Green Design Rules AIA Michigan’s Awards Program
AIA Michigan is proud and happy to announce that green design was the order of the day as the chapter presented its annual awards to the owners and architects of 12 buildings at a May 2 ceremony at the Cranbrook Academy, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Among the delightful dozen was the inaugural winner in the newly established sustainable design award category, the Ford Rouge Center Revitalization in Dearborn, by ARCADIS.

Ball State Architecture Students Help Rebuild Technician’s Home
After an arsonist destroyed Bob Githens' home in Muncie, Ind., Githens, a woodshop technician at Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning, figured he would buy a new property rather than rebuild the abode that had housed his beloved $40,000, fully equipped workshop. But an architecture professor at the school had a different idea. The instructor wanted his students to take Githens on as a client. Although initially reluctant, once Githens, aka “Woodshop Bob,” started kicking around plans with the students, he didn’t think it was too bad an idea either.

AIA, CSI Seeking Common Ground on
MasterFormat Expansion
A rapid and far-reaching expansion of the standard specifications reference for the construction industry has raised many eyebrows and some alarm. CSI has extended its completion target six months from the original July 2003, and AIA representatives continue to focus attention on Draft 4 of the expansion, which is open for comment until November 7, 2003.

Tax Cut Legislation Provides Relief for Small Businesses
Key provisions of last month’s $350 billion economic stimulus package include tax relief for individuals and small-business owners, as well as federal funds for cash-strapped state governments.

BOOK REVIEW
Evenings at Five, a novel by Gail Godwin, Illustrated by Frances Halsband, FAIA
It would be easy to tout acclaimed novelist Gail Godwin’s Evenings at Five as a perfect beach-trip summer story—easy, and not quite right. This obviously autobiographic tale of a writer who muses back on the 30-year marriage to the music composer husband she just lost is instead an hour’s respite from chores on a rainy day, an under-a-pine-tree fictional retreat, or a quietly contemplative evening when the reader will be drawn to savor the good bits and pieces of her or his own life. Frances Halsband's line drawings add much to the tale's poignancy.

Your Kiplinger Connection (members only)
AIArchitect links members to three stories a week from the pages of the renowned Kiplinger Letter. (Nonmembers may subscribe to The Kiplinger Letter.)
Prices: Tariff-induced increases in domestic production have pushed steel prices way down. Oil prices to plummet soon. Business Planning: Small businesses can save big by outsourcing business-management tasks. If people are sick, send them home, risk mitigators advise. Tax Cuts: If the new law boosts the economy, Bush will win in a big political gamble.

PROJECT WATCH
SBRA’s New Science Building Unites Disciplines Physically and Generations Symbolically
Boston’s Shepley Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott’s newly dedicated science center on the campus of Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga., brings light-filled learning to this women’s liberal arts college via large corner windows and a three-story, glass-fronted entrance atrium. To encourage cross-disciplinary learning, the 104,000-square-foot center bridges four departments—biology, chemistry, physics, and psychology—and houses labs, classrooms, faculty offices, and a science reading room. Perhaps its most unusual feature is a mural in the center’s Woolford B. Baker atrium that offers a three-story rendition by Jon Roll of the DNA of the college’s namesake. The painting of the genetic material of Agnes Scott, a young Irish immigrant and matriarch, was derived from the mitochondrial DNA of a female Scott descendent and alumna. “This particular double helix, through a discovery made only 50 years ago, symbolically lines the college’s tradition with today’s graduates and students—the conscience of modern science,” the architects report. (Photo © Kieran Reynolds, courtesy of Agnes Scott College.)

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