The Smile Architects - Dentists in Huntersville, NC

HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (PRWEB) December 09, 2020

The team at The Smile Architects in Huntersville, NC is excited to announce the release of their new hybrid-responsive website: https://www.smilearchitects.com. Just as the practice prides itself on building beautiful smiles, Chris Meletiou, DDS and Jim Meletiou, DDS have been hard at work building a better website for their patients.

As Dr. Chris Meletiou explains, "My brother and I are very excited to provide our new and existing patients an easy to navigate website and app. This will allow our patients the flexibility to schedule and contact us with their dental needs quickly and efficiently. The new interactive website and app are ever-changing to meet our patients needs now and into the future. Please take a moment to see how they have evolved and how our new website and app can benefit you."

The Smile Architects has been serving the Huntersville community since the early 1980s. The current head dentists are brothers with a combined over 60 years of knowledge and experience between them. Providing exceptional dental care is the brothers mission and the new website facilitates this by allowing patients to access the information they need and connect with the practice more easily.

On the new Smile Architects website, patients will find intuitive navigation and improved usability. With a hybrid-responsive design, the site renders equally well on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Whether patients are at home, at work, or on-the-go, theyll find a website that is easy to read and navigate, allowing them to find exactly what they need when they need it.

Above all else, the brothers goal with the new website is to create a resource for their patients. Rather than simply using the site as a marketing tool, Smile Architects provides information about insurance, dental conditions, procedures, and aftercare instructions. Patients can email their doctor, request an appointment online, and read updates from the practice on their blog.

In addition to working on the new website, the Smile Architects team has been busy implementing new protocols to protect patients and staff from COVID-19. The practice is following all guidelines from the American Dental Association, Centers for Disease Control, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration, including screening all patients prior to their appointments, offering hand sanitizer for patient use, and adjusting schedules to allow for social distancing between patients.

About Chris Meletiou, DDS

Dr. Chris Meletiou earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Iowa and completed a hospital residency program at the university upon graduation. He has been practicing in Huntersville, NC since 1991, with a focus on complete family dental care including Invisalign orthodontics, restoration of implants, and aesthetic dentistry.

About Jim Meletiou, DDS

Dr. Jim Meletiou received a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Iowa and worked as an instructor in the universitys Department of Oral Diagnosis and Radiology. Before joining his brother at The Smile Architects, Dr. Jim practiced in Wisconsin. He has advanced training in the restoration of dental implants and aesthetic dentistry.

About The Smile Architects

The Smile Architects provides comprehensive dental care to patients in Huntersville, NC. Services include preventive care, cosmetic dentistry, restorative dentistry, root canals, periodontics, sleep apnea treatment, and Invisalign orthodontics. To learn more or request an appointment, visit the new website at https://www.smilearchitects.com, schedule a visit to the office at 131 Marguerite Lane, Huntersville, NC 28078, or call 704-875-1621.

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The Smile Architects of Huntersville, NC Announces New Responsive Website - PR Web

Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects have both withdrawn from Architects Declare, an organization seeking to raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergency.Photo Hufton+Crow

Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) have left Architects Declare, a network of architecture practices seeking to raise awareness about climate change and loss of biodiversity.

As per Dezeen, the decision to exit Architects Declare was made after signatories, such as Foster + Partners and ZHA, were criticized for designing airports and for being involved in the aviation sector. Last week, Architects Declare told Dezeen that high-profilearchitects are clearly contravening climate pledges.

Foster + Partners has withdrawn from Architects Declare because, since our founding in 1967, we have pioneered a green agenda and believe that aviation, like any other sector, needs the most sustainable infrastructure to fulfil its purpose, said Norman Foster, studio founder,in a statement issued to Dezeen.

Agriculture and aviation are not going to go away and they will both need the most sustainable buildings to serve them together with the architects who can most responsibly design them, the statement said.

Architects Declare released a statement on Foster + Partners saying, We are disappointed that Foster + Partners have chosen to withdraw from the declarations and we would welcome a conversation with them on the points raised. We recognize that addressing the climate and biodiversity emergencies challenges current practice and business models for us all, not least around the expansion of aviation. We believe that what is needed is system change and that can only come about through collective action. Architects Declare is not a protest movement but a collaborative support network to innovate positive transformation. Our movement is global.

ZHA exited the group asserting that Architects Declare is setting the profession up for failure.

