USGBC Opens Building Performance Partnership to Current LEED-Certified Buildings

Green Building Pro

Buildings Can Voluntarily Submit Performance Data to Inform Future Version of LEED

Washington, DC – (July 22, 2010) – Last summer, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced its Building Performance Partnership (BPP), a program to engage owners and managers of commercial and residential LEED-certified green buildings, optimizing the performance of buildings through data collection, analysis and action. Starting this summer, USGBC has opened the program to all current whole-building LEED-certified commercial and residential projects. BPP will further the efforts to understand how buildings perform from the moment of LEED certification and years beyond.

This partnership among USGBC and the thousands of LEED project owners will result in the population of a comprehensive green building performance database and enable standardization of reporting metrics and analytics to establish new building performance benchmarks.

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Online Registration for TSA Convention Just around the Corner...

Online registration for the TSA Convention in San Antonio, Oct. 14-16, is just around the corner. Members will receive notice via e-mail toward the end of next week that online reg is now open.  Stay tuned to the TSA blog for more details in the coming months regarding Continuing Education Sessions, events, tours, and awards/recognitions. This year's convention theme is Purpose and keynote speakers are Will Wynn, former mayor of Austin, and Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

by Yvonne Castillo

TSA General Counsel

The Texas Board of Architectural Examiners is planning to propose a rule change requiring that renderings be labeled with your name, date of issuance, and statement of intent (“Not for regulatory approval, permitting or construction”). It’s an issue that the Board finds compelling due to cases seen where clients have decided during the schematic design phase or design development phase that they don’t want to pay for architectural services anymore and are ready to build with what they’ve got. This, of course, poses a risk not only to the architect, but to the public at large if the building design is not ready to be constructed.

The problem is: how can the agency regulate this scenario to protect the public in this digital age particularly since the proposed definition of a “rendering” is “a drawing, illustration or other artwork created for the purpose of demonstrating the anticipated appearance of a proposed design after construction which allows a client to make design-related decisions throughout the course of the project?” This is pretty broad. Moreover, does this kind of regulation cross over into meddling?

Architects illustrate for a living. We (and I mean you all) help clients visualize the future with illustrations of what the space will feel like, look like and how it will function, which is part of the proposed definition of “rendering.” I assume that pretty much every client meeting involves illustrating the project in some form or another. That’s why one hires an architect. These illustrations are on paper (sometimes paper napkins, paper bags, the back of an envelope) and they’re electronic (2-D and 3-D). These illustrations, especially in this technological age, are evolving, being manipulated and changed with the client real time. So with this proposed rule, how does one draw the line (so to speak)? Isn’t every illustration in some way a “rendering” used to help your client make design decisions? So, how does one decide when to include the disclaimer language? The bottom line, I think, is that it’s too fuzzy and probably shouldn’t be regulated by TBAE. Now, from a legal standpoint, if I were your attorney, I would certainly recommend that you use this disclaimer language any time possible because it protects you, as well as the public. But I don’t think it’s an easily enforceable rule. Not only that, I understand from our last Government Affairs Steering Committee meeting that because the line is so fuzzy, architects would err on the side of caution by including the language on virtually everything, which puts architects in the awkward position of appearing overly defensive to the client. Makes sense to me.

We’ll be advocating our concerns at the next TBAE meeting on August 20th. If you’re interested in this issue and want to provide input, please contact me at ycastillo@texasarchitect.org.

The Blind Spot in Vanity Fair's World Architecture Survey: Green Design

image courtesy of Chicago Tribune

by Blair Kamin

Chicago Tribune

At first, I decided not to say anything about Vanity Fair's self-aggrandizing "World Architecture Survey," which asked top architects, critics and architecture school deans to rank the most significant buildings, bridges and monuments built since 1980.

After all, it seemed like a pretty harmless, attention-getting device--a star-obsessed magazine obsessing about "starchitects" and their spectacles of steel and glass and stone. A pictorial of sexy buildings instead of sexy babes. A story about architecture's overheated recent past rather than its chillingly sober present.

