For the past six years, architecture/engineering firm Leo A Daly has been designing sites for remote field stations that are collecting environmental data across the country on behalf of the National Ecological Observatory Network, an independent nonprofit entity funded by the National Science Foundation.
Over its 30-year lifespan, NEON’s 106 aquatic and terrestrial sites will track climate conditions, land-use changes, and data on invasive species. The sites have been selected to represent different regions of vegetation, landforms, climate, and ecosystem performance.
One difficult design problem, according to Elizabeth Hunter, the firm’s Project Manager for NEON, has been complying with a mandate of near-zero ecological disturbance. “NEON’s engineers wanted to build [the field stations] with a hovercraft and not disturb anything,” she says, only half jokingly. Leo A Daly, which has designed structures for national parks, had to find ways to meet NEON’s demands using equipment no bigger nor more intrusive than a small skid steer loader.
Case in point: the instrument hut and tower for a site called Dead Lake, near Demopolis, Ala. The site is located close to the Black Warrior River and is susceptible to flooding. NEON has strict criteria about enclosing its instruments within a continuous foundation, so the design team called for the tower to be built on a foundation supported by piers five feet off the ground that allow floodwaters to pass through. The station went live in 2013.
The sites are mostly self sufficient, but have to be accessible by scientists, who visit the sites periodically to collect data and recalibrate the equipment. At Dead Lake, an elevated metal boardwalk wiggles its way around trees and other obstructions from the site to a staging area a couple of hundred feet away.
Hunter says the buildout of 60 towers and 46 aquatic sites—including 40 relocatable structures—should be completed by 2017. The towers range in height from 26 to 300 feet and take two to six months to build. The sites cost anywhere from under $500,000 to more than $1 million each.
Read about more innovations from BD+C's 2014 Great Solutions Report
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Gensler, HOK, HDR among the nation's leading reconstruction design firms, according to BD+C's Giants 300 report
A ranking of the Top 100 Reconstruction Design Firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants
| Aug 11, 2010
Gensler, Arup, HOK among the largest office sector design firms
A ranking of the Top 100 Office Design firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants
| Aug 11, 2010
Callison strengthens retail design presence with RYA acquisition
Callison LLC on June 1 acquired RYA Design Consultancy, a Dallas-based retail architecture and design firm with offices in New York City. The new “Callison RYA Studio” will merge staff and clients into Callison ’s existing retail practice at their Dallas and New York offices.
| Aug 11, 2010
Prism-shaped design unveiled for five-star hotel in Saudi Arabia
Goettsch Partners has been commissioned by Saudi Oger Ltd. to design a new five-star, 214-key business hotel in the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. As a design-build assignment, Saudi Oger is serving as the contractor, selected by developer Rayadah Investment Company. The project is sited on Parcel 1.08, one of the first 10 parcels currently under development in the massive new master-planned district.
| Aug 11, 2010
Construction Specifications Institute to end support of MasterFormat 95 on December 31, 2009
The Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) announced that the organization will cease to license and support MasterFormat 95 as of December 31, 2009. The CSI Board of Directors voted to stop licensing and supporting MasterFormat 95 during its June 16, 2009, meeting at the CSI Annual Convention in Indianapolis.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gensler among eight teams named finalists in 'classroom of the future' design competition
Eight teams were recognized today as finalists of the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom. Finalists submitted designs ranging from an outdoor classroom for children in inner-city Chicago, learning spaces for the children of salt pan workers in India, safe spaces for youth in Bogota, Colombia and a bamboo classroom in the Himalayan mountains.
| Aug 11, 2010
F&S Partners merges with SmithGroup
F&S Partners, a Dallas architecture firm specializing in the design of educational, recreational, and religious projects, has merged with SmithGroup, a top 10 U.S. architecture/engineering firm. The 40-person office in Dallas will carry the name SmithGroup/F&S.