Architects Declares steering group has unilaterally decided on its own precise and absolute interpretation of the coalitions commitments, ZHA said in a statement to Architects Journal. By doing so, we believe they are setting the profession up for failure. Redefining these commitments without engagement undermines the coalition and trust. We saw Architects Declare as a broad Church to raise consciousness on the issues; enabling architectural practices of all sizes to build a coalition for change and help each other find solutions. We need to be progressive, but we see no advantage in positioning the profession to fail. In fact, it would be a historic mistake.

In response, Architects Declare said, Patrik Schumacher of ZHA (a signature practice to Architects Declare) had asserted that we need to allow prosperity and progress to continue and that will also bring the resources to overcome [the climate crisis] through investment in science and new technologies. That must be built on continuous growth. He also warned against those voices who are too quick to demand radical changes. We believe these statements are fundamentally in conflict with the Architects Declare commitment to advocate for faster change in our industry towards regenerative practices. We also believe these statements are scientifically flawed and decades out of date in terms of informed intellectual thought. Click here to read the full statement.

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Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid withdraw from Architects Declare - The Construction Specifier

Bjarke Ingels, Danish founder of the architectural practice BIG (short for Bjarke Ingels Group), bridles at the suggestion that he is megalomaniac. I made a mistake at the dawn of time when I named my office BIG, he tells me, speaking from the converted car ferry in the port of Copenhagen that is one of his homes. It felt sweet when we started off in Denmark. Now it means we always get re-interpreted as megalomaniacs.

Well yes, maybe, but his new book, Formgiving: An Architectural Future History, does place the work of his practice in the context of a timeline of the creation of absolutely everything that goes back via the evolution of life to the big bang. It also introduces the concept of Masterplanet, whereby the Earth and its climate would be put to rights by the sort of plans that architects sometimes prepare for neighbourhoods and large-scale development proposals. The magic of form the architectural technique whereby BIG can, for example, give a twisting shape to an art gallery outside Oslo or a tower in Vancouver is in this view continuous with problem-solving for a whole planet.

Its partly a guy thing. Ingels, 46, doesnt seem troubled by the striking gendering of Masterplanet. The practices website address is Big.dk, which, however droll it might have seemed 15 years ago, has surely outlived its welcome. But he has his answers to the accusations of megalomania: You can dismiss the desire to deal with a very important issue or you should believe that youre going to intervene for the better.

Its fair to say that Ingels is a can-do sort of person. BIG is now big, with more than 550 employees in its offices in Copenhagen, New York, London and Barcelona. He has made his name with monuments for the Instagram age CopenHill, the Copenhagen power plant that is also a ski slope; or West 57th, his courtscraper in Manhattan a giant off-kilter pyramid punctured by a garden courtyard. He has designed (with Thomas Heatherwick) headquarters for the mighty Google, now rising in London and in Silicon Valley.

In BIGs world you can have it all. Yes is more, to quote the title of one of his earlier books. Opposites can be reconciled into what Ingels calls oxymorons or bigamy. You can have a power plant and a ski slope. The courtscraper, says the official blurb, combines the density of the American skyscraper with the communal space of the European courtyard. He speaks of pragmatic utopianism and hedonistic sustainability, which means you can save the planet and still have a good time. The Dryline, his plan for combining flood defences for lower Manhattan with public parks, encapsulates the idea.

Ingels cites as inspiration The Rational Optimist (2010) by Matt Ridley, the British viscount, self-described climate lukewarmer and former chairman of Northern Rock bank. I recognise a lot of the vibe, says Ingels of Ridleys book. He makes the claim that optimism is not a question of naivety. Its empirical. You can see that things tend to evolve in a good way. And this is part of the thesis of Formgiving. There is an ever-increasing ability to collaborate, of doing better and better. Where others get nervous about such things as artificial intelligence and the replacement of crafts by robots, Ingels gets excited.

In the world of architecture, Ingels presents a challenge. Hes prolific, hes rich. He turns the cherished tropes and dreams of other architects into smash hits. He makes the visionary physical. For the Burning Man festival he designed a structure in the shape of a giant orb. His Oceanix project proposes a floating city. His Google Bay View building puts a multiplicity of human life under a great oversailing roof. All seem to owe something to visionary architects of the past respectively to the 18th-century French revolutionary tienne-Louis Boulle, to the 1960s Japanese metabolist group, to the 20th-century American Buckminster Fuller.

Most obviously he has learned from his former employer Rem Koolhaas, with whom he shares a love of crashing together seemingly incongruous uses and forms a WTF fondness for puncturing piety and pomposity, an attitude that says lets embrace the modern world for all it is, in all its extremes of beauty and ugliness. Like Koolhaas, Ingels has a prodigious publishing habit: Formgiving is the last of a trilogy.

