We are honored to receive the 2021 Mayor Thomas M. Menino Legacy Award for the Richard and Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center. The Mayor Thomas M. Menino Legacy Award celebrates projects that are transformative, catalytic, embrace the community, create partnerships, and revitalize the best of the past to make something good for the future.
We are proud supporters of the AIA 2030 Commitment. See how we’ve worked to get to net zero with our Anonymous Hall project at Dartmouth College, transforming this 1960s library into the north campus social center.
The John W Olver Design Building at UMass Amherst was featured in the 2021 Mass Timber Design Manual in the Mass Timber and Sustainability section. The manual was also featured in Architect’s Newspaper. It’s an excellent resource from WoodWorks and includes a Forward by LWA Principal Tom Chung.
“The college asked our advice about incorporating two vacant buildings on the site for the initiative. Our assessment determined that one, a lab building, should be demolished, and the former Medical School Library should be transformed and expanded as a gateway and social center for the north quad. With its high-tech, efficient curtain wall; solar canopy; and high R-value walls, carbon savings exceed all expectations, and design models show the project energy use approaches net-zero” explained Leers Weinzapfel principal-in-charge Josiah Stevenson
Anonymous Hall is the new name for Dartmouth College’s former Dana Biomedical Library, which was stripped down to its steel-and-concrete frame and transformed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates into a sleek four-story building wrapped in terra cotta and glass. The architects answered a few questions about the building, whose name recognizes the many generous alumni who have given back to the school over the years. Read More.
“Mass Timber is changing how construction is done,” says Tom Chung, a principal at Leers Weinzapfel Associates. “Construction is completed more quickly, there is much less labor needed, it’s quieter, and there is significantly less construction waste.” Mass Timber Construction is appealing to advocates of sustainability. By using wood instead of steel or concrete, a project leaves a much lighter carbon footprint. Read more.
Tom Chung, one of Leers Weinzapfel’s principals, said that the firm is bullish on mass timber for its many obvious, pragmatic advantages: it’s a renewable resource, has a less carbon-intensive manufacturing process than concrete or steel, and can be locally sourced across much of the country. But for Andrea Leers, cofounding principal, the material’s advantages go beyond economic or even ecological considerations. “The contentment that comes from being in a wood environment is a huge incentive,” she said. “The smell of the wood, the feel of it, the appreciation of it is something rooted in human experience. Everybody knows wood. Everybody’s touched trees. It’s very immediate.” Read More.
Ashley Rao is a senior associate at Leers Weinzapfel Associates. She was project manager for Adohi Hall at the University of Arkansas, the largest completed mass timber project in the US. A passionate advocate for sustainable design (and good eating), Ashley relishes new challenges and is eager to share what she has learned. Read more.
We take great pride in the diversity of our practice. Leers Weinzapfel Associates is a majority women-owned firm, created in 1981 by founding principals Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel and later joined by Principals Josiah Stevenson and Tom Chung. With architectural staff from around the world, there is a more vibrant interchange of ideas with an infusion of diverse viewpoints and fluidity of approaches.
We support woman and the supporters of woman!
Named for alumni and friends who have quietly supported the college over two centuries, the $28 million project reuses and adds to vacant 1960s library in the siloed north campus quad, transforming it into an administrative and social center for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a communal hub for the area. Part of a wider campus renewal plan, metrics show the project is close to net zero energy use. Read more.