The new US embassy in London broke ground today in a ceremony that included Ambassador Matthew Barzun, Director of Overseas Building Operations Lydia Muniz, and Leader of Wandsworth Council Ravi Govindia. The embassy, which will stand on a 4.9-acre site in the Nine Elms neighborhood on the South Bank of the Thames, is expected to be completed in 2017. Its design reflects values of transparency, openness, and equality as well as leading-edge measures of environmental responsibility, including an energy-gathering envelope and on-site water management system.
A sketch by Steve Kieran of the facade of the Palazzo Maccarini in Rome, one of the buildings he "disassembled" during a one-year fellowship in the city.
As part of the Home from Rome series sponsored by the American Academy in Rome, Steve Kieran delivered a lecture this week entitled "Carrying Rome." His lecture traced a passage back to his 1980-81 fellowship in Rome and its influence on thirty years of making architecture.
While in Rome, Steve made more than 3,000 index card-sized sketches that continue to inform design at KieranTimberlake. His drawing of the Palazzo Maccarani, in particular, allowed him to disassemble the entire facade, completed in 1532, to understand how architect Giulio Romano established then flouted convention and then pointed a rhetorical finger at it (minute 24:00 in the video below). Partner James Timberlake was also a Rome fellow, in 1982-83, and the balance of art, intuition, science, and innovation that the two observed in Roman architecture led them to seek a similar balance in their own work. Steve pointed to Brunelleschi's dome in Florence as an exemplar of this equilibrium, explaining that truly compelling beauty hangs in the balance between art and science.
Steve noted, "Rome is still home. The insights I gained through disassembling and recording what I was seeing more than thirty years ago have remained ingrained in every facet of my life as an architect."
Tally™ empowers architects to conduct Life Cycle Assessments directly in a Revit Model.
Philadelphia, PA -- KieranTimberlake announced today the release of Tally™, a new software application that allows designers to measure the environmental impact of building materials directly in a Revit model. The application provides Life Cycle Assessment on demand, backed by the rigor and credibility of GaBi data from PE INTERNATIONAL, a global leader in life cycle information and sustainability consulting. Autodesk, the maker of Revit modeling software, supported development and testing for the application.
A construction crew spreads and smooths concrete to form the surface at Dilworth Plaza.
In the early morning hours of July 11, a major concrete pour raised progress on the Dilworth Plaza renovation to a new level—quite literally. Previously, work on the plaza at Philadelphia's City Hall had been restricted to the transit concourse below ground. Now, with the addition of a roof over the north concourse, the floor of the plaza has been formed, and work can continue on the two levels simultaneously.
More than 6100 keys were glued to stained wood backing to create the eight panels placed throughout Stone Hall.
Harvard University's residential housing system includes twelve residential houses, each endowed with its own character and culture that provide undergraduate students with a smaller community within the university as a whole. Following their freshman year in one of the dormitories in Harvard Yard, students transfer to a residential house, where they remain for the rest of their college careers. As part of a larger House Renewal project at Harvard, we recently completed a full renovation of Stone Hall (formerly Old Quincy Hall), a project which improved the living spaces within the building and added social spaces and a smart classroom in the previously underutilized basement.
The building is five stories, each of which includes two historic fireplaces—used for heating in the past but now decorative. Early in the design process, a desire emerged for a graphic treatment representing the history of the house to be placed above the mantles of these eight fireplaces. Through a brainstorming process involving members of both Harvard University and KieranTimberlake, we developed the idea to create sculptural wall panels using thousands of old room keys used by former residents.
KieranTimberlake researcher Ryan Welch presented a paper on BIM-integrated environmental impact assessment at the 29th annual PLEA (Passive and Low Energy Architecture) Conference in Munich. PLEA 2013 brought together architects, engineers, and academic researchers from over 50 countries to present research around the theme of Energiewende (German for "energy transition"), which considers the shift to a low- or zero-carbon economy. Research topics explored a range of scales, from the human body to the urban environment, and examined sustainability through both cultural and technological lenses.
"Quantifying the Embodied Environmental Impact of Building Materials During Design," coauthored by Roderick Bates, Stephanie Carlisle, Billie Faircloth, and Ryan Welch, examines the potential for architects to consider embodied environmental impacts as an integral part of their design process. The paper lays out a methodology for resolving the discrepancy between the abstract representation of materials in BIM and the higher resolution of materials required for Life Cycle Assessment. When combined with life cycle inventory data, this information allows architects to understand and refine their designs through the lens of environmental impact.
While approaches to reducing operational energy are well established within the discipline of architecture, methods for quantifying embodied environmental impacts of building materials have yet to gain traction within the architectural, engineering, construction community due to the difficulty in quantifying building materials and the high cost and limited availability of pertinent life cycle inventory data. Our presentation served as a prescient counterpoint to the operational energy discourse of the conference—and in his closing remarks, Douglas Mulhall posed the quantification of building materials and their impacts as the paramount challenge for next year's PLEA conference.
The Harvard Gazette reported last week that our renovation of Old Quincy Hall on the campus of Harvard University is a success among students who recently moved in. The first in a series of renewal projects, Old Quincy was used as a test case to gauge future renovations. On September 7, the house was rededicated as Stone Hall.
That's according to students who were moving into the 80-year-old neo-Georgian on Thursday. After 15 months of construction and renovation, Old Quincy, the first test project in the House Renewal initiative, began welcoming students this week. What they found was a fully transformed building designed to enhance the interactions of the multigenerational community living within it. Based on first impressions, the project was a success.
“I haven't been in a room as nice as this anywhere on campus,” said Fola Sofela '16, as she walked into her six-person suite.
Sofela marveled at the size of her bedroom, and grinned as she examined the suite's common room, furnished with couches, chairs, and tables. One of her roommates, Lauren Greenawalt '16, pointed out some of the room's details, such as built-in desk lights and electrical outlets, and a mirror on the wardrobe door.
“Having the rooms fully furnished is nice. It immediately made me feel at home,” Greenawalt said. “Some people say there isn't enough social space on campus, but I think this building goes a long way in addressing that.”
Modern features were brought into the House to meet the needs of students in the 21st century, but the distinctive character of Old Quincy, based on its unique architectural design, history, and traditions, was maintained.
The full-scale prototype for Loblolly House is a central feature of the Prototyping Architecture exhibition, which runs at Cambridge Galleries Design at Riverside and Waterloo Architecture in Ontario, Canada, October 17 to December 17, 2013.
Organized in conjunction with the ACADIA 2013 Adaptive Architecture conference held October 24-27, 2013, the exhibition includes a post-digital prototype for the Passion Façade of Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família Basilica; a laser-sintered additively manufactured violin; lightweight prefabricated fabric formwork for on-site cast concrete; an additive manufactured titanium aircraft component; and a Rolls Royce high pressure turbine blade cast and "grown" as a single nickel alloy crystal.
Specialized suction-cups are used to lift the 22-foot glass panels for the entryway on Spruce Street.
Work continues apace at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and renovation projects are planned to open to the public late 2013. A new entranceway is among the renovations, as is a new restaurant at street level to be operated by Chef Jose Garces. Both projects were identified in our master plan for the Kimmel Center, which seeks to provide transparency and activity to the building perimeter.
We developed this animation to demonstrate the components that come together and the assembly methodology used to create Ideal Choice Homes. Watch as the pieces fly into place!
