February 24, 2012

AIA Charlotte Applauds Center City Building

© Peter Aaron/OTTO

AIA Charlotte Awarded UNC Charlotte's new Center City Building a Merit Award, calling the building a “vibrant addition to Charlotte's central business district [that] establishes a lively urban presence within First Ward.”  
 
Designed in partnership with Gantt Huberman Architects of Charlotte, the project was praised for fostering interdepartmental interaction, engaging the public, and showcasing the university's innovative work.

January 11, 2012

Waterfront Plans Awarded by AIA

The American Institute of Architects announced this week that the Master Plan for the Central Delaware has received national acclaim with a 2012 Institute Honor Award for Regional & Urban Design.

This master plan transforms six miles of the Delaware River waterfront in Center City Philadelphia, based on the Civic Vision that was prepared through an extensive public-engagement planning process. The goal of the plan is to provide a practical implementation strategy for the phasing and funding of public-realm enhancements to the waterfront, including the locations of parks, a variety of waterfront trails, and connections to existing upland neighborhoods. Specific zoning recommendations to shape private development as well as design guidelines for the public spaces are integral components of this project.

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December 07, 2011

Toward a Concept House for India

A component-based system whose forms respond to multiple goals for single- and multi-story house construction in India.

In order to answer a crucial housing shortage among middle class people in India, we developed Ideal Choice Homes in partnership with the Indian asset management company, Sam Circle Venture, and the Indian development company, Project Well. The project was unveiled at a press conference and workshop on mass housing, sponsored by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in Mumbai and New Delhi in December 2011. 
 
The search for a whole-building solution required research into all aspects of off-site fabrication, supply chain, and drivers of thermal comfort in India. We asked and answered questions about affordable cost, efficient construction, mass-customizable materials, resource conservation, thermal comfort, and owner self-sufficiency. We interrogated target market, Indian housing typologies, familial room-use patterns, development incentives, flood potential, seismic risk, air pollution, water pollution, solid waste infrastructure, labor, traditional material use per state, general material availability, and the Indian Green Building Council Green Homes Rating System.

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November 03, 2011

Architectural Record Features Yale Colleges

The November 2011 issue of Architectural Record covers the transformation of Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges at Yale University. 
 
KieranTimberlake's renovation and expansion retains the medieval-modern spirit of the Eero Saarinen–designed complex at Yale 
By Suzanne Stephens 
 
While regarded as one of Eero Saarinen's most distinctive works during his short career, the Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges at Yale University (1958–62) in New Haven have long seemed more appealing in photographs than in real life. Part of the reason is the surrounding competition: When you walk past the chunky, textured stone of the Collegiate Gothic residential colleges designed by James Gamble Rogers from 1925 to 1934, it's a little hard to adore the pasty, raw concrete and stone aggregate surfaces of Saarinen's stolid clusters. Even Vincent Scully, master of Morse College from 1969 to 1975, admits, “I liked Rogers's Branford and Berkeley better, but I didn't have a choice. [Yale president] Kingman Brewster assigned me to Morse because of my association with modern architecture.”

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October 10, 2011

Captivated by Light

© Michael Moran/OTTO

KieranTimberlake was deeply honored last Thursday evening to receive five AIA Philadelphia Awards for Design Excellence. The honors included a Divine Detail and an Honor Award for the Sidwell Friends School Meeting House.  

Jury comments

“The jury was captivated by the many and varied ways light was introduced into the space, and the gentleness and warmth it imparts to the emotional magic within.”

October 01, 2011

Monitoring as a Tool for Fine-Tuning

Architecture Week published an excerpt from our monograph titled Inquiry, authored by Stephen Kieran, James Timberlake, and Karl Wallick, about the philosophy of continual “tuning,” or making adjustments, in design practice. The practice of monitoring, both pre-project and post-occupancy, emerges from the belief that architecture is in need of constant adjustment and should never become static.

Tuning a Building at KieranTimberlake 
by Stephen Kieran, James Timberlake, and Karl Wallick 
 
At KieranTimberlake, we frequently conduct postoccupancy building monitoring to verify the performance of our buildings. Preproject monitoring services are used to diagnose and treat existing buildings.  
 
A monitoring program preceded renovation work at Yale University's Sage Bowers Hall, a 1920s-era classroom and office building. The study compared existing uninsulated construction with mock-ups that added new insulation and energy-efficient window assemblies.  
 
We sought data to answer the following questions: How much energy is lost through the wall? Is the dew point reached in the modified or unmodified wall assemblies? Does the indoor ambient room temperature exceed thermal comfort levels? How does the modified window compare to the unmodified window in keeping the room comfortable?  
 
Data from this project may inform other renovation projects on the campus. Given current and emerging energy paradigms, it is no longer tenable to compensate for underperforming solid masonry walls and single-glazed windows by overheating.  
 
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