Koolhaas, however, comes with a certain amount of existential angst, which Ingels discards, which doubtless makes him more attractive to clients. He more generally dispenses with the difficulties and complexities and sometimes the social issues over which other architects agonise. He rinses out the problematic. Instead, he offers his oxymoron, which makes complexity and contradiction into a charmingly consumable package. Which raises a question: are the angst and scruples of other architects actually important, or should we just accept Ingelss invitation to lie back and enjoy the ride?

This is partly about detail. His projects tend to come with loud clunks, where his ambitions of his ideas and shapes are imperfectly reconciled. In those of his works that I have seen, there is often a lack of joy in the way cladding panels and Planar glazing enable the transition from computer screen to physical reality. At the 8 House, an early housing project on the outskirts of Copenhagen, many of its residents have furnished their flats and terraces from Ikea: combined with BIGs construction they conjure a dizzying feeling of just-stuck-togetherness, of coalitions of convenience between processed sheet materials.

Its also about politics. In January, Ingels met Brazils forest-wrecking, racist and homophobic president Jair Bolsonaro, in order to discuss a plan (as the countrys tourism minister put it) to change the face of tourism in Brazil. For this, Ingels was accused by a leading architecture critic of lacking a moral compass, and the controversy may have contributed to office space company WeWorks decision soon afterwards to cease employing Ingels as their chief architect. Id like to raise this with him, but the publicists for his book rule it out: there is no direct link to Formgiving with regard to politics, they say beforehand; please strike the question from the interview. Ingels, however, has previously expressed himself on the subject: criticisms of his Bolsonaro visit, he said, were an oversimplification of a complex world.

He also pushes back at critiques of detail. He cites his recent museum for the Audemars Piguet watch company, a grass-roofed spiral in the Swiss Jura. Its hard to complain about detail with that, he says. The 8 House was a very inexpensive project. It was finished in the middle of the biggest financial crisis in my lifetime. Every cost that could be reduced was reduced.

Its probably clear that Im what Lord Ridley might call a BIG-lukewarmer. I believe that much gets lost in Ingelss blithe renunciation of the complex and the particular. But those of us who would curl our lips and wrinkle our noses should answer his challenge. A project such as CopenHill makes a powerful and direct appeal to almost all the non-professionals who see it, as the Dryline in New York probably will. What can more fastidious beings offer to match them?

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Bjarke Ingels: the BIG-time architect with designs on the entire planet - The Guardian

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CAMH Research Centre, by KPMB with TreanorHL - Canadian Architect Award of Excellence winner.

Winners have been announced for the 53rd annual Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence. The awards are considered the highest recognition for Canadian architects and projects currently in the design and construction phases. This year 132 entries were submitted and reviewed by the jury.

The awards program shared that the entries themselves "show that Canadian architects are still amply producing innovative designs that are sensitive to their physical, social and environmental contexts."

View this year's winners in all five categories and select project images below.

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARDS OF MERIT

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECTPHOTO AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECTPHOTO AWARDS OF MERIT

Award-winning projects will be featured in the December issue of Canadian Architect. To learn more about the winners and their projects click here.

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The annual Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence highlights its 2020 winners - Archinect

Climate action group ACAN has called on architects at Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects to take "meaningful action outside of your employment" amid an escalating row over airport projects.

The body condemned the two studios for refusing to stop designing airports and urged staff to take action over an issue that is dividing the profession.

"If you work for Foster + Partners, ZHA or indeed any practice, please know that you are welcome to join our movement and take meaningful action outside of your employment," said Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) in a statement on its website.

"It is vital we speak truth to power and take action together."

Feud over airport projects escalates

ACAN's statement, posted yesterday, comes amid an increasingly acrimonious row over whether working on new airport projects is compatible with decarbonisation goals.

It came after the two London architects resigned from Architects Declare, another climate action group, following criticisms of the practices' ongoing work in the aviation sector.

Architecture writer Christine Murray, editor of The Developer, asked why ACAN and Architects Declare were picking a fight over aviation, which accounts for around three per cent of global carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, new construction and existing buildings are responsible for around 40 per cent of atmospheric carbon, Murray pointed out on Twitter.

Squabble has "divided the profession into good guys and bad guys"

"Instead, for example, could you write angry letters to all the practices specifying coal-fired bricks, concrete and stainless steel in, like, every single house-extension and new house in the whole country?" Murray tweeted.

