury is outsiders. We’re privileged. We’re not entrenched in the projects. There’s a certain degree of unfairness because people spent hundreds of hours on them, and then we come in and only have a very short period of time to understand the project. But in a way, that’s also how the culture is professionally, so I think it’s healthy to see how you can consolidate the hundreds of hours of work into something between an elevator pitch and a TED talk. It’s good to take commentary with a grain of salt in terms of praise or criticism, but understanding that this shorthand way of comprehending a project is useful.
What positive project qualities are resonant for you, and how do those qualities translate into what design excellence means?
ML: It’s highly subjective; it’s very hard to define a universal standard for design excellence, but I think for me, it’s really about the appropriateness of each project. It’s about understanding not just the possibilities, but the limitations. I see architectural projects that are much smaller in scope, but with much larger ambition. When the gap between ambitions and scope of resources are so huge, the result is underwhelming. At the end, if you give credit to those projects you give credit to the effort. And for me‚ effort itself is not the end. It’s the object, the thing that was designed—that’s what matters.
Do you appreciate the process, rather than presenting only the object?
ML: The process is always helpful. But I think also that sometimes process could obfuscate the aspect of the final result. Design projects are very unforgiving in the end. What stands is the object; you don’t have the author next to the audience to explain the hardship.
How do you look differently at built work versus unbuilt work, especially in relation to the jury’s conversations about generosity?
ML: Today’s tools and representations are so advanced that unbuilt project renderings are so close to the built project, sometimes it takes time for us to realize. Prior to that, oftentimes unbuilt projects tended to hide a lot of things that were unresolved in their representation through a degree of abstraction. One is typically more generous with unbuilt projects because there are still areas to be developed and areas to be improved on. I think one tends to be more forgiving, knowing that there are some areas that are still yet to be addressed.
I feel like the you are more aligned with the user or the public than you are really with… ML: With the author? I think so. There is a quote by the painter Philip Guston where he talked about how the creative process works. He said, when a painter is in the studio, starting with a blank canvas, everyone is in the room: teachers, forefathers, other artists‚ brothers, friends, lovers—they’re all in that room with you. And then when you start painting, one by one, they leave. And at the end, if you’re lucky, you will leave, too. you have all these demons with you—all these issues you have to deal with when you start a project. But at the end‚ the project takes a life on its own.
ELIZABETH PAGLIACOLO
Editor-in-Chief
Azure
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Elizabeth Pagliacolo is a national magazine award-winning writer who has reported on design fairs around the world, covered prominent architecture projects— including Odile Decq’s restaurant at the Paris Opera Garnier and Snøhetta’s entrance pavilion for the 9/11 Museum in New york—and reported on new trends and technologies, from the emergence of LEDs to the evolution of sustainable concrete. Elizabeth has also interviewed the leading lights of modern architecture and design, such as Patricia Urquiola, Lawrence Scarpa, and Walter Hood, and participated on design juries in Toronto and New york. from 2016 to 2017, she was the Director of Programming for EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology, a festival produced by the Design Exchange, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme. At Azure‚ she leads the editorial team in conceptualizing and producing six print issues a year, helps organize the AZ Awards, provides direction for the magazine’s online platform, and leads on the AZURE Talks.
How does your editorial experience influence your perception of how HDR architects have framed their project submissions? What do they do well, and what do they need to work on?
EP: I actually read the project write-ups very thoroughly, and many times over. I think that the plans, sections, and images tell a much fuller story. All together, I think that what they do very well is make decisions about what to include and not to include, and I think that’s the toughest thing. Everyone did a really commendable job in terms of putting the writing and the images together. Some of the projects, especially the larger-scale ones that involve systems—a lot of our discussion was around the decisions that teams made of what to include and what not to, and there seemed to be a difficulty in understanding what to amplify versus trying to jam in too much information.
But there were a lot of vague moments. Sometimes when we came across a project that was difficult to evaluate, it was because the images provided a set of information that maybe was not furthered in the copy, and we were left guessing, filling in the gaps. And getting more specific about the really granular things, especially when it comes to sustainability. If there’s a certain feature that you’re pulling out as being really important, making sure that it comes through as a main point in the written part as well as articulated in images.
What do you think our architects could learn from spending time with people who write about architecture and communicate architecture to the public?
EP: Well, everything! I think people love stories, and they need stories; they need a narrative, they need to know why a project is important and needs to be created. So I think that learning to talk to people about projects in a very accessible way, and not a theorized or intellectualized way, benefits the broader community. Though I do appreciate that there’s a higher level of conversation that architects have to have amongst themselves in theory and in academia, and that is a very worthwhile conversation.
Architecture has a huge impact in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions that it creates and how it either embeds itself respectfully or not in the community. I think that architects need to learn to speak to the general public about the importance of architecture—what they do as an architect, what architecture as a cultural phenomenon means. I feel like, in certain places around the world, not many people quite understand that yet, even though they feel the impact and they experience it.
Let’s talk about about publishing and architecture—objects like monographs and books. What value do you think they bring to the firm and to the public?
EP: I think monographs are very important to capture a moment in time for a firm, and for a firm to look back and see the broader picture. Especially at a huge firm with multiple studios around the world like HDR, to see the thread that connects their work; to understand the overview of what they’re doing and what’s important to them in a moment in time. for the same reason, I think it’s important for other people to look at monographs. I don’t think it’s just for the firm, but it’s important to see what architecture offices look like and what they represent.
And yeah, I think that they’re just beautiful. you know, they hold our imagination, they’re inspiring, they provide an opportunity to tell a story about a project across multiple pages. As somebody in publishing, that is super beautiful, important, compelling, and immersive.
NADER TEHRANI
Founding Principal NADAAA
Dean, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Boston, MA, USA
for his contributions to architecture as an art, Nader Tehrani was the recipient of the 2020 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which he was also elected as a member in 2021, the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States. Nader’s research focuses on the transformation of the building industry, innovative material applications, and the development of new means and methods of construction, especially through digital fabrication. His work has received many prestigious awards, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, and 18 Progressive Architecture Awards. Prior to becoming Dean at the Cooper Union, he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard GSD, Georgia Institute of Technology, and MIT.
I’m interested in your interpretation of research at a corporate firm, especially as a dean of an academic environment. How does research play a part in this corporate model, or what might be lacking therein?
