Williams College’s Davis Center has been honored by Engineering News Record (ENR) as a recipient of the 2024 Award of Merit in its annual Regional Best Project Awards. It received the award in the Higher Education/Research category for the New England region.

The Davis Center, the College’s center for the advancement of institutional diversity, equity and inclusion, connects multiple buildings on campus and transformed existing facilities to better reflect the Center’s mission and serve current and future academic and cultural needs. Through a major new addition and comprehensive energy retrofit renovations to the 19^th century Rice and Jenness Houses, the new Davis Center provides fully accessible resources and community spaces for students and faculty.

Utilizing mass timber and engineered wood hybrid materials, the all-electric project removed fossil fuel-based heating systems and was built to rigorous environmental standards to support the College’s commitment to sustainability. It is targeting Petal Certification under the ILFI Living Building Challenge.

Project teams recognized by ENR’s panel of judges were evaluated on their ability to overcome challenges, contribute to industry innovation and benefit the community, as well as overall excellence in design, construction and safety execution.

Learn more about the project Davis Center.

View the full list of ENR New England’s 2024 honorees here.

Leers Weinzapfel Associates took an office trip to Exeter New Hampshire to visit one the Philips Exeter Library by Louis Kahn and also visit LWA’s Astronomical Observatory. We got to explore and learn about each of the projects.

Leers Weinzapfel Associates Makes the Architizer A+ List: The 220 Best Architecture and Design Firms Worldwide in 2024. This list comprises of all winners of the Architizer A+ Awards.

“The A+List forms a comprehensive guide to the world’s best architecture firms”

– Architizer A+ Awards

This year, Harvard University District Energy Facility was the Jury Winner in the Factories and Warehouses category. The District Energy Facility sets the stage for a state-of-the-art, cost effective, and sustainable utility generation and distribution system for Harvard’s Allston campus that also makes a significant contribution to its urban design.

View the A+ list: https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/architecture-and-design-firms-to-watch-in-2025/

Anonymous Hall, Dartmouth College has received the 2024 AIA Education Facility Design Merit Award.

“As education continues to evolve, we must evaluate and measure our successes, and have an arena in which to test ideas. The Education Facility Design Award provides an opportunity to engage in critical evaluation and experimentation, not as an end in itself, but in the context of our clients and their needs.”

-The American Institute of Architects

Named for alumni and friends who have quietly supported the college over two centuries, Anonymous Hall reuses and adds to a vacant 1960s library in the heart of the medical school quad, transforming it into a vibrant administrative and social center for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a communal hub for the north campus.

See the award page here: https://www.aia.org/design-excellence/award-winners/dartmouth-college-anonymous-hall 

Leers Weinzapfel Associates Principal Tom Chung, FAIA wrote Building Design + Construction’s recent article “3 Mass Timber Architecture Innovations”.  This feature explores John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Adohi Hall at University of Arkansas and the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science Building at Cornell University.

“Looking back at the past 10 years in mass timber design—since our firm’s first mass timber building, the John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst—it is evident that as a building material mass timber and especially cross laminated timber (CLT) has come a long way. Designed in 2014 and completed in 2017, our 87,500-sf Design Building was one of the first large-scale mass timber buildings in the U.S. It demonstrated the possibilities of mass timber with CLT gravity and lateral systems and a cutting-edge concrete-CLT composite floor system.” – Tom Chung as quoted in Building Design + Construction

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Tom Chung, Maryam M Karimé, Su Theng Poon, and Andy Wen presented last month on Recent Mass Timber Explorations at SGH’s Timber+ Forum. The LWA team discussed project examples, Conservation Legacy Center for the National Museum of Forest Service History and the Environmental Education Building at Auburn University.

Adohi Hall, University of Arkansas was Shortlisted in the 2024 World Architecture News Americas Awards in the Residential category.

Adohi Hall, a 708-bed student housing complex at the University of Arkansas, demonstrates a pioneering use of cross-laminated timber and an innovative approach to live-learn communities, with embedded arts and academic spaces.

Completed in August 2019, it was the largest mass timber building upon its completion and the first large-scale mass timber university housing in the US, supporting the economic potential of Arkansas’ burgeoning timber industry.

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Adohi Hall at University of Arkansas has won an Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture for a New Building for the 2024 SCUP’s Excellence Awards Program!

“SCUP Excellence Award honors achievement in strategic, integrated planning that results in exemplary buildings and grounds, institutional success, and careers that inspire.This award is a juried competition open to professional service providers and institutions that have prepared designs or plans for two-year and four-year colleges, universities, academic medical and research centers, and public or private institutions.”

– SCUP’s Excellence Awards Program

LWA Layla Ni & Maryam Karime, Associate AIA, have been nominated for the METROPOLIS’s prestigious Arch30 program, an initiative that recognizes the top 30 young architects. Congratulations on this significant recognition for both of our amazing architects!

“Nominees will convene for an exclusive workshop led by METROPOLIS’s Editor in Chief, Avinash Rajagopal, Editor at Large, Verda Alexander, and EVP and Design Futurist, AJ Paron, focused on professional development and networking. Following the program, enjoy a delightful cocktail reception. This is your chance to forge connections with fellow architects, engage with vendors, and even stand a chance to win exciting door prizes.” – METROPOLIS Arch30

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We welcome tenure-track faculty at accredited architecture schools throughout the U.S. to apply for an intensive 3-day workshop geared towards equipping faculty interested in teaching Mass Timber design. 

The objectives of the workshop is to provide faculty in architecture schools throughout the country, holistic understanding about mass timber (what it is, its life-cycle components, design and engineering possibilities, benefits and challenges, industry connections, etc.) to enhance academic teaching in mass timber that is grounded in practice and facilitates creative explorations of design possibilities. The workshop is sponsored by the Softwood Lumber Board and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. 

As the workshop balances practice and academia, the collaboration of Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects (LWA) and Auburn University’s Mass Timber Collaborative brings together architecture, forestry, engineering, and construction spanning both. 

LWA is an internationally recognized architecture firm with over a hundred design awards and a recipient of the national AIA’s Firm Award, the highest honor bestowed on a firm by the AIA. LWA’s two signature mass timber buildings, John W. Olver Design Building at UMass Amherst (among the first and most advanced large scale academic CLT buildings in the US and national AIA Honor Award and Education Design Award Winner) and Adohi Hall at the University of Arkansas (the largest CLT building in the US at the time of completion in 2019 and national AIA Housing Design Award Winner) are nationally recognized as pioneering examples of mass timber architecture. 

Auburn University Mass Timber Collaborative, a recipient of the 2023 USDA Wood Innovations Grant, brings together the mass timber research and education among Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC), College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment (CFWE), and Samuel Ginn College of Engineering (SGCE). 

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