"Instead, you've got architects sitting back congratulating themselves for not designing airports they were never going to be asked to design, while most of the country (and the newspapers) now think designing airports is the problem."

"If someone can explain what's been gained by this, I am seriously all ears," Murray wrote. "But you didn't stop the airport. You've just divided the profession into good guys and bad guys."

Architects Declare "disappointed" with Foster + Partners' decision to leave climate action group

However, ACAN said Foster + Partners had "made it clear that continuing to enable aviation expansion is more important to them than being part of a collective industry effort to address the largest crisis of our time."

"They have signalled very clearly that tackling the climate crisis is not their priority, especially when doing so would conflict with their business model."

"Statements from both of these practices are rooted in obsolete, hubristic ideologies which bear much responsibility for our failure to respect planetary boundaries," added the network, which this summer urged members to send paper aeroplanes to Foster + Partners in protest against its airport projects.

The row coincided with the UK government's announcement of plans to cut carbon emissions by 68 per cent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The plan does not include international aviation or shipping emissions.

Founding signatories resign from Architects Declare

Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, the UK's largest and third-largest architecture firms, were founding signatories of the Architects Declare movement, which advocates a shift to sustainable construction to help avert climate and biodiversity breakdown.

However, both resigned from the network this week after ongoing criticism of their continued involvement in new airport projects.

Foster + Partners withdraws from Architects Declare climate change group

In its resignation statement, Foster + Partners said it was committed to sustainability but felt that aviation was vital to tackling climate change.

"We believe that the hallmark of our age, and the future of our globally connected world, is mobility," said Norman Foster, founder of Foster + Partners.

"Only by internationally coordinated action can we confront the issues of global warming and, indeed, future pandemics," Foster said. "Aviation has a vital role to play in this process and will continue to do so."

A day later, Zaha Hadid Architects resigned citing "a significant difference of opinion with the Architects Declare steering group on how positive change can be delivered."

Photography and drawing are courtesy of Architects Climate Action Network.

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UK architects feud over airport projects as ACAN urges staff to take action - Dezeen

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One of the UKs most famous architects has withdrawn from an environmental coalition in a dispute about the destructive role of aviation in the escalating climate crisis. [...]

The decision follows a row over Foster and Partners work on airports around the world seen by critics as incompatible with tackling the climate and ecological emergency. The Guardian

Airport designs have been key projects in Foster + Partners' portfolio for years, with prominent recent commissions and competition entries in Saudi Arabia, Marseille, Chicago, Mexico City, and Beijing.

Following Foster's decision to withdraw from his initial commitment, Architects Declare issued following statement on its website today:

We are disappointed that Foster + Partners has chosen to withdraw from the declarations and we would welcome a conversation with them on the points raised.

We recognise that addressing the climate and biodiversity emergencies challenges current practice and business models for us all, not least around the expansion of aviation. We believe that what is needed is system change and that can only come about through collective action. Architects Declare is not a protest movement but a collaborative support network to innovate positive transformation. Our movement is global. As of today there are 1037 UK practices committed to the declaration and over 6000 companies signed up in 26 countries under the broader banner of Construction Declares.

The debate, and indeed the very definition of sustainability, has evolved considerably as the depth of the crisis we face has become ever clearer. Our declaration represents a positive vision of how our profession can respond to the planetary emergencies. This involves embracing new approaches and being realistic about what can be solved with technology in the next crucial decade.

Were looking forward to working with our signatories to raise the level of ambition in preparation for the critical COP26 climate negotiations next year.

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Foster + Partners withdraws from Architects Declare over aviation dispute - Archinect

Less than three months ahead of the (pushed-back) opening of Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, the first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to examine the ties between architecture and African American and African diaspora communities, seven architects, artists, and designers featured in the forthcoming show have signed a letter demanding that the MoMA remove the name of the late Philip Johnson from all titles and public spaces due to what the letter describes as his widely documented white supremacist views and activities.

In addition to his prolific architectural output, Johnson was a MoMA curator, patron, trustee, subject, and institutional figurehead who had and continues to have posthumously vast associations with the museum.

As the November 27 letter states, the racist, antisemitic worldview held by Johnson makes him an inappropriate namesake within any educational or cultural institution that purports to serve a wide public.

There is a role for Johnsons architectural work in archives and historic preservation, the letter reads. However, naming titles and spaces inevitably suggests that the honoree is a model for curators, administrators, students and others who participate in these institutions.

As of this writing, the letter, which is also addressed to Johnsons alma mater, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and any other public-facing nonprofit in the United States that uses his name for honorific purposