HOK has become the latest AEC firm to form a partnership with Delos, the New York-based real estate developer whose International WELL Building Institute’s WELL Building standard establishes performance criteria for occupant health in the built environment.
Within the next 12 months, HOK has committed to put more than 100 of its designers through Delos’s program to become WELL Accredited Professionals (WELL APs).
Bill Hellmuth, AIA, LEED AP, HOK’s chief executive, has joined Delos’ Advisory Board, and will provide strategic counsel on design. HOK will also offer its experts in various practices to provide Delos with research and insight.
Advocates are attempting to promote wellness as the next big thing in nonresidential design and construction, like high performance and sustainability. BD+C’s September issue includes an extensive feature on this movement’s progress. One of the projects cited in that article is a HOK-designed interior renovation of office space in the TD Centre in Toronto to the specifications of the WELL standard for New and Existing Interiors.
“This project for TD is an example of how designers can uses WELL’s performance standards to elevate our ability to create exceptional workplaces,” said Kay Sargent, ASID, IIDA, CID, LEED AP, director of strategic accounts for HOK.
HOK and Delos are now working with Strategic Property Partners, a real estate developer, on the design of multiple buildings within SPP’s mixed-use development on 53 acres in the Channelside district of Tampa, Fla., between Amalie Arena and the central business area.
SPP is a joint venture between Cascade Investments LLC and Jeff Vinik, who owns the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL franchise and has a stake in the Boston Red Sox. This project aspires to be the world’s first WELL-certified city district under the WELL Community standard that is in its early pilot stage.
Components of that standard include enhanced walkability, robust green spaces with low-pollen trees, sound barriers to support acoustic comfort, access to healthy foods, green infrastructure, the daily monitoring and reporting of district air quality, and access to amenities of the urban waterfront.
The redevelopment of Channelside district will include the new 320,000-sf University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute, an adjoining 300,000-sf medical office building, and a parking, residential and retail building. It will also feature a 650-room luxury hotel.
SPP intends to begin vertical construction on this project late next year. When all three phases of this district are completed, sometime in the next decade, the redevelopment will have up to 9 million sf of commercial, residential (including 5,000 housing units), educational, entertainment, cultural, and retail space, with total investment exceeding $2 billion.
Related Stories
| Oct 5, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Bronze Winner: Pomeroy Senior Apartments, Chicago, Ill.
The entire interior of the building was renovated, from the first floor lobby and common areas, to the rooftop spaces. The number of living units was reduced from 120 to 104 to allow for more space per unit and comply with current accessibility requirements.
| Oct 5, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Bronze Winner: Walsh Group Training and Conference Center, Chicago, Ill.
With its Building Team partners—architect Solomon Cordwell Buenz, structural engineer CS Associates, and M/E engineer McGuire Engineers—Walsh Construction, acting as its own contractor, turned the former automobile showroom and paperboard package facility into a 93,000-sf showcase of sustainable design and construction.
| Oct 5, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Silver Winner: 220 Water Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.
The recent rehabilitation of 220 Water Street transforms it from a vacant manufacturing facility to a 134-unit luxury apartment building in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood.
| Oct 5, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Silver Winner: Residences at the John Marshall, Richmond, Va.
In April 2010, the Building Team of Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio, Stanley D. Lindsey & Associates, Leppard Johnson & Associates, and Choate Interior Construction restored the 16-story, 310,537-sf building into the Residences at the John Marshall, a new mixed-use facility offering apartments, street-level retail, a catering kitchen, and two restored ballrooms.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Silver Winner: Allen Theatre at PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland, Ohio
The $30 million project resulted in three new theatres in the existing 81,500-sf space and a 44,000-sf contiguous addition: the Allen Theatre, the Second Stage, and the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Gold Winner: Wake Forest Biotech Place, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Reconstruction centered on Building 91.1, a historic (1937) five-story former machine shop, with its distinctive façade of glass blocks, many of which were damaged. The Building Team repointed, relocated, or replaced 65,869 glass blocks.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Gold Winner: Rice Fergus Miller Office & Studio, Bremerton, Wash.
Rice Fergus Miller bought a vacant and derelict Sears Auto and converted the 30,000 gsf space into the most energy-efficient commercial building in the Pacific Northwest on a construction budget of around $100/sf.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Platinum Winner: Building 1500, Naval Air Station Pensacola Pensacola, Fla.
The Building Team, led by local firms Caldwell Associates Architects and Greenhut Construction, had to tackle several difficult problems to make the historic building meet current Defense Department standards having to do with anti-terrorism, force protection, blast-proofing, and progressive collapse.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Platinum Winner: City Hall, New York, N.Y.
New York's City Hall last received a major renovation nearly a century ago. Four years ago, a Building Team led by construction manager Hill International took on the monumental task of restoring City Hall for another couple of hundred years of active service.
| Oct 4, 2012
BD+C's 29th Annual Reconstruction Awards
Presenting 11 projects that represent the best efforts of distinguished Building Teams in historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and renovation and addition projects.