NT: Simply said, a corporate office can do great professional projects and do some foundational inquiry before they design, and that can be perfectly fine. But whatever those inquiries are, they don’t necessarily need to be transmitted to another project or to another generation. The idea of research is that inquiries can become collective projects that are shared between studios, transmitted across generations, and that take on different shapes and forms. To the extent that the corporate office has a business model which innately affords the capacity to take on materials research, to take on questions of urbanism or computation, they often have a financial base that even the academic context does not.
Given the successful business models of firms such as HDR, it becomes an ideological decision: should we put 10% of our profits back into research? And once we do, how do we make it part of a cultural mission to give back to the discipline or to communities? Clearly some of that is going on. But either not enough that it becomes systemically visible across the projects, or it’s not consistent enough that you can see the connections between them. And I think this is an opportunity to come to terms with that, because obviously, what we researched maybe two or three decades ago may not be the same as what we’ll do today or in 20 years. But it’s important to see the evolution of ideas that are not project specific.
I want to know more about your focus and fascination with the word transformation, particularly as we’re thinking about designed spaces. When you’re evaluating transformation, what are you looking for?
NT: The discipline has laid out certain terms that make it easy to respond to that. But I have ideas of my own also, from a kind of historical perspective: There’s a difference between the terms ‘model’ and ‘type’ in the sense that the model refers to a thing itself; that type refers to the anatomy of a building that has the capacity to become longer, shorter, fatter, atrophied in one area or another. And so I’m interested in that malleability of typology, over the specificity of just one building, for one building’s sake, to the extent that you can transport the idea of model and type into systems thinking.
Some of the presentations we saw today produce a very specific building. But you also sense that they are the result of systems that could be adapted by a project architect who inherits the project at midstream or somebody who has to make a judgment call right on the spot because the designers are not there. And they understand, let’s say, the language of the building in such a way that they can make it adapt to new circumstances that become relevant on site. And I like that form of intelligence in architects. Sometimes, we design buildings, but sometimes we design systems that are there for society, for culture, and for others to take on and to transform. And that’s a form of intelligence that architects often overlook, because there’s such a pride in authorship. They think that this is the endall of all thinking: my building, my authorship. But some of the most interesting projects that we cited today have the capacity to do both. They are great projects, but they’re also great systems.
We began Day 1 in the HDR New york office located in the Garment District in Midtown Manhattan. Jurors reviewed each project in pinup, selecting 34 projects for the next day’s deliberations. The firm also hosted a welcome celebration for the jury.
71 frankfurt Cancer Institute‚ frankfurt‚ Germany
72 Helmholtz Quantum Center+‚ Jülich‚ Germany
73 LEOMO Performance Center‚ Boulder‚ CO
74 Lupeng Pharma Headquarters and New Drug Research & Development Campus‚ Guangzhou‚ Guangdong Province‚ China
75 NASA Instrument Development facility‚ Greenbelt‚ MD
76 National Grape and Crop Improvement Center‚ Geneva‚ N y
77 Naver Data Center‚ Sejong‚ South Korea
Sanhome Pharmaceuticals Chillin Park‚ Nanjing‚ Jiangsu Province‚ China
Shanghai Pharma Beijing Headquarters‚ Beijing‚ China 80 The Science Gondola york University Neuroscience Laboratory and Research Loft, Toronto‚ Ontario‚ Canada
USDA Plant Biosciences Research Building‚ Pullman‚ WA 82 USDA Little Rock Laboratories‚ Little Rock‚ AR
Wai
Day 2 kicked off in The Cooper Union’s architecture studios. Jurors reviewed the 34 projects selected from Day 1‚ and each juror’s individual priorities and attentions became clear. Themes emerged for award categories‚ and projects were explored based on those themes. By the end of the day‚ the jury had made most of their final selections but a few remained undecided.
DAY 2
1 Al Widad Specialist Clinic
Almoosa Rehabilitation and Long-Term Care Hospital
Charles E. Lakin f oundation Pier
Confidential High-Rise
Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin 6 East Torrey Pines Science & Technology Center
frankfurt Cancer Institute 8 Heidekreis-Klinikum Bad fallingbostel 9 Helmholtz Quantum Center+
High Desert Corridor Service Development Plan (SDP)
Back at The Cooper Union‚ the jury reviewed seven projects that had not yet been awarded or categorized; rather than revisiting them on screen‚ they opted to review pinups from Day 1. After making their final comments and selections‚ we moved to The Cooper Union’s 41 Cooper Square for the livestream reveal to HDR staff worldwide. On stage‚ each juror led a discussion of the 11 awarded projects.
PROJECT LOCATION
World map identifying the locations of the 98 total submitted projects. Icons represent awarded projects. CITED MENTIONED
SELECTED
2 Projects N/A to location data.
BUILT & UNBUILT PROJECTS
A cluster analysis of built and unbuilt projects illustrates how a majority of awarded projects fall in the unbuilt category.
SELECTED
Selected projects gained consensus among all jurors, but according to Allison Grace Williams, “what they share is a classic and rigorous resolution, editing, and conceptual clarity.”
While these four projects exist across various scales, programs, and geographic locations, they “establish an unknowable, handsome, timeless, noble armature for how a building can hold very close to a set of principles about how to solve issues of program orientation, view, or interior requirements in a very careful, edited set of tools.”
DEUTSCHES HERZZENTRUM BERLIN
LOCATION Berlin, Germany
CLIENT Charité UniversityMedicine Berlin
STUDIOS Berlin
SERVICES Architecture
TEAM Ioannis Diakakis
Agata Glubiak
Thomas Grabner
Sarai Metten
Stefan Meyer
Michael Reischl
Martin Sapinski
Linus Schulte
Ricardo Valencia Paéz
The new German Heart Centre Berlin at the Charité Campus Virchow Klinikum is the prelude to the long-term development of the entire campus until 2050. The building fulfills its role as an important institution in the public urban space with its urban position as well as its sculptural formulation. The building fits coherently and proportionally into its surroundings, interweaving with its urban environment. Föhrer Platz continues seamlessly into the building. The long-distance effect and address formation are clearly articulated. In connection with the building’s use, the compact design achieves a high degree of organizational and economic efficiency. 1
Clarity, orientation and functionality for all users of the building form the basic idea: The simple building structure, with two main access cores and two inner courtyards, gives visitors to the building a clear overview as soon as they enter. The infopoint and core form the center of the floor plan, which is repeated on almost all floors. The two groups of elevators, which are accompanied by the two inner courtyards, are accessible from this point.
The core arrangement allows for maximum flexibility and thus permanently economical use. The technical floor above the functional floors reduces the riser zone areas, increases retrofittability and simplifies consistent system separation. When leaving the elevator on the station floors, the central support point provides users and visitors with a clear point of contact. The arrival and recreation area, embedded in light, air and nature, represents the starting point of the level, from where general care, IMC and ICU are accessed in a star shape. The three wards are laid out in a U-shape, with short and clear connecting paths. 2 All patient rooms, functionally, clearly and harmoniously designed, are located on the outer façade and have appropriatelydimensioned window openings. Natural ventilation is provided by a ventilation element that meets safety requirements and has a sound-absorbing function.
ENDNOTES
1. Tehrani, Nader. From a typological point of view, it brought up an interesting discussion about the type of model the building represents, and the project’s particular qualities being the kind of framework that allows for transformation and interpretation. In this instance, the bedroom at the periphery functions as a rim, and two cores on diagonals with two courts on opposite diagonals along with administrative spaces. It made a framework that is very powerful in plan, but also gives way to a sectional promenade that produces continuities. In other words, it produces a system that any other author, project manager, or participant could follow up on and engage in.
2. Lee, Mark. I think geometry can be a straitjacket, but when it’s handled well, it can give a lot. At first glance, this building has a kind of Teutonic rigor to the grid, but then in closer scrutiny, I think, actually, there is a lot of variation. One thinks it’s a pure cube, but then you realize that the top bay is perhaps two bays; and see how the corner is rotated from one to two to three bays—I found that it’s very well done. The introduction of the curve is worth noting: I like how it’s not just used in the interior, not just used as a contrast in experience, but it’s very softly introduced throughout.
EAST TORREY PINES SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CENTER
LOCATION La Jolla, California, USA
CLIENT Salk Institute
STUDIOS Los Angeles, Princeton, Omaha; in collaboration with WRNS Studio
This new research building partners with the original Louis Kahn Salk Institute to continue to inspire meaningful breakthroughs in science for generations to come, reinvigorating a dynamic sense of place across the entire campus.
The building is sited to respect the geometry of the Salk Institute master plan, while also creating a new face to the community.1
At the entrance, a fountain—a single stream of water representing a spring—is directed into the ground, reemerging as the formal “infinity pool” running through the center of the Salk Institute to the ocean. The pool is reinterpreted in the new building not with water but with a linear shaft of light created where the two sides of the roof meet in a glass “slot.” The idea is to intensify the connection to nature.
The two-story linear building containing the science (research labs, offices, and collaboration areas) is bisected by a public forum (an open and transparent central gathering hall) that retains the width of the original courtyard of the Salk Institute.
The double-height central hall visually connects Kahn’s courtyard through the site, terminating at the building entrance to engage the community at the street. The central hall is flanked by meeting rooms to accommodate a wide range of activities, from small gatherings to formal events, and is designed to visually and functionally create a modern forum for science.
The solid masses adjacent to the central hall contain large, open flexible labs on each floor. The labs are designed to accommodate myriad lab typologies, from heavy wet-lab and core technologies, to open, general labs, and computational labs. Offices and interspersed collaboration nodes located at the building perimeter are designed to support individual contemplation as well as group interaction.
A highly-sustainable design, the two-story linear building runs from north to south, with two levels of parking below, enhancing natural light and views. Non-laboratory spaces are naturally ventilated most of the year. The façade is composed of the Salk Institute master plan material palette and expresses the structure of exposed architectural concrete shear walls and slabs. 2 Panels between the shear walls alternate between glass at the collaboration nodes and teak window walls at the offices.
1 Naturally Ventilated Perimeter Zones
2 Dilution Exhaust Stack System
3 Neutral Air AHU with 4-Pipe VAV
4 Passive/Active Shading
5 High Performance Glazing
6 Recycled Material
7 Thermal Mass
8 Future Core Technology Zone
9 Preserve Existing Mature Trees and Natural Habitat
Green Roof
Mass Transit Access
Bicycle Storage
Stormwater Treatment System
14 Engineered Garage Exhaust System 15 Photovoltaic System 16 Radiant Floor Heating
Voided-Slab Technology
18 Carboncure Concrete Mix
19 Automatic Car Stacking System
GLASS ELEVATION
WOOD ELEVATION
ENDNOTES
1. Lee, Mark. I think about a chess game where someone makes the first move; then someone makes the second and then, a third. We talked about the original state of the building before the second move was made—how the forest set up a contrast to the plaza. And for me, the second move was a slight bit of wandering, in terms of trying to be respectful to the plaza by duplicating it, but didn’t lessen it at the same time. So I thought back to the third move: it is quite ingenious in a way that it is repeated again, but also produces a roof that creates that type of shaded condition that the canopy of the trees used to do. It softens the second move, and also reinforces the first move.
2. Lee, Mark. The materiality of it, the interplay between the careful heft of the concrete and the insertions of the wood elements are really beautiful. As opposed to defining the void it celebrates the void, and encloses it at the same time.
HEIDEKREIS-KLINIKUM BAD FALLINGBOSTEL
LOCATION Bad Fallingbostel, Niedersachsen, Germany
CLIENT Heidekreis-Klinikum GmbH
STUDIO Düsseldorf
SERVICES Architecture
TEAM Gabriele Gölzer
Milan Kapetanovic
Michael König
Timo Margaritidis
Stefan Meyer
Lea Reinschmidt
Keyvan Tat
Tobias Kremp
Surrounded by woods and small-scale towns, the hospital’s low-rise pavilions nestle in the landscape. Nature weaves into the building structure, opening the hospital toward the healing environment, creating a unique place of healing, interdisciplinary work and growth. 1 Natural materials, wellproportioned rooms and an interior design with a focus on nature creates the sustainable atmosphere. Generous areas of nature and recreation in between the pavilions enrich the site and offer calming views from every room. The sensible care units offer individualized, dedicated gardens; one central roof terrace above the main entrance is open for the public. A recreational loop surrounds the hospital, leading throughthe landscape, which promotes restorative walks.
