Architext (Fall 2011 Edition)
- Annual Conference & Expo / Design Awards Preview
- Fall Lecture
- Young Architects Forum
- Lessons Learned by the Yeoman Architect
- The School Auditorium, a Better Paradigm
- Sustainable Preservation
- First Annual Scholarship Award
Annual Conference & Expo / Design Awards Preview
By: Chris Dawson, AIA, President
Eastern Market Plaza Artwork Project
Lancaster, PA
Our Annual Conference / Vendor Expo / Design Awards Gala will all be held Friday, October 28th at HACC York's CyTec Building (2163 Pennsylvania Avenue). This is the principal member event we organize as a chapter providing an opportunity for all of our members to gather at the local level.
The day's events will begin with a presentation on the New USGBC LEED AP Credentials program for Professionals. About 65,000 people have become LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs) since the program began in 2000 as a way to recognize experts in the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC's) LEED Rating System. In November 2008 at the Greenbuild conference, the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), the organization that administers the LEED AP credential, announced substantial revisions to the program. After June 2009, existing LEED APs have to opt in to an updated version of the program with continuing education requirements, while aspiring LEED APs will find that accreditation requirements have become more rigorous. This presentation will review credential options for existing LEED AP's. An iPad will be given as a door prize to an attendee of this presentation.
Listrak/Vertex Internet
Lititz, PA
There are then opportunities to obtain Continuing Education Units (CEU's) via 2 sets of afternoon seminars sandwiched around a Vendor Expo which allows you to connect with important industry representatives. As we move in to the evening hours, we start with a Happy Hour that will include heavy hors d'oeurves as a precursor to the Design Awards Gala. The Design Awards program recognizes high quality projects by AIA Central PA members as selected by another AIA Chapter (AIA Europe this year). The Design Awards Gala will be followed by a Social Hour allowing everyone to continue the day's fellowship.
Specific details for the events planned for October 28th will be sent to every member via e-mail. We hope that the promising growth we have seen at these events over the last few years continues as we have adopted this more cost effective approach for these events. We were pleased to see members embrace the new format and think we have tweaked the program this year to set the stage for our most successful program to date. I look forward to seeing everyone on October 28th at HACC York.
By: Chris Dawson, AIA, President
Our 2011 AIA Central Pennsylvania Lecture Series will conclude on Thursday November 3rdat Armstrong World Industries Corporate Campus in Lancaster. Winka Dubbeldam, Assoc. AIA will present the work of her firm Archi-Tectonics, with offices in New York & the Netherlands, in a lecture entitled "Fragmentation as Optimization."
Chelsea Townhouse
New York City, NY
Winka is engrained in academia currently teaching at University of Pennsylvania but she has also lectured and taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities most notably. She is a founding partner of Archi-Tectonics which was established in New York, NY in 1994. The project that first caught my attention was the 2004 Greenwich Building in New York which is comprised of a new eleven-story "smart loft" building wrapping up and over a historic six-story warehouse building creating a dynamic mediation between the past and present. I look forward to learning about her process and the firm's work and hope you can join us.
Again our Lecture Series is not possible without the support of our sponsors...Thank you to each one:
Armstrong World Industries, Centria, Chris Dawson Architect, The Engineering Society of York, Fessenden Hall of PA, Interface FLOR, Keith Bush Associates, Kinsley Construction, LSC Design, Modernfold of Reading, Murphy & Dittenhafer Architects, Penn Lighting Associates, Pennsylvania Concrete Masonry Association, Reese Lower Patrick & Scott Architects, TONO Architects, & Whitney Baily Cox & Magnani
By: Tammie Fitzpatrick, AIA
Congratulations to the newly licensed Architects in Central Pennsylvania! All of your hard work and dedication as an intern (and those late nights studying for the ARE) have finally paid off! We would like to welcome you to The Young Architects Forum! Below are a few things we have lined up for the Fall!
- Don't forget to nominate someone for the Young Architects Award! The Inaugural Young Architects Award will be issued at the Design Awards Gala Event on October 28, 2011. The award will be given to an architect who has been licensed 10 years or less and shows exemplary performance in architecture, leadership, vision and community service. Who in your firm should be acknowledged for outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the field of architecture? Don't let these outstanding individuals go unrecognized!
All information must be submitted online before 5pm on October 14, 2011.
Nomination information and forms can be found on the Central Pa AIA website. - This fall, we will host an annual picnic for Young Architects and Seasoned Architects to join in a social setting. This will be a great opportunity for newly established architects to meet and learn from architects that have been in the business for more than 30 years. We have a wealth of knowledge here in Central Pa and this is a great opportunity to form lasting mentor/mentee relationships. More information to come soon!
If you are a newly licensed Architect, please send me your email address in order to be included in all YAF emails. (email me at tammie@lefevrefunk.com )
Lessons Learned by the Yeoman Architect
By: James Mehaffey
Of the decisions I have made as an Architect, I think the smartest one I have ever made was to refuse to get involved with the house my parents built on their retirement lot. My parents had owned several desolate acres in New Mexico for years, always intending to build a house when they retired. I have only ever seen it in photographs, but it looks like the photos Viking sent back from Mars when I was a kid.
Of course when it came time to start designing their house, they started asking for free advise. They didn't pay for my tuition, so they couldn't hold that over my head, but I didn't mind until I heard a few things that sent up warning flags in my head. First of all, I was not too familiar with the climate in which they would live. Although they were to move to New Mexico, it was not desert. Their property was in the foothills of the mountains. While it still goes up to 120 degrees in the summer, nights would get rather cool. In the winter, it can actually snow quite a lot there. My step father had ideas of installing a coal burning stove and a swamp cooler in the house, neither of which I had ever seen as primary heating and cooling. I didn't want to be responsible for them freezing to death in their sleep.
Mars
Here was the big warning flag, though: my step father had visions of a log cabin. Did I mention their property, nor none in sight, had any trees what-so-ever? The biggest vegetation there would be considered scrubby here and cut down in short order. No matter how hard I tried to explain to him that his idea was ridiculous and probably cost-prohibitive, he would not admit that I knew better than he did. I saw the way things would go.
So I gently explained that it would be much easier on everyone if they would meet some local builders on their next trip out and see what they had to offer. They knew the climate, the permitting process, as well as the local building materials. The builder was going to build it anyway, and probably wouldn't follow the directives from some moron from back east anyway. So that is what they did and they currently reside in a respectable stucco house with a clay tile roof, heated by a traditional furnace. They do have a swamp cooler instead of a traditional air conditioner and it works quite well, as I understand it, and I am still on speaking terms with my parents.
The School Auditorium, a Better Paradigm
By: Christopher Brooks
The current "age of austerity" is a good time to rethink the school auditorium. School auditoriums are usually designed based on "what a school auditorium looks like," the paradigm being the "Performing Arts Center (PAC)," the Swiss Army Knife of auditoriums that can present Les Mis one night and the Phila Orchestra the next, complete with raked seating, balconies, proscenium stage, curtains, stage shell, pit, smoke machines, spotlights, and wireless microphones for all.
Auditorium construction is expensive.
The conventional approach to school auditorium design is to emulate the PAC model at lower cost (for example, substituting a flat area in front of the stage for a true orchestra pit, resulting in terrible balance problems between instrumentalists and singers). Another common approach is to design an auditorium that can also be used as a gymnasium or cafeteria (or even both). Actually, this latter approach can result in an excellent school auditorium with significant cost savings---if the basic requirements, discussed below, are met.
A performing arts center serves an entirely different function from a school auditorium. A PAC presents events to the largest possible audience (some seating in excess of 3,000) in order to entertain the crowd and generate revenue.
A school auditorium, on the other hand, serves the students and their families. Students require a supportive place in which to rehearse, learn and perform. Family and friends want to experience the performance of the child they have come to support.
What sort of space would support this program best? Specifics will vary depending on items such as budget and school level (e.g. a modest scale for a high school would be larger than a modest scale for an elementary school). But the requirements hold. Let's go through the elements one by one.
Scale
Modest scale, a small footprint, offers many benefits:
- It is less expensive
- It brings audience and performers closer together
- Smaller spaces are more forgiving of acoustic shortcomings
- Smaller spaces are easier for performing children to connect with their audience
Conventionally, school auditoriums are designed for the largest audience that will ever attend: the entire school, plus parents. A better approach is to create a space with fewer seats and a smaller footprint, and address larger groups by scheduling. This can result in multiple performances, which is actually a benefit for the student performers.
Flexible performance area
A school auditorium will host a wide range of performance types, including: assemblies with a speaker, plays, musicals, band, chorus, recitals, movies The conventional approach of a stage house with music shell is expensive, with mediocre results unless it is really done right-which requires resources far beyond most school districts. Furthermore, the conventional proscenium stage isolates performers by putting them, essentially, in another room from their audience.
One better approach is to provide a large, open performance platform, with a walk able grid from which lights and curtains for visual masking can be hung in any number of configurations. Much less expensive, and vastly more flexible, than the conventional proscenium stage, this approach keeps the performer where they should be: in the same room as their audience.
Seating
Balconies and raked seating are powerful tools for creating a better connection between performers and audience and allowing more audience into a smaller footprint. However, school officials are understandably wary of balconies (which are hard to police and increase costs), which can fit.
However, without balconies, many school auditoriums seat audiences in a vast plane of seats, far from the performing students.
With a smaller footprint, loose chairs on a flat floor with a raised performance platform may provide adequate sightlines. A flat floor and loose seating also allows the room to support other functions.
Supportive geometry
Elements such as acoustic shelves and overhead reflectors are necessary to support ensemble hearing and clarity. These are not complicated or expensive items. They may have to be integrated with basketball hoops. Intelligent design can minimize cost.
