March 28, 2008
  Fighting Irish Tackle Climate Change Through Design
Notre Dame embraces LEED on campus
The University of Notre Dame is taking steps to address climate change. They have created a Web site devoted to sustainability issues that states: “As a Catholic academic community of higher learning, the University of Notre Dame and its faculty, staff, and students believe we have a responsibility to advocate the principles and live out the practices of energy and environmental stewardship.” As testament to their commitment, Notre Dame recently retained BSA LifeStructures to design its first LEED® certified building for its College of Engineering. With a price tag of $69.4 million, the new 161,000-square-foot Stinson-Remick Hall will be the flagship of the engineering department and provide modern facilities for undergraduate and graduate students, including a clean room and nanotechnology lab. Designed in collaboration with RFD and Maregatti Interiors, the building was designed to create spaces that foster collaboration and experiential learning and discovery.

Indian Green
Haworth Pune goes for sustainability in building and product
Consumer demand, coupled with stiff import and export taxes in India, convinced office systems furniture manufacturer Haworth that they needed a manufacturing and showroom facility in Pune, India. Located less than 100 miles from Mumbai, Pune is becoming an IT and automotive metropolis. “India’s a very fast growing market, so we looked at that and said we could serve our customers better by making that product in India to serve the Indian market,” says Mitch Boucher, PE, LEED-AP, project manager for Haworth’s facilities design and management division.

ADVENTURES IN ARCHITECTURE
Il Duomo: Brunelleschi, a Man of Many Talents
Episode Three: The Architect
In our last episode, author Jim Atkins, FAIA, explained how the wardens of the Opera del Duomo, the program managers for the wealthy wool merchants who were financing the new cathedral, Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, elected both Filippo Brunelleschi and his arch rival Lorenzo Ghiberti as capomaestros, today’s rough equivalent to the architect-of-record, to build the new cathedral dome. Filippo’s success in gaining the commission was based in part on his proposal to build the dome without supporting armature or centering, a feat that had never before been accomplished at this scale. But who was this young Florentine? How is it that this local artisan emerged to become a capomaestro? What path led him to these lofty concepts of design and technology? Read on!

 

Copyright 2008 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. Home Page
home
news headlines
practice
business
design
Welcome to the Practice Zone
This is the home of the weekly Best Practices column, news of tips and tools that you can use in your day-to-day practice and case studies illustrating “how-tos” and “lessons learned” for all stages of practice. The Practice Zone also features reports of research in architecture and related fields.