Despite the generous integration of landscape, the hospital’s efficient design is optimized for the users’ needs. The modular pavilions create compact care units with one central hub for short distances. These care units are connected to the main hub. This one main hub connects the entrance, information, gastronomy and hospital at the central circulation. The intensive care is located in a compact level beneath the main hub, using the site’s natural slope to its advantage, creating a fast and efficient environment without relinquishing the connection to the surrounding nature. 2
The building’s open and modular structure creates potential for future growth. The flexible, modular layout enables short-term changes in usage. Along the connectors and patios, additions can be built, extending the existing axes.
Consolidating the Heidekreisklinikum into one hospital optimizes efficiency and ensures security of supplies into one central location. Next to this medical supply, a respite area is created for personnel, patients, and relatives. A lively district will be created, starting with the hospital, parking garage, and psychiatry, connected and accessed via the campus boulevard.
The plinth, which houses sensitive machinery, will be built from reinforced concrete. The upper floors and pavilions will be built in a sustainable construction of wood and steel, enabling the reuse of material.
ENDNOTES
1. Addington, Michelle. For centuries, hospital design was entirely focused on perimeter exposure; that changed in 1918 with the flu epidemic. The combination of HVAC systems and a fear of contamination is what led us to the model of clinic hospital design that we have today, which is basically a sealed box. This project sort of goes back to the perimeter model, understanding that it is really a functional model for us to resurrect and to incorporate further as we move forward in the field.
2. Tehrani, Nader. This project has variation—it’s more human scale with two or three stories; having the different heights, I could imagine, creates more of a sense of orientation than a typical healthcare building. It also finds a way in which to mediate between building and landscape in an incredibly poised way.
HEATHLAND AND WOODS
Level 3
Administraion
Level 2
Nursing Care
Level 1
Examination and Treatment
Nursing Care
Social Services
Lower Level 1
Examination and Treatment
Nursing Care
Lower Level 2
Supply and Waste Disposal
Technology
PROGRAM AXONOMETRIC
GARDEN LEVEL
SCHEMATICS AND SECTION
Support
Care Cluster
Flexible Arrangment
OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE STORAGE FACILITY
LOCATION Toronto, Ontario, Canada
CLIENT Metrolinx
STUDIOS Toronto, New York
SERVICES Architecture
Graphic Design
Engineering Interiors
Planning + Consulting Research
Sustainability + Resiliency
Urban Design + Planning
TEAM Suzanne Baumgardt
James Huang
Paul James
Celia Johnstone
James Lane
Behnaz Rafeei
Austin Seid
Evgeny Tsarev
To meet the challenge of finding the best site for this facility in the city, the architectural and planning teams collaborated on an extensive alternatives analysis to minimize environmental and community impacts as well as potential job loss. Using extensive 4D BIM and track layout iterations, keeping construction and building footprints as slim as possible was one of the ways the final configuration was achieved. In keeping with the Ontario Line branding, and establishing a system-wide architectural language, the OMSF reconsiders the aesthetic and environmental impact of these enormous industrial structures. The facility is to be a model for future maintenance facilities as part of a larger, expanding regional Metrolinx program.
The highly-pragmatic nature of the plan was designed to work with a kit of prescribed façade typologies for cladding the building in response to the site narrative and the exposure to natural light as well as views from the community, with the alignment bringing a close view of the south façade to passengers on the mainline.
A serrated roof creates a contemporary, industrial vernacular that efficiently integrates the principles of passive design with indirect northern light over the primary maintenance facility area. The shed extends the serrated skylight roofline across the building to unify the large structure as a cohesive whole while the building’s large scale is mitigated through a repetitive pattern across all façade elements.1 The roofscape is considered as a fifth elevation, accommodating the Toronto Green Standard requirements for green roof for the entire project.
The northern façade diffuses light with translucent glazing that reinforces the vertical line. 2 The southern façade shades light, using a metal grillage opening up views to the natural landscape. The base of the building is robust with vertical board-form textured concrete to set a strong horizontal datum across the first story of the façade, anchoring the building to its site, with soft reflective metal panels at the second story that blend with the sky and surrounding landscape and help to mitigate the enormous scale of the building.
Dichotomy of Site
New Vehicular Paths
Rail Paths
ENTRANCE FA Ç ADE
ENDNOTES
1. Lee, Mark. Albert Kahn resonates with the beautiful orchestration of the fenestration used in the screen wall—it negotiates between porosity, opacity, and focused openings. It’s just incredibly well done. The presentation has a muteness to it that cancels out the noise around it, but it doesn’t try to talk about building as object.
2. Pagliacolo, Elizabeth. This is a very well articulated building, with the design of the façade. The metal and glass also speak to the main functions of the building, which is maintenance and operations in a clear design. It’s very elegant, it’s beautiful architecture for what is a very infrastructural systems building, kind of elevating it to a cultural moment.
Façade Boundary
Dividing Façade to 1125 mm Modules
Channel Glass Insert
Entrance Façade Diagram
This year, Mentioned projects were articulated by the notion of transformation; they produce, as Nader Tehrani said, “new forms of knowledge” in regard to technological, material, or social conditions. Despite their disparate locations, each project “pointed to some larger issue about other aspects that architecture could benefit from,” said Mark Lee. “All four of them, I think, took a lot of time in thinking about the history and the vernacular of the places where they are built and designed, and were thoughtful about how that vernacular is transformed.” MENTIONED
AL WIDAD SPECIALIST CLINIC
A new start-up hospital that was designed around technology and hospitality, Al-Widad is set to be a “Google” for health in Jeddah, KSA. The philanthropic family that is funding this hospital wanted to create a local facility that was accessible and affordable to all.
The design, site, planning, and interior teams worked with physicians worldwide and benchmarked hospitality elements to crystallize what it would mean to have a hospital that focused on the finest details in enhancing well-being—future genome preventative techniques, executive health and wellness, and DNA mapping—while designing a flexible and open chassis that would allow major medical equipment to be replaced as technologies improve.
Whether arriving through the front door or via the underground parking, visitors are greeted by a multi-story pocket park. This acts as a unifying element that can be seen from multiple levels upon which the public waiting and staff respite zones overlook.
