Bostonians voted the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's new wing the People's Choice Award winner for 2012, honoring the project as the city's "most beautiful new building" for the calendar year. The new wing, designed by Renzo Piano and Stantec, beat out three other projects on the short list: Fumihiko Maki's MIT Media Lab; the restoration of Alumnae Valley at Wellesley, led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates; and Temple Beth Elohim by William Rawn Architects. The winning team was honored at the annual Boston Society of Architects Awards Gala on Jan. 31.
The museum expansion provides spaces for specific programming, including a 296-seat performance hall and a 1,500-square-foot, three-story special exhibition gallery. The glass-enclosed first floor includes a new entry, a café, gift shop, greenhouses and education spaces. Administration offices, lab-quality restoration spaces, and accommodations for two Artists-in-Residence are also included in the new wing. The design team relied on BIM to coordinate the building’s many complex systems, and the new wing achieved LEED Gold certification last fall.
For more on the award, including a photo gallery of the finalists, visit: http://boston.com/advertisers/bsa/2012/index.html.
Related Stories
| Nov 3, 2010
Dining center cooks up LEED Platinum rating
Students at Bowling Green State University in Ohio will be eating in a new LEED Platinum multiuse dining center next fall. The 30,000-sf McDonald Dining Center will have a 700-seat main dining room, a quick-service restaurant, retail space, and multiple areas for students to gather inside and out, including a fire pit and several patios—one of them on the rooftop.
| Nov 2, 2010
11 Tips for Breathing New Life into Old Office Spaces
A slowdown in new construction has firms focusing on office reconstruction and interior renovations. Three experts from Hixson Architecture Engineering Interiors offer 11 tips for office renovation success. Tip #1: Check the landscaping.
| Nov 2, 2010
Cypress Siding Helps Nature Center Look its Part
The Trinity River Audubon Center, which sits within a 6,000-acre forest just outside Dallas, utilizes sustainable materials that help the $12.5 million nature center fit its wooded setting and put it on a path to earning LEED Gold.
| Nov 2, 2010
A Look Back at the Navy’s First LEED Gold
Building Design+Construction takes a retrospective tour of a pace-setting LEED project.
| Nov 2, 2010
Wind Power, Windy City-style
Building-integrated wind turbines lend a futuristic look to a parking structure in Chicago’s trendy River North neighborhood. Only time will tell how much power the wind devices will generate.
| Nov 2, 2010
Energy Analysis No Longer a Luxury
Back in the halcyon days of 2006, energy analysis of building design and performance was a luxury. Sure, many forward-thinking AEC firms ran their designs through services such as Autodesk’s Green Building Studio and IES’s Virtual Environment, and some facility managers used Honeywell’s Energy Manager and other monitoring software. Today, however, knowing exactly how much energy your building will produce and use is survival of the fittest as energy costs and green design requirements demand precision.
| Nov 2, 2010
Yudelson: ‘If It Doesn’t Perform, It Can’t Be Green’
Jerry Yudelson, prolific author and veteran green building expert, challenges Building Teams to think big when it comes to controlling energy use and reducing carbon emissions in buildings.
| Nov 2, 2010
Historic changes to commercial building energy codes drive energy efficiency, emissions reductions
Revisions to the commercial section of the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) represent the largest single-step efficiency increase in the history of the national, model energy. The changes mean that new and renovated buildings constructed in jurisdictions that follow the 2012 IECC will use 30% less energy than those built to current standards.
| Nov 1, 2010
Sustainable, mixed-income housing to revitalize community
The $41 million Arlington Grove mixed-use development in St. Louis is viewed as a major step in revitalizing the community. Developed by McCormack Baron Salazar with KAI Design & Build (architect, MEP, GC), the project will add 112 new and renovated mixed-income rental units (market rate, low-income, and public housing) totaling 162,000 sf, plus 5,000 sf of commercial/retail space.
| Nov 1, 2010
John Pearce: First thing I tell designers: Do your homework!
John Pearce, FAIA, University Architect at Duke University, Durham, N.C., tells BD+C’s Robert Cassidy about the school’s construction plans and sustainability efforts, how to land work at Duke, and why he’s proceeding with caution when it comes to BIM.
