GSA Building Modernization: Design Excellence and LEED Gold Certification
In 2002, GSA initiated a four-year design and construction process to modernize the Byron G. Rogers U.S. Courthouse in Denver, explains Mary Morissette, AIA, Senior associate, Bennett Wagner & Grody Architects. Over the past 40 years, little had been done to upgrade the building’s systems, functions, or appearance. As a means of evaluating and measuring green building achievements, GSA requires major modernization projects like this to exceed basic LEED® certification, achieving at least a LEED Silver rating. Working with Bennett Wagner & Grody Architects of Denver, GSA planned and executed a comprehensive interior renovation that carefully integrated sustainable design features, resulting in a LEED Gold rating. The courthouse renovation was one of 50 projects designated for the USBGC's LEED EB (Existing Buildings) pilot program.

project watch
Dallas Breaks Ground on New “Vertical” Theater
The City of Dallas recently broke ground on the Center for the Performing Arts Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, an 80,300-square-foot multiform theater facility. The Wyly Theatre is co-designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture OMA and Joshua Prince-Ramus of Ramus-Ella Architects and is being built by McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. The 12-level, 600-seat theater—composed in cast-in-place-concrete and steel frame and clad in aluminum—features an inventive "stacked," vertically organized facility that allows rapid change of the stage configuration to a wide variety of configurations, including proscenium, thrust, and flat-floor. The main performance chamber sits at ground level, and support spaces are above- and below-house. Also included within the facility are a cocktail bar, rehearsal spaces, administrative offices, costume shop, lobby, stage support areas, mechanical rooms, production spaces, and rooftop multipurpose space. (Photo © Auralab, courtesy of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.)

AIA New Hampshire Celebrates Design Excellence of Three Special Projects
Three projects were honored at the New Hampshire chapter of the AIA 23rd annual awards banquet at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, January 19. Serving as jury members for the 2007 Design Awards program were T. Whitcomb Iglehart, AIA, Tai Soo Kim Partners; architecture writer Rachel Levitt; and Carol A. Wilson, FAIA, Carol A. Wilson, Architect. All three projects are in the Granite State.