But then I heard the author of the story that accompanied the survey, Matt Trynauer, talking on NPR's Weekend Edition last Sunday.

He was asked why no explicitly green buildings made the list, which was topped (no surprise) by Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Trynauer replied that there are a lot of very interesting green buildings out there, at least at a small-scale. Then he continued: "These buildings in general don't look so hot because they have to do a lot of things that buildings traditionally never did."

Like, say, saving energy? Adapting to local climates? Or using local materials that don't cost tens of thousands of dollars to transport?

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Architecture Firms Re-Imagine Our Future Cities

Newsweek posed the following question to three well-known architecture firms: What will our cities look like in 2030? Click on the following link to see their ideas:

http://www.newsweek.com/feature/2010/future-of-work.html

Four Projects Selected for TSA Studio Awards

Color Clock House by Max Levy, FAIA

edgeHouse by C. Graham Beach, J. Brantley Hightower, and Jennifer Young

by Bengie Daniels, AIA, Derek Keck, Jon Gately, and Michael Day

Warren Ranch Visitor's Center by students of Architecture Design VI Studio at Prairie View A&M School of Architecture (including student Gary Fondel, faculty advisor Heidi Dellafera Eagleton, and teaching assistant Adam Boutte)

A jury of three Arizona architects has selected four unbuilt projects to receive 2010 TSA Studio Awards. The announcement followed the jury's meeting on July 16 in Phoenix.

The following projects were awarded:
• Color Clock House by Max Levy, FAIA, of Max Levy Architect
• edgeHouse by C. Graham Beach, J. Brantley Hightower, and Jennifer Young
• Pegboard designed by Bengie Daniels, AIA, and Derek Keck, both of Latitude Architects; and Jon Gately and Michael Day, both of Object 31
• Warren Ranch Visitor's Center by students of Architecture Design VI Studio at Prairie View A&M School of Architecture (including student Gary Fondel, faculty advisor Heidi Dellafera Eagleton, and teaching assistant Adam Boutte)

Color Clock House is a plan for a 2,400-sf speculative house in Dallas. According to the architect, the project is a "small house [that] connects with something big: sky and sunlight."

edgeHouse is a concept for a house located on a standard residential lot on the northwest side of Marfa that creates spatial conditions to accommodate both solitary retreats and social gatherings.

Pegboard envisions a house in Ghana assembled with a kit of light-weight concrete components poured on site. Other elements are handcrafted by local artisans with bamboo and wood.

Warren Ranch Visitor's Center is designed for the Katy Prairie Conservancy for a site in Hockley on the largest cattle ranch in Harris County. The 20,000-sf compound includes the adaptive re-use of a 90-year-old barn.

This year's Studio Awards jury was composed of Wendell Burnette, AIA, principal of Wendell Burnette Architects in Phoenix; John Kane, FAIA, a founding principal of Architekton in Tempe: and Philip Weddle, AIA, of Weddle Gilmore Black Rock Studio in Scottsdale.

TSA Studio Awards recognize innovation and excellence in the design of unbuilt work. The competition was established in 2004 to encourage real or theoretical projects that go beyond the boundaries of architecture by addressing current critical issues. This year’s winning entries will be profiled in an upcoming edition of Texas Architect.

Architectural Record/Design Vanguard 2010

Architectural Record is looking for a great group of 10 emerging firms from around the world to feature in its annual Design Vanguard issue. Although there is no age limit, the focus is to try to select architects who have had their own practices for less than 10 years.

To enter the competition, send a low-resolution PDF (no larger than 8 MB) with a portfolio containing 5-8 projects (both built and unbuilt), CVs of your firm’s partners and a short statement of your firm’s design approach or philosophy.

Deadline: August 16, 2010

Send to Clifford Pearson at: PearsonC@mcgraw-hill.com