Volume
A small footprint can result in a space that is simply too small for the sound produced by louder ensembles, such as band or full orchestra. A cost-effective answer to this problem is to build a high volume auditorium with enough floor area to just fit the audience, and sound-transparent ceiling at an appropriate height to create an intimate feel in the room, with an open, blacked out volume above.
Adjustable curtains
Acoustic requirements for music and speech diverge, particularly with regard to requirements for reverberation. Many school auditoriums have fixed sound-absorbing material because low reverberation is so necessary for speech.
But this forces music ensembles to play in acoustically dead halls, which is both frustrating and unflattering to the performers. The answer is to adjust reverberation using sound-absorbing curtains. These curtains can be hand-drawn to limit costs. The costs of the curtain and track are very comparable to the costs of fixed sound-absorbing materials that are almost always used in conventional designs.
Quiet background
Perhaps the most fundamental requirement for an excellent auditorium is low background noise. Sources of noise include HVAC, electrical equipment and the environment. I have walked into many school auditoriums with mechanical units and noisy dimmer rack located in the stage wings, precluding acoustic quality.
A truly quiet space can have almost magical acoustics. Though noise control costs money, it is the most cost-effective means of achieving high acoustic quality. Actually, it is the only way to achieve high acoustic quality.
Sound system
Every assembly space requires a sound system, even if just for lecture and playback of recorded material. However, in many school auditoriums, sound systems are used to compensate for poor acoustics. I have never met a teacher who is happy about having to amplify student performers. They just don't think there is an alternative.
Excellent acoustics, following these basic guidelines, may allow less reliance on the sound system, reducing costs for design, equipment and maintenance.
Storage
Stage wings are often used for storage. Storage is necessary, particularly for a space that will be used for a wide variety of functions. However, the stage is an extremely expensive closet. A better alternative is to plan for adjacent storage and retain the stage for performers.
Note that the LEED for Schools Acoustical Performance Requirements does not begin to address the acoustic requirements for auditoriums. One could design a LEED platinum school with a dismal auditorium.
Special considerations for children
- Children hear better than adults (generally speaking), but do not listen as well. When conditions for speech intelligibility are poor, they tend to fidget, creating noise and making matters worse. Background noise and reverberation are particularly challenging for children with hearing or attention problems.
- When younger children perform music, they cannot generate the power that older performers can. Thus, the requirements for both acoustic support and for low background noise are more critical for children than for older performers.
- For many children, their school auditorium will be the first space that they perform in. A supportive space can make a huge difference in that experience.
- The acoustic quality of the school auditorium will affect the sound of the performances, and consequently the perception of the quality of the school district's music and theatre programs.
By digging beneath appearances and down to the program and its fundamental requirements, school auditoriums can be designed and built at lower cost while supporting their programs far better than does the conventional approach.
For any architect who has worked on a historic preservation project involving government funding, The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties with Guidelines for Preserving, Rehabilitating, Restoring, and Reconstructing Historic Buildings (http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/tps/standguide/) is required reading. Now, the Department of the Interior, National Park Service has followed-up these standards and guidelines with the newly-released publication, The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation & Illustrated Guidelines on Sustainability for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings. This guide to sustainable preservation is now available on the National Park Service website: http://www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/download/guidelines-sustainability.pdf.
First Annual Scholarship Award
The Central Pennsylvania Architecture Foundation Fund (CPAFF) recently announced the award of its first annual Architectural Scholarship to Elizabeth McIlnay, a fourth-year architecture student at Temple University. To be eligible, scholarship applicants were required to be present or former residents of one of thirteen counties in Central Pennsylvania and currently enrolled in an architecture degree program. Additionally, students submitted letters of interest and supporting materials demonstrating their design work, community involvement, and volunteer activities.
This year's inaugural honoree, Elizabeth McIlnay, is a 2008 graduate of York Suburban High School. At Temple University, she has been involved with Habitat for Humanity, American Institute of Architecture Students and Freedom by Design. As fundraising chair or Freedom by Design, a volunteer organization that fundraises and creates architectural interventions for persons with disabilities, Ms. McIlnay has guided efforts including design and construction of a wheelchair ramp for a young man with severe cerebral palsy.
Elizabeth plans to apply to the Central Pennsylvania Architecture Foundation Fund Architecture Scholarship to study abroad at Temple University's Rome campus. While traveling and improving her understanding of design across various cultures, she hopes to continue to fundraise and engage in a small-scale project in Rome-supporting her long-term goal of helping others through design. Speaking on behalf of CPAFF, Frank Dittenhafer II, FAIA, LEED AP, who chaired the Scholarship effort, stated that "the Selection Committee was very impressed with Ms. McIlnay's past involvement with the community-based design initiatives-and felt that the 2011 scholarship award could make a positive contribution to her international cultural design research."
The Central Pennsylvania Architects Foundation Fund is the foundation of AIA Central Pennsylvania, a chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The fund is led by former presidents of AIA Central Pennsylvania and was created in partnership with the Foundation for Enhancing Communities, a 501 (c) (3) located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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