The fine detailing of in-joinery and concealed attachment lend to hospitality driven wellness, birthing, postnatal birthing units and patient rooms. The overall building architecture follows a simple yet elegant cascaded solution of glass and solid surface on an exterior application to balance views with thermal mass and minimize western sun loads. 1
LOCATION Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
CLIENT Al Naghi
STUDIOS New York, Charlotte, Dubai, Princeton
SERVICES Architecture
Graphic Design
Interiors
Landscape Architecture
Lighting Design
Planning + Consulting
Sustainability + Resiliency
Urban Design + Planning
TEAM Mohammed Ayoub
Jim Atkinson
Sabine Aoun
Christopher Brockhoft
Joshua Domingo
Jasmine Gao
Omar Hamasni
Brooke Horan
Thomas Hughes
Nanmei Jiang
Ryan McDonough
Katherine Thomas
Annette Veliz
The project is embedded in the heart of a city not only rich in cultural and religious history, but also one that is riding the waves of development. Al Widad is strategically positioned at close proximities to main attractions. With a window to the unique Red Sea, it strives to contribute to Jeddah’s evolving landscape.
Vernacular references play out in the solid backbone/materiality of floors and walls, which relate to the coral block walls in the historic Al Balad neighborhood. In contrast, the baffles and dichroic glass elements are ephemeral and change as the light changes throughout the day, resulting in a façade that creates patterns of light in the interior. Glass sculptural elements cast color onto the internal courtyard and in the atrium; changing colors throughout the day signal the passage of time as a reference to circadian rhythm and relating back to the diurnal cycle of prayer and respite.
ENDNOTES
1. Addington, Michelle. Something that I found particularly notable about this project is its understanding of light, and not just in terms of the ambient light of this particular location. We’re in a time when we tend to egregiously overglaze, and this project understands the intensity of light and its impact on the patient experience. There have been numerous studies that have looked at a patient who's on their back, and the impact of light into their eyes and how it affects their healing. This project understood all of that. I really applaud those who investigated that and understood that you need to have a combination of lumination for the medical professionals who are working with the patient, but at the same time, recognize that the patients themselves are being harmed by much of that. This project beautifully orchestrated that throughout that space to make sure it manages glare and creates a well-designed luminous experience.
ENGINEERING AND SCIENCES BUILDING
This Engineering and Sciences Building will serve a variety of constituents, from the university to academic and corporate partners to students in the sciences and the humanities to neighborhood residents and the greater scientific community. The building is intended to facilitate this variety of intersections, bringing the complexity and often-opaque nature of science research into the public’s view.
Its prominent location on campus requires multiple connections to enhance its function, the experience of a Science Quad, and the university’s academic mission. The conceptual design for the building is about creating an “object building” with a singular identity, and about meeting a technical program. It’s about deconstructing the “object” into components that best serve their function and express their combined purpose. Images shown were created for a design competition and are not indicative of the project’s final design solution.
LOCATION Midwest, USA
CLIENT Confidential
STUDIOS Chicago, Princeton
SERVICES Architecture Interiors
Planning + Consulting
TEAM Mohammed Ayoub
Pepe Carrillo
Jae Hyuck Choi
Erin Disbrow
DD Du
Gerome Garses
Josh Greenfield
Gaute Grindheim
Jason Heinrich
Warren Hendrickson
Brooke Horan
Thomas Knittel
Brian Kowalchuk
Rikka Liu
Jack Paul
Kim Ramaekers
Ellen Randall
Grace Rappe
Diego Samuel
Damian Wentzel
Allison Grace Williams
2. Tehrani, Nader. The dimension of a truss, which is just functional, becomes its own iconic moment; the engineering is integral to the formation of new style. ENDNOTES 1 Open
1. Tehrani, Nader. This is a building that houses quite a few different entities. We were impressed by how, on one hand, the massing of the project fits within the context; it seems like it’s completing a courtyard. But at the same time, the section is almost a reverse of what one typically expects: As opposed to having a base and having the smaller objects on top, this actually has a series of smaller objects and cores, supporting a slab that is floating above so it’s both contextual and assertive at the same time.
WALDKLINIKEN EISENBERG
HDR, in collaboration with architecture firm Matteo Thun & Partners, planned and implemented the new construction of the Waldkliniken “Forest Clinic” in Eisenberg. The aim of the project was to create a clinic campus with a consistent design and experience for patients, employees, and visitors in terms of design, concept, and functionality. Because of the strong emphasis on having a hotel-like character, the design of the patient rooms differs significantly from the usual standard: There are predominantly two-bed rooms with z-shaped geometry that provides each patient a personal space. The arrangement of bathrooms, furniture, and veranda offer the possibility of interaction and privacy. 1
LOCATION Eisenberg, Thuringia, Germany
CLIENT Waldkliniken Eisenberg GmbH
STUDIO HDR Germany
SERVICES Architecture
Waldkliniken breaks new ground in terms of sustainability in hospital construction. The forest is literally brought inside the building with an abundance of wood-based materials 2 that were selected for surfaces and floors. Wood also plays a key role in construction design: The new hospital was built using a hybrid wood-concrete construction. Reinforced concrete skeleton construction, necessary for fire protection and large spans in hospital construction, is reduced to a minimum. Infills, such as the exterior walls in the upper floors, are designed as wood frame construction and are clad with wood, resulting in ecological benefits such as the use of renewable raw materials, as well as economic benefits such as life cycle costs and shorter construction times through prefabrication. A portion of the concrete construction is used sustainably via a concrete core activation for temperature control of the bedrooms.
ZIMM ER NORMALPFL EG E | GE NE RA L WA RD 1_ 10 0.
TYPICAL FLOOR
| Waldklinik en Eisenberg - Patientenhotel. Eisenber g, Deutschland.
WKE
WKE. 4. OBER GESCHO SS | 4T H FL OOR 1_ 500.
ENDNOTES
1. Pagliacolo, Elizabeth. There were some parts of the presentation that we felt were not clear in terms of how that interior courtyard actually affects the floor plan. When we were looking at the floor plans, we weren’t sure if those core spaces are nurse’s stations, or they’re actually the courtyard itself, so that caused a bit of a confusion. But the idea that you’re placing the hospital rooms around the perimeter of the building is very well thought out, and the rooms themselves and plans seem very substantial and well oriented.
