The East End Transformation of the Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis was awarded an Excellence in Planning Honor for 2020 from the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). The award recognizes excellence in creating an integrated plan for an entire geographic or functional area of a campus. Five design firms, including KieranTimberlake, Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, BNIM, Moore Ruble Yudell, and Perkins Eastman worked together to fulfill the vision. 
 

The Engineering Research Center at Brown University has received a Lab Design Excellence Award for 2020. Established by Lab Manager in 2019, these awards recognize the best new projects in research laboratory design, planning, and construction. A panel of industry experts evaluated each project for its innovation, sustainability, and safety.  
 
The Engineering Research Center, which was awarded an Honorable Mention for Innovation, opened in 2017. It unites three formerly disconnected laboratories, offering welcoming open space to the larger university community, and creating a new Engineering quadrangle. The core of the building's program is a suite of state-of-the-art, multi-disciplinary laboratories that are designed to adapt to shifting research types. Loft-like and accessible, the labs encourage dialogue among researchers and include connecting flexible workspaces that maximize daylight and views. 

On April 6, 2020, the board of directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences voted to approve the installation of four new officers, including KieranTimberlake founding partner James Timberlake. Timberlake will hold the office of Vice Chair of the 21-member board. The President of the United States appoints six members while the remaining fifteen are elected from the building industry community.

KieranTimberlake has been named to Fast Company magazine's prestigious annual list of the World's Most Innovative Companies for 2020. The list honors the businesses making the most profound impact on both industry and culture, showcasing a variety of ways to thrive in today's fast-changing world. 

“Innovation and invention have driven us ever since we started KieranTimberlake over thirty-five years ago. We invent software, innovate in material science, and lead in sustainability and carbon reduction, all while exploring form and design in architecture,” says Partner James Timberlake. “We are thrilled to be recognized by Fast Company for our work in all of those areas.”

Our redesign of Washington University's East End appeared in Architect magazine's February 2020 issue. The article emphasizes the project's energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and focus on preserving history on a 120-year-old campus while also keeping pace with innovation.  
 
It highlights the university's goal, announced in 2010, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020—while doubling its square footage with new construction. The efficiency of the five new buildings we designed (all of them achieving at least LEED Gold) helps meet that ambitious goal.  
 
The university architect reported that a student experience survey had uncovered a desire for more welcoming architecture. The new buildings meet this need, creating a more inviting experience for students through transparent glass facades and informal spaces that contrast with the existing formal Collegiate Gothic architecture.  
 
With regard to the new buildings, Partner James Timberlake is quoted as saying that the goal was to make them “all work together as a community of new buildings, yet also make the other buildings around them better. There's this oscillation between that new language and the existing one, and the glass buildings become a logical extension, creating something unique while still being very much part of Washington University.” 
 
The project also restores the expansive green space of Tisch park, moving parking and roadways underground via the innovative East End Garage, which is designed with the flexibility to accommodate additional programs in the future. 
 
Read the full article in Architect.

OpenHome, a new system for constructing customizable prefab homes, was unveiled recently in Dwell magazine. Created in collaboration with Bensonwood, a builder of timber-frame houses and high-performance architectural components, OpenHome aims to strengthen ties between the architect and the builder, offering homebuyers an easier and faster design-build experience with higher quality construction.

KieranTimberlake is committed to reducing carbon footprints both in our own projects and across the architecture industry. We help our clients understand and reduce their buildings' total greenhouse gas contributions, including contributions from both operational carbon emissions and embodied carbon.  
 
Understanding embodied carbon—the emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole life cycle of a building—requires Life Cycle Assessment, a practice that until recently has been new and confounding for most building professionals. KieranTimberlake has been a forerunner in the movement to quantify embodied carbon early in the design process when adjustments can be made to reduce embodied carbon in a building. In 2013, KieranTimberlake's affiliate company KT Innovations released Tally, a Revit plugin that makes LCA practices accessible to building professionals.

On February 14, 2020, KieranTimberlake Partner Jason E. Smith was named Fellow of the American Institute of Architects by the College of Fellows jury. This distinction is the AIA's highest honor, awarded to those who have made significant contributions to the profession and society. 
 
In more than two decades leading architectural projects across the country, Jason has evolved a wide-ranging and inclusive design process, resulting in a body of work that is collegial, artful, and spontaneous. As a partner at KieranTimberlake, Jason has led the design and construction of several award-winning projects, including Brockman Hall for Physics at Rice University and Pound Ridge House. 

A new training center for government officials that we designed in Blackstone, Virginia, was recently featured in Wired magazine. The Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FASTC) is a project of the US State Department that provides an extensive campus of simulated learning environments alongside high-speed driving tracks and classroom buildings. 
 
Wired praises FASTC's “centerpiece”: the military operations in urban terrain simulator (MOUT). This simulated city is designed to help foreign affairs agents develop hard skills for situations they may encounter in the real world.  
 
Consolidating several existing training centers, FASTC will train thousands of government professionals on a daily basis as the “largest and most comprehensive of any US law-enforcement training resource.” 
 
 

Metropolis recently featured our work at Washington University in St. Louis to transform the East End of campus, bringing a unified, contemporary identity, creating a welcoming gateway to the university, and restoring the original intentions for a park-like setting. The story highlights our response to the existing Olmsted-designed campus, including the early 20th Century neogothic work of Cope & Stewardson and two 2005 buildings by Fumihiko Maki—modern limestone structures—that influenced our additions.  
 
Our work here included five elements: the new Weil Hall for the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts; Sumers Welcome Center and Schnuck Pavilion, which form a pair of glass pavilions that frame the towers of Brookings Hall beyond; the renovation and expansion of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum; and below-grade parking to replace surface lots with new green spaces in keeping with early aspirations for a campus composed of “outdoor rooms.”