Statement of Intent
The rapid development and increasing population of Austin have created a polarity within the city. While some are eager to accept changes to the urban fabric, many are hesitant about what growth may bring: traffic, overcrowding, perhaps gross and thoughtless real estate development? Regardless, the city is expanding at an unprecedented rate and expected to…
AIA updates construction management contract documents
The American Institute of Architects has announced that it will issue 13 new and updated documents for its Construction Manager as Constructor (CMc) and Construction Manager as Adviser (CMa) series. The updated CMc documents will be available Nov. 15, while the CMa series will be released in February 2020. Changes to the CMc documents, used…
How to design net-zero ready buildings on a budget
An architect and engineer present a case study and give advice on how to be sustainable and cost-effective at the same time. The term “net-zero” often brings to mind big budgets and expensive building systems, but this conception couldn’t be further from the truth. As architects and engineers, we have everything we need to design…
OMA and Powers Brown Unveil Adaptive Reuse Design for Houston’s 1962 Central Post Office Building
Real estate development in Houston throughout its history has been mostly unremarkable, the minimum product of pro formas and adherence to the city’s slipshod patchwork of building, site plan, traffic, and parking ordinances. The only notable interruption in the pattern of averages was during the go-go years of the 1970s and 1980s when, according to…
Zero net carbon buildings are possible now. An industry game changer describes how Architecture 2030’s ZERO Code is a pathway for architects and clients.
Ed Mazria, FAIA, is an architect who has been called “game changer” since the early 2000s. That’s when he saw, in energy data, just how much buildings were contributing to emissions. He recognized then the leadership opportunity for the architectural profession. Mazria is still crunching numbers and pushing the industry toward greater, faster impact. Today,…
Houston Endowment Headquarters International Design Competition
Houston Endowment (HE), a leading Houston philanthropic organization, and design competition organizers Malcolm Reading Consultants, recently launched the global search for an outstanding design team of architects and landscape architects for HE’s new headquarters. The center, circa 40,000 s.f., will be HE’s new public face and will provide dedicated space for the organization’s team and community…
Rice Is Transforming a Midcentury Sears Into an “Innovation Hub” for Houston
For nearly the past 100 years, Houston has been proud to be a world leader in the oil and gas industry. However, despite the recent fracking boom, there seems to be a growing sense among its entrepreneurial and political elite that this economic model is going to fail at some point, or at the very…
Gensler Designs Texas’ First Full Mass Timber Building in Fredericksburg
The first full mass timber structure in the nation to use southern yellow pine cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels is set for completion in September 2019. Designed by Gensler’s Dallas office, the First United Bank in Fredericksburg has the distinction of being the first full mass timber construction project to be completed in Texas as well…
House Bill 4342 Moves Ahead
Following an April 16 hearing, House Bill 4342 was approved by the House Public Education Committee the next day. HB 4342 now advances with the committee’s full support. HB 4342 would add a licensed architect to the Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC) Board of Directors. TxSSC is the official, university-supported research center at Texas State whose mission is to…
Let’s Keep it Complicated
Equity. Diversity. Inclusion. I heard these powerful, complicated words reduced to the acronym “EDI” for the first time last week at a meeting — and while this signal of ubiquitous discussion encourages me, I felt the abbreviation packages them up a little too neatly. What does it mean for an organization to value diversity? How…
Five ways architects can protect their data
As data privacy concerns make headlines, architects should consider how much they share when specifying products Building products have always made up a significant portion of construction project budgets, and the specification of those materials takes up a large amount of architects’ time. But while product selection was once generic and took place in a…
-Advertisement-