2. Addington, Michelle. We all know that the material used just makes people feel better, and especially in a study that is dedicated to health and healing, it’s really important and somewhat still rare to have that material within that kind of hospital setting.
ZENTRALKLINIKUM DIEPHOLZ
The design for the new Diepholz Central Clinic aims to strengthen a sense of community for this structurally-sensitive location. To achieve this, the design respects the special landscape qualities of its surroundings. Differentiated building masses, proportional to the surroundings, allow for a regional integration into the landscape context. 1
The clinic campus opens with a generous plaza as a gesture and visual axis to the entrance area of the central clinic and links to main traffic access. The plaza band guides visitors and patients from centralized parking to the heart of the campus and provides the necessary orientation. 2 The central forecourt includes a water feature and groves of trees to shade the seating areas and accentuate the central campus square. A supply of short-term parking spaces will be integrated into the central plaza perimeter, ensuring accessibility for mobility-impaired persons and emergency situations.
LOCATION Diepholz, Niedersachsen, Germany
CLIENT Kliniken Landkreis Diepholz Grundstück GmbH & Co. KG
STUDIOS Munich, Berlin
SERVICES Architecture
TEAM Ioannis Diakakis
Agata Glubiak
Sarai Metten
Krzysztof Pydo
Linus Schulte
The campus band connects the clinic campus in an east-west direction and contains all important path connections between the urban clinic components, the centralized parking and into the campus park. A sequence of waterformed bands and modeled planting areas add rhythm to the campus band and is accentuated with solitary flowering trees. The courtyards will be designed as intensive garden areas with different themes; places of tranquility, meeting places, active areas for exercise and rehab sports, play or sensory gardens are central themes of the courtyard designs and set different focal points.
VIEW
VIEW
ENDNOTES
1. Tehrani, Nader. This one dissolves the object in a series of courtyards that speak to the landscape itself. Developed as a first phase of several courtyards, it also anticipates future feasibility, so that they can grow and expand, gently cascading in response to a subtle section that goes down the hill.
2. Tehrani, Nader. It’s one of those projects that also finds a way to mediate between the car—which is inevitably a point of arrival—that then brings you to a series of pedestrian paths. There’s a continuity from the east/west x-axis that secures all of the courtyards together, but there’s a more organic way of moving from one port to the other. It defines, more humanely, enclosures in each of the different wings.
The list of Cited projects is one that had no consensus among jurors, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t commonality. “There was no mandate to bring them together thematically, but somehow we found some commonalities,” said Nader Tehrani. “That had to do with the way in which architecture may speak to the concept of the landscape, infrastructure, the urbanism, the situation in which it finds itself and they happen in three scales here.” They are, he continued, “probably the most exciting because this is where there are the most illogical disparities.”
ONTARIO LINE SUBWAY PROJECT
LOCATION Toronto, Ontario, Canada
CLIENT Metrolinx
STUDIOS Toronto, New York
SERVICES Architecture
Engineering
Graphic Design
Interiors
Landscape Architecture
Planning + Consulting
Sustainability + Resiliency
Urban Design + Planning
TEAM Bita Gharadaghi
Bijan Ghazizadeh
Paul James
Celia Johnstone
James Lane
Ibrahim Miles
Brendan Onstad
Behnaz Rafeei
Nicolas Ryan
Loi Tang
Evgeny Tsarev
This project represents the development of the “Ontario Line Design Guide, Output Specifications and Reference Concept Designs,” the design principles and requirements for the station design, engineering, and development teams. The principles and vision connect civic, urban design, and city building goals with aspirations for a high-functioning, safe and easily maintained transit system.1 The guidelines develop a brand for the newline consisting of 15 stations, from the architecture of the stations to aesthetics for the guideway and civil works to industrial design for the vehicles.
Elements of continuity create a sense of communality from station to station allowing for standardization of maintenance and achieving economies of scale in manufacturing and construction.
The rail vehicles move through diverse neighborhoods, but Elements of Variability ensure a station belongs to a specific place in terms of scale, volume and building massing, its predominant orientation, the use of color, and its site-specific connection with the urban realm through site planning sensitive to context with individualized softscape and hardscape designs. 2
Exhibition Station King Bathurst Queen Spadena Osgood Queen Moss Park Corktown
East Harbour Leslieville Gerrard Pape Cosburn
Thorncliffe Park
Flemingdon Park Science Centre
Basis of Design
Optimize operational reliability, efficiency, and safety
Apply a coherent user-centered design vision for the whole line and associated facilities
Use of scale, massing, and materiality informed by civic considerations
Implementation of architectural solutions that responds to contextual, local, and future conditions
Foster the intuitive navigation of stations, informed by architectural spatial qualities in lieu of applied signage
ENDNOTES
1. Pagliacolo, Elizabeth. There are some repeated or prototypical elements, such as curved glass, ceiling elements, the lighting, the palette. Those are all very elegant moves. The architecture itself is quite elegant; there are some stations that really stand apart as their own momentous works of architecture. I think the difficulty we had as a jury was to really see those elements in a bit more detail in the way that foregrounds them. So the presentation of the project could have brought those elements forward a bit more—not so much the design of the stations themselves—but those that illustrate the connective tissue between the entire system.
2. Tehrani, Nader. Cited examples: One was Bilbao and the other one was Washington DC, in the sense that both of them had to deal with a system that was linguistically quite consistent in this instance, accommodating for the differences of character and materiality, while maintaining that system.
3.
3. Lee, Mark. It’s a difficult project, because on one hand, it showed in the presentation the different ways that it has to adapt to different situations. Sometimes the station wants to be more in the background, underneath a building or on the ground floor of a building. One can imagine how that type of architecture could work in concert with an existing building that could be very different. But then there are situations where it needs to be a standalone building. To have a system to satisfy all these different appointments is quite difficult.
WHITE PLAINS HOSPITAL MASTER PLAN
This project entailed examining the current campus master plan for the White Plains Hospital to assess future growth plans and make recommendations on how to design for the next 30 years.
Looking at the latest trends of how people will be arriving at the front door between personal autonomous vehicles 1 and enhanced autonomous public transit, the team took advantage of the streetscape topography to create a new multi-layered greenbelt that threads together the multiple existing 2 centers and future towers.
