Recreation centers used to be highly programmed places. Pools, gyms, basketball courts, tennis courts, handball courts, playgrounds, ball fields, changing rooms, and offices—all defined spaces for specific activities. More meant more. The good ones were regularly maintained and became community hubs. The not-so-good ones were easy to spot because of their shabbiness, usually because of the cost of maintaining “more.”
More »Hanbury Helps Higher Ed Clients Plan for Resilience
The call to climate action has been sonorous to say the least, but sometimes doesn’t penetrate as deeply into the client ideation process as it should. Norfolk-based Hanbury created a digital series called “Resilience in Practice” this year on connecting values with action. What began as a multi-month Hanbury study about campus planning became a frank Zoom dialogue between the firm and its higher education clients about the different physical scales of resilience, space design, and focusing on the end user’s quality of life.
More »Virginia Creates Strategy for Coastal Resilience
When Hurricane Ida ravaged Louisiana’s coastline last month on the 16th anniversary of Katrina’s carnage, everyone wondered if the region’s levies and infrastructure improvements would make a difference. While the storm surges were managed better this time around, the economic damage for households and businesses will still have a deleterious effect on an already challenging situation for tens of thousands of Louisianans.
More »SOM’s New Army Museum Speaks to Diverse Audiences in a Singular Way
There are some 90 museums in the United States and abroad covering individual aspects of the American Army, from its airborne and artillery divisions to general defense to the personal history of General George Patton, himself. The eighth to open in Virginia alone is the most comprehensive among them in terms of its permanent collection and scope, and its exhibitions program is varied to accommodate a variety of audiences. Yet, the new home for the National Museum of the United States Army, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and sitting at the head of 84 acres of land at Fort Belvoir, is entirely singular in its expression.
More »Reader & Swartz Design a School for Today that Anchors Ashburn’s Tomorrow
Loudoun County has changed a lot in the last two decades. Horses and farms still define its idyll for city slickers, but an encroaching exurbia has raised the alarm for many residents (and their horses), some of which speak only of inevitabilities. Driving home recently from visiting the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies (LSAS) in Ashburn, designed by Reader & Swartz, I passed no fewer than 13 Teslas and one mauve Hummer, and I began considering what’s inevitable about the place. Thinking about the school, it seems possible that what’s new and old about Loudoun County might even prosper together under certain economic circumstances. But, what about the social infrastructure that makes it a real place?
More »WM+P’s Project Legacy
William McDonough + Partners’ (WM+P) Project Legacy at Universidad EAN in Bogotà, Colombia is designed to illustrate the potential of Cradle to Cradle® and the circular economy. The team designed this school to be like a living, breathing organism, native to and a part of its environment — its colorful façade captures the exuberance inherent in Colombian culture.
More »At the Intersection of this Moment and the Future: Innovation + Flexibility at Flint Hill School
Bowie Gridley’s design of the new Peterson Middle School at Flint Hill School (FHS), a progressive independent school with 1,000 students located in Northern Virginia, embodies innovation, flexibility, and both the social/emotional and physical wellness needs of middle school students. With its spaces for creativity and experimentation and its incorporation of technology, it meets the school’s cutting-edge educational pedagogy with 21st century design and addresses the need for flexibility in a post-COVID world.
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