Category Archives: Process

Proper English, as in “Crikey, It’s the Loo!”

June 25, 2010 – 2:42 pm

Editor’s note: British-isms in the text, such as theatRE, are bolded; translations, when deemed necessary, follow in parenthesis – for example, bingo wings (flabby underarms, associated with elderly denizens of gaming parlors). Our guide, a tiptop British architect from Hopkins Architects of London, was showing us Yanks, Mark Simon and me of Centerbrook, several buildings [...]

By Jim Coan | Tagged , | Comments (1)

The Story of Yale’s Kroon Hall

June 22, 2010 – 10:17 am

Yale University has produced an engaging and informative video about Kroon Hall, examining how the new home for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies was planned, designed and built to LEED Platinum standards (and beyond). Opened last year, Kroon Hall has drawn rave reviews from the general and architectural media – and, more [...]

By David Holahan | Also posted in Clients, Sustainable Design, Video | Tagged , | Comments (0)

What Would George Costanza Think?

May 6, 2010 – 11:30 am

I was invited to two meetings that kicked off the design development effort for a new math and science center at the Berkshire School in Massachusetts.  The first dealt with Revit coordination, Revit being the latest in three-dimensional computer modeling software.  The second gathering was the “Card Trick” meeting. I was the embedded, in-house reporter.  [...]

By David Holahan | Comments (0)

The Ten Commandments of Architecture

March 25, 2010 – 3:13 pm

It was time to dust off the Ten Commandments of Architecture and hold them over my head like Charlton Heston (blessedly they were etched in Microsoft Word rather than stone).  They have been passed down to me, in part, by Bill Grover, partner emeritus, and my current Centerbrook partners.  I have done a bit of [...]

By Jim Childress | Comments (0)

Making Design Accessible

March 16, 2010 – 9:40 am

To mangle an old saw, the stakeholders are NOT always right.  But they do have opinions and ideas, oftentimes quite insightful ones.  At our peril do we architects overlook, or lord over our clients, and building inhabitants as well, in the design effort.  When said stakeholders include citizens wielding the franchise, as is the case [...]

By Chad Floyd | Also posted in Public Architecture | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

A Symphony with an Ocean View

January 14, 2010 – 11:28 am

As an architect involved with projects great and small, I am always struck by how disparate elements come together to work towards a distant and unifying goal.  An aerial view might reveal all of the “usual suspects” – designers, engineers, consultants, carpenters, painters, pool builders etc. – scurrying around below like monomaniacal worker ants, somehow [...]

By Peter Majewski | Tagged , , | Comments (2)