Enhancing the pedestrian experience with this inward central park, the master plan addresses the new demand model, but also allows for future campus development that incorporated housing and other centers of excellences as yet to be defined.
What started as an initial assessment of clinical future planning eventually led to an urban design that examined the relationship between the residential community to the south and commercial regeneration to the north with the future design of condominiums and mixed-use buildings to meet the demand in Westchester County, New York.
LOCATION White Plains, New York, USA
CLIENT White Plains Hospital
STUDIO New York
SERVICES Architecture
Graphic Design
Landscape Architecture
Planning + Consulting
Urban Design + Planning
TEAM Aslihan Avci Aksap
Jim Atkinson
Mohammed Ayoub
Jasmine Gao
Thomas Hughes
Susan McDevitt
Dave Redemske
Nibu Samuel
Katherine Thomas
Annette Veliz
Emergency Department
Emergency Diagnostics and Treatement
Administration
Public
Inpatient Care
Inpatient
Public Circulation
Staff Circulation
THIRD FLOOR
FIRST FLOOR
GREENERY LOGISTIC CIRCULATION
ENDNOTES
1. Williams, Allison Grace. This project reopened some environmental design dialogues which we have not yet completely come to terms with professionally. One of them is this notion of creating a second ground plane, which is an incredible opportunity to create a linear campus that’s continuous in an urban setting. But the revelation of the 70s—when the car was still supreme—is present in that the parking garages in this proposal are huge. And that’s necessary right now. It does create a sense of conditions on the streets that that happen adjacent to the linear organization. So this thing poses a lot of big questions about when the car will find its lesser priority in the organ*ization of these large urban projects.
2. Addington, Michelle. The particularly interesting part about this project is that it took on an understanding of the formal fabric of the city, whether it’s the topography, dealing with the grain of a small residential area versus the the denser, high-rise commercial core, and understood what that grain was. Rather than seeing this as just another city center, it’s looking to stretch what was there and put a pin on it. And its thoughtfulness—in identifying what existing fabric there was, and how the new project enhances that fabric rather than replaces that fabric—is remarkable.
THE SCIENCE GONDOLA
YORK UNIVERSITY NEUROSCIENCE LABORATORY AND RESEARCH LOFT
The new Neuroscience Laboratory and Research Loft at Toronto’s suburban campus of York University will add to the existing Sherman Health Science Research Centre on a compacted site. This structure was created in near “hybrid” format to allow for distinct wet laboratories, kinesiology, and neuropsychology laboratories nested below the research lofts. The team utilized the site topography to house the most intense and discrete neuroscience lab spaces in the lower level with mechanical areas right above it to facilitate easy maintenance access without disrupting research.1 A bridge connects the new building to the existing building, allowing access to the MRI suite. The kinesiology and psychology clinical spaces are located off thelobby. The strategic location of these clinics on the public side of the building provides intuitive wayfinding for visitors and research participants without needing to go to other levels.
04
Wrap and Perch
Proper blocking and stacking 2 of the programs and connections expands the research capacities of both the new and existing buildings beyond the initial project requirements. The faculty, grad student offices, and collaboration spaces are all located on the third floor, with views of the adjacent sports field to the north.
The project in many ways identifies with the culture of being an “edge presence” on campus in its aspiration to be a key component to heightening the spirit and the science of a truly integrated campus life.
LOCATION Toronto, Ontario, Canada
CLIENT York University
Finding expression in the corner, the so t and the retaining wall
For generations of Canadians, the ‘gondola’ is the archetypal perched structure overlooking a sporting event — best popularized by the national sports broadcasting icon Foster Hewitt...
For generations of Canadians, the “gondola” is the archetypal perched structure overlooking a sporting event best popularized by the national sports broadcasting icon Foster Hewitt.
PROGRAMME SPLIT
Research
Collaborative Mechanical Systems Laboratories
For a campus otherwise typically flat, the topographic oddity on site—an “orphaned” space— became an opportunity rather than a drawback. Here, the program split (evenly distributed in nature) evolved into a lighter, upper loft combination atop a nested, bunkered space—setting up for a unique and well-used infill condition.
NEUROSCIENCE LABORATORY AND RESEARCH LOFT
New East Forecourt
New West Service Court
Alumni Field
Main Entrance
SHERMAN HEALTH SCIENCES RESEARCH CENTRE
Despite the relatively oversized existing/neighboring Sherman Centre to its south, the aim for the new facility was not to ‘bookend’ the project with a greater degree of campus “agency”—but to enhance existing public flow distinctly and as efficiently as the private flow for science and related material movement.
Nesting into what amounted to a “blind spot” site on campus, the project aimed to neatly stack and pack while proficing utmost fluidity of movement for deep science and collaborative research engagement models. This approach was largely based on a “building-as-intrument” approach: Can the resultanting architecture behave as much as a tool as it is a vessel ?
Research and collaborative area
Mechanical and laboratory area
Limited site
Research and collaborative area reproportioned
Mechanical and laboratory area reproportioned
Limited site
Research and collaborative area, paired and stacked
Mechanical and laboratory area paired/stacked and ‘bunkered’
Dovetailed/ unified
Linked to existing/ connected to campus
Slipped/perched
ENDNOTES
1. Williams, Allison Grace. It uses the typology to conceal the third story, really the lowest level of the composition, and very elegantly kind of lift or launch above what in the narrative was called a bunker to create this gondola.
2. Williams, Allison Grace. We had a lot of questions about that upper gondola level, which is very pristine and beautiful; it appears to be lab space, office, or some bio research. There’s an opportunity to really clarify flexibility there. We had some issues about understanding the purpose of the space. I think our questions are probably because it is the single building. There’s a huge scope for the realization of this project, and I think we would have benefited from understanding its relationship to the rest of the campus.
AFTERWORD
Our Manhattan design studio, along with the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, hosted the sixth installment of Opacity— the publication for which is aptly named “Endnote.” Endnote, in this case, refers to a conclusion or summarization of architectural design, where the design is evaluated and its excellence is reflected upon. It is an opportunity to reflect on a design’s aesthetic and functional qualities, as well as its impact on the environment, society, and other factors.
The backdrop for this event—New York City— has profoundly influenced the architecture profession , with numerous iconic buildings and structures located throughout the city. One notable favourite of mine is the Seagram Building , designed by Mies van der Rohe. For me , it is one of the first of its type in modern architecture that put the notion of “experience design” into practice. The building sits gracefully within its surroundings, allowing the neighborhood and users to enjoy its open and welcoming plaza , a design element that was initially mocked by developers for its potential loss in revenue. Yet soon after its opening , the Seagram Building (and its plaza) became the most sought-after real estate in Manhattan , expanding the definition and influences associated with what is considered “place making ” and fostering dialogue about ways to create more of it. The Seagram Building is a masterpiece of modernist architecture , an iconic symbol of New York ’s skyline , and a touchstone for contemporary architecture. It ’s impact on architecture has been farreaching , inspiring countless other architects and designers to push the boundaries of what was possible in building design, experience, and placemaking.
Judging the design excellence of a body of architecture is a complex task that goes beyond aesthetics. It requires a thorough understanding of the different factors that contribute to the design , including functionality, sustainability, and the ability to meet the needs of the users. Having a jury comprised of a diverse group of disciplines , including academics and journalists, can help to ensure that the evaluation is as objective as possible ; it also made for an enjoyable conversation of what good architecture ought to be. This , of course , all took place within the architecture department at The Cooper Union , which generously allowed us to borrow and use their beautiful studio space with their end-of-year models as a backdrop to the jurors’ deliberation of our work.
Another challenge is understanding the complexities of designing large projects , especially those commonly found in healthcare. Hospitals are large and multifaceted buildings that serve a wide range of users. They have a variety of specialized spaces, from operating theatres to research laboratories , each with their unique requirements and constraints. Without first-hand knowledge of such works, it is difficult for a jury to fully appreciate the design excellence of a hospital.
Additionally, the design of hospitals must also consider the impact of the building on the environment and the community.
Hospitals are large energy consumers and generators of waste , and the design must consider the use of sustainable systems and materials, and the integration of the building with the surrounding community.
Despite these challenges , the jury did a great job of evaluating a body of over 100 pieces of architecture in a limited time. Their deliberation was enlightening and refreshing , and it was clear that they were considering a wide range of factors in their evaluation. The outcome of this event has the potential to continue the conversation about design excellence for the next juried review and help to ensure that all aspects of the design are given appropriate consideration.
Design excellence is an important driver for our firm; it is a critical factor in determining the success of our projects. Striving for excellence means that we put a great deal of effort into understanding the needs of our clients and the users of the building , as well as ensuring that the design is functional, sustainable , and visually appealing.
Over the last six series of events , it is clear that the body of work presented has improved exponentially. This is a testament to the efforts of our firm and the dedication of our design teams. However, it is also clear that room for improvement exists , particularly when it comes to equity, diversity, and inclusion in our designs.
It is refreshing to see that more attention is being paid to these important considerations in the design process. Equity refers to the ability of the building to provide equal opportunities and access for all users. Diversity refers to the ability of the building to reflect the cultural and social diversity of the community it serves. Inclusion refers to the ability of the building to provide a welcoming and comfortable environment for all users.
In the future, we must incorporate these considerations into our designs just as much as we measure the sustainability of a building. Only by doing so will we create buildings that are not only functional and sustainable but also inclusive and equitable. And , thus , the definition of design excellence and success will evolve accordingly.
The feedback and conversation from the jury in measuring our merits of design will be an important source of inspiration for our firm as we continue to strive for excellence in design.
Mohammed A. Ayoub
D.ARCH , ARB , AIA , RIBA Vice President, Design Director
IN MEMORIAM: DAVID LEMPKE , AIA
IN HIS OWN WORDS
By design , my career has been different. In pursuit of excellence , I have chosen to focus on fewer projects , taking each from design concept through construction administration.
I believe excellent architecture must have an exceptional concept, exceptional detailing, and exceptional execution.
I often refer to architecture as the endurance art. It is a long road from concept to completion; each step along the way is an opportunity to continue the trajectory and fully execute a powerful concept—or a chance to misstep, disrupting or even derailing the project.
Larger scale projects are certainly a team effort, a team which must be led by a holistic practitioner.
I live at both 50,000 feet and in the weeds; this has been my method.
He was creative, caring, curious, humble, inspiring, and loved. David was a great friend. He was a caring architect with incredible talent. For me, he will forever be remembered as the best person I was privileged to call a friend and colleague. My spirits are lifted by the memories and gifts he gave to the world. During our time together at HDR, we had a 25-year-long conversation about architecture. He was a mentor for many, including me.
He would arrive at a concept by sketching. Ideas flowed from the end of his pen. Creativity takes space: paper, wall, glass, marker boards. We would meet in my office or conference room almost every morning. By the end of the discussion, the walls would be covered with diagrams and vignettes. One of his many talents included being able to visualize being in the space when making design decisions. He would be imagining himself in the building or on the site as he designed. Understanding the needs of the client and understanding the needs of the people that would use the space was important. He loved all of this.
David was curious and always learning. Anytime we were traveling for work—in any city, in every city—at the end of the day he would say, “We need to go look at this…” In New York one time, he said we needed to go down to the World Trade Center. We walked there that night and it was inspiring. Three months later, the buildings were gone.
David had humility. The definition of humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. When we first talked, I expressed the ideal of always continuing to raise the quality of design. David made that happen. Nearly every project he was involved with received recognition for design excellence from the American Institute of Architects. Through the design principals’ group at HDR, David had an impact globally on both creativity and the quality of design. There is a saying among landowners: “Leave the land better than you found it.” David left the world a better place.
Bruce Carpenter, AIA Central Region Civic Director
GUEST EDITOR
Anjulie Rao
Anjulie Rao is a journalist and critic covering the built environment. Based in Chicago, much of her work reckons with the complexities of post-industrial cities; explores connections to place and land; and exposes intersections between architecture , landscapes , and cultural change. She is the founder and editor of Weathered, a publication focused on cities and landscapes in the wintertime.
Anjulie is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Architecture/ Interior Architecture and New Arts Journalism departments , and an adjunct faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a columnist at ARCHITECT magazine , and her bylines can be found in The Architect’s Newspaper, Landscape Architecture Magazine , The Architectural Review, The New York Review of Architecture, among others.
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