As a firm, we encourage the next wave of women aspiring to be leaders in architecture and design to believe there’s a place for us in the design field. Let’s keep celebrating the achievements we have made!
Harvard University District Energy Facility received the 2021 Honor Awards for Design Excellence – Honor Award
Jury Comment: “[Harvard District Energy Facility] is elegantly simple—or, an elegant reduction of a complex system into something somewhat understandable. Architects don’t always get to choose a program. We were excited about this infrastructure project with its compelling, jewel-like expression of the interior function on the exterior. Expertly executed from concept to detail, with a clarity apparent through elimination of any unnecessary elements. This is an exemplary presentation with clear case-study diagrams and design solution.”
Jury Comment: “The Center for Engineering, Innovation, and Sciences was seminal in establishing “place” and creating a single building designed to encourage cross- pollination of areas of study. The connection between the quad and Parker Street reinforces the campus edge while the program elements on display enable curiosity and inclusivity. As the technical anchor of the Colleges of the Fenway, this project bookends the connection between this and the other institutions that call the Fenway home while embodying the ethos of the campus and academic offerings in a highly entrepreneurial setting.”
Richard and Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center received 2021 Higher Education Facilities Design Award – Citation
Jury Comment: “The jury found this investment in community, education, and the arts to be the type of transformative work we hope will be emblematic of architecture’s future. We had the privilege of reviewing a project that repurposed an existing building, artfully fulfilling many of the submission requirements, while contributing to a sense of place in a truly transformative manner. As the original build approaches its sesquicentennial, we hope that both Middlesex Community College and the City of Lowell find this to be a catalytic project that enables the future success of both institution and city.” Richard and Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center
Adohi Hall received the 2021 Housing Design Award – Citation
Jury Comment: “Adohi Hall at the University of Arkansas demonstrates exciting new potentials for sustainable student-housing design. Most notable is the project’s deep exploration of wood as a structural material: timber columns, beams, floor panels, and intricate trusswork greatly reduce embodied carbon and imbue living spaces with warmth, texture, and connection to the region’s woodland ecology. The building’s serpentine plan shapes a series of intimate and inviting outdoor rooms, each activated by shared spaces for learning, socializing, dining, recreation, and artistic creation. The design skillfully merges architecture, landscape, and program to create a strong sense of community within the context of a large university.”
Adohi Hall received the 2021 Sustainable Design Award – Award
Jury Comment: “[Adohi Hall] is extremely impressive in taking mass timber design to the next level: scaling up to a major residence hall complex for a public university with beautifully designed public rooms and courtyards. The inventive hybrid trusses in the common rooms, integrating both timber and steel, are an excellent example of thoughtful sustainable design. The interior biophilic motifs address student wellness and relate to the surrounding forested environment. The exposed materials provide a connection to the wood CLT as a finish, which reduces the number of materials used but also brings a warm element to the spaces. Hopefully, other projects will draw attention to this type of construction within the public-bid realm.”
Harvard University District Energy Facility is announced the winner for the Infrastructure category and the Innovation Center is announced as the winner for the Unbuilt Commercial Category.
“Here is a statement on the diverse and often unexpected realms where great architecture, great designers, and great products are appearing, across the North American continent and beyond.” —Aaron Seward A’N
Harvard District Energy Facility was described by the jury:
“Often the architecture of infrastructure is at best an afterthought. This amazing District Energy Facility shows us both how and why design is essential to a livable environment.”
—Carol Ross Barney
Happy to announce that we’ve been selected as part of the newest cohort of the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence program! We’re excited to work with the selection committee and the Walton Family Foundation to shape and strengthen the community by helping create inclusive public spaces.
Link to Walton Family Foundation Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program website and full list of program participants: https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/grants/design-excellence/selected-firms
Link to the news release: https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/about-us/newsroom/walton-family-foundation-builds-on-design-excellence-programs-diversity-breadth
“A Statement of Power at Harvard”
“The challenge was to wrap the working machinery of the DEF within an envelope that was “harmonious and dignified, but also spirited.” Ms. Weinzapfel took its tumble of pipes, pumps, tanks and generators, and encased it within a lattice of anodized aluminum fins, all pointed upward. They are highly attractive, resembling airplane wings, and they look as if they should move. (They don’t.) They are canted at various angles around the building; to the south they screen the sun, to the north they welcome it, and at various other points they offer tantalizing views of the machinery within.” – The Wall Street Journal
Leers Weinzapfel Associates new 56,000 sf District Energy Facility (DEF) sets the stage for a state-of-the-art, cost effective, and sustainable utility generation and distribution system for Harvard’s Allston campus that also makes a significant contribution to its urban design.
“Metal fins and abundant glass boldly announce Harvard University’s District Energy Facility (DEF) which, quite literally, provides windows on the building’s state-of-the-art equipment. The DEF, designed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates, efficiently generates electricity and hot and cold water for the school’s expansion into Boston’s Allston neighborhood. The team designed the LEED Gold natural gas–fired cogeneration plant—the first building in what will be a dense urban campus—for flexibility, anticipating future technological innovation and demands on capacity. Conceived to withstand flooding, dampen sound, and reduce emissions, the resilient structure includes a thermal energy-storage tank, backup equipment, and self-restart capabilities. These high-performance inner workings guided the team’s approach for the building that contains them. “We wanted the facility to have an elegant, refined exterior, but one that didn’t compromise any of the equipment’s requirements,” says founding principal Jane Weinzapfel. A galvanized-steel structure supports the glazed curtain wall and anodized-aluminum fins, which are rotated at different angles on each side of the cube for varying degrees of opacity. The DEF facilitates engagement with an “energy-on-display” model, Weinzapfel explains. “It would be a shame to button it all up.”” – Architectural Record
See feature here: https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15395-snapshot-district-energy-facility-by-leers-weinzapfel-associates-on-harvards-allston-campus
This project reuses and adds to a vacant 1960’s library in the heart of the medical school quad, transforming it into a vibrant administrative and social center for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a hub for the north campus. The 32,995sf Anonymous Hall project—as well as new entrances for its surrounding buildings, a wide pedestrian bridge, and new circulation between buildings—is transforming the college’s least compelling area into a well-scaled part of this historic campus.
The addition’s main floor houses the building’s lobby and a café, with an adjacent terrace overlooking a newly formed green. Tied together by a spiral object stair visible from the south lawn, the building’s upper floors contain faculty offices, classrooms, and places for student gathering. The penthouse level features a solar-paneled canopy and a south-facing planted terrace that overlooks the iconic main campus.
The graduate student lounge in the walkout basement opens to a protected courtyard below a pedestrian bridge.
A structure in a cold climate, the choices of high R value terra-cotta-clad walls, solar panel canopy, triple-glazed windows, and south-facing glass with an expanded metal interlayer to limit summer sun create a building with a low embodied energy that approaches net zero energy use. This low operational carbon building is further improved by reusing the existing 1960’s concrete and steel structure achieving low embodied carbon use.
See the project featured here: https://www.wanawards.com/finalists/anonymous-hall-dartmouth-college-ad0002
See the all finalists and winners here: https://www.wanawards.com/winners-2021
Wentworth Institute of Technology Center for Engineering, Innovation and Sciences and Adohi Hall at University of Arkansas each have received 2021 American Architecture Awards in the Schools and Universities category.
“Now celebrating the 27th year, The American Architectural Awards® are the nation’s highest and most prestigious distinguished building awards program that honor new and cutting-edge design in the United States. This annual program, organized by both our institutions, also promotes American architecture and design to our public audience in the U.S. and abroad. This year, the Museum received a record number of projects for new buildings, landscape architecture, and urban planning from the most important firms practicing in the U.S. and globally. From a short list of 400 projects, the 2021 Jury for Awards was held in Australia, and over 125 projects were selected by a distinguished group of Miami architects, educators, and developers.” – Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards
A full list of winning projects for 2021 is attached and can be viewed soon at our Museum’s website at www.chi-athenaeum.org or at www.americanarchitectureawards.com.
Learn more: https://www.americanarchitectureawards.com/award-category.html?cat=14&page=2
“Josiah Stevenson, FAIA, Principal in Charge and Senior Associate Kevin J. Bell , with Leers Weinzapfel will present the Anonymous Hall project at Dartmouth College, part of a wider campus renewal plan. Metrics show the project is close to net zero energy use. The building was stripped to its columns and slabs to remove hazardous materials in the existing library walls before construction could begin. As a reused concrete structure in a cold climate, the choices of highly insulated terra-cotta-clad walls, triple glazed windows, and a photovoltaic canopy created a building with low embodied energy that approaches net zero energy usage. The facade system is first-of-its-kind in the US, comprising multiple advanced technologies including vacuum insulated panels, krypton filled triple glazing, metal mesh integral shading, and toggle-held structural glazing (2″ IGUs).” – Continuing Education Center
Register for the event here
Learn more about the Anonymous Hall project here
Adohi Hall was finalist for two World Architecture Festival Design Awards.
The Adohi Hall team gave live presentations to the jury for the categories of Housing and Best Use of Certified Timber.
Adohi Hall is the first large-scale mass timber residence hall and living learning setting and was largest cross laminated timber (CLT) building in the United States at its completion in 2019. Leers Weinzapfel led a design collaborative including Modus Studio (Fayetteville, AR), Mackey Mitchell Architects (St. Louis), and OLIN (Philadelphia), in the realization of this new campus gateway project. The 202,027-square-foot Adohi Hall creates a new residential college with emphasis on a creative live learn environment within a relaxed, informal, tree-lined landscape that re-conceptualizes university housing.