The John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been voted the 2017 World Architects U.S. Building of the Year.

The U.S. Building of the Year poll received more than 4,000 votes for nearly 50 Buildings of the Week from 2017. The first-place John W. Olver Design Building won by a large margin, with about 30% of the total votes.  Read about it here

The Design Building is the largest cross laminated timber (CLT) academic building in the US and is the first LEED Platinum Certified building on the Amherst campus.

Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) announced on Saturday a shortlist of design proposals for its new ecological power plant in Kaohsiung and invited the public to vote for their favorite work on the project website. Five firms will move forward in the design competition and present full design ideas on how the current power plant can best change its current electricity generation systems in accordance with the government’s policies to eliminate nuclear power and eventually generate 20 percent of the country’s electricity through green energy by 2025.  Read more here

Source: Wall Street Journal

Aspirational plays for iconic status can miss the mark. The standout buildings completed over the past 12 months were instead notable for focusing on concrete needs, not dazzling form. Long-term planning and a smart use of innovation served a purpose.

In March, the 2017 Timber Innovation Act was introduced in Congress to support research into using wood for structures over 85 feet tall. Considerable research already shows how composites such as cross-laminated and glue-laminated timber can be more sustainable, fire resistant, lightweight and seismically viable than concrete or steel. The new John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, designed by Boston-based Leers Weinzapfel Associates, is a forerunner. At only four stories, it’s no timber skyscraper, but it is the first cross-laminated timber academic building in the country, housing the university’s architecture, landscape and building technology departments.

… its interiors radiate with the saturated warmth long associated with woodwork. Here it’s engineered wood used in exposed beams, columns, braces, ceilings—even the stairwells and elevator shafts. For the flooring, an innovative wood and concrete composite developed right on campus is used here for the first time. The Design Building is helping to lay the foundations for the smart use of mass timber in ways that will soon enrich, and transform, our built environment.

Read the full article here

For the third year in a row, Leers Weinzapfel Associates has been recognized by ARCHITECT Magazine as one of the Top 50 firms for design in the U.S. as part of the 2017 ARCHITECT 50 list. The annual ARCHITECT 50 program ranks the best architecture firms in the U.S. based on design excellence, sustainability, and business performance.

This year Leers Weinzapfel Associates was ranked 33rd Overall, 26th in Business, and 26th in Sustainability.  To view the full list, click here

The recently completed Design Building at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the first Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) academic building in the United States and the largest installation of wood concrete composites in North America.  Read more about the project here.

An upcoming exhibition at the National Building Museum aims to dispel myths about the use of structural wood in construction.

Steel and reinforced concrete have long been the predominant construction materials for commercial buildings worldwide, but in the past five years, mass timber construction has rapidly gained viability as an alternative. Engineered wood products, which include cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail-laminated timber, and glue-laminated (glulam) structural members, have attracted interest for their high strength-to-weight ratios, comparatively lower embodied energy, and innate ability to sequester carbon.

In September, mass-timber construction will become the centerpiece of “Timber City,” an exhibition at the National Building Museum (NBM), in Washington, D.C., that will look at the evolving industry and its role in improving rural manufacturing communities and its benefit to urban centers. The Design Building at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will be featured in the exhibit.

Watch a cli

Timber City” will run from Sept. 17, 2016, to May 21, 2017, at the National Building Museum.

Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel took a few minutes to sit down with Architectural Review during their trip to London to celebrate International Women’s Month this past March. They share their experience in designing attractive infrastructure facilities and energy plants, and advocate for more overlap between infrastructure projects and the public realm.  Watch the full interview here.

The Women in Architecture Awards celebrate great female architects and look to create role models for young women in practice.

Read the full article here:

ARCHITECT Magazine has featured the Design Building at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, highlighting its innovative zipper truss, in the March 2017 issue.

The Design Building is currently the first and largest mass-timber academic structure on the East Coast, and became the first project to use several cutting-edge building technologies, including a “zipper truss” and a composite floor system developed by the school’s faculty. It is also  one of only two buildings in the U.S. to use timber for every major structural system.

In keeping with the building’s pedagogical mission, all its structural systems are exposed: the glue-laminated post-and-beam structure, CLT shear wall cores, composite concrete-and-CLT floor plates, and the custom steel-and-glulam zipper trusses, named for the way they converge multiple structural members to a single point.  Read the full article here

Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel have been jointly shortlisted for Architectural Review’s Women in Architecture, 2017 Architect of the Year Award. This annual award recognizes excellence in design with an emphasis on a built project completed in 2016.

Christine Murray, founder of the Women in Architecture Awards and editor-in-chief of The Architectural Review and The Architects’ Journal, said about the shortlists:

“These women architects are creating some of the most innovative and creative design work in the world today. It is a privilege to celebrate work from a broad range of countries – showing how great design touches all our lives.”

Leers and Weinzapfel were recognized for their work on the Ohio State University East Regional Chilled Water Plant. Of the project, the jury noted “The project is an elegant approach to a functional building which uses perforated aluminium panels to achieve a refined aesthetic”.

The winners of the prestigious awards will be announced at the AJ/AR Women in Architecture Luncheon at Claridge’s on 3 March.

To read more about the shortlist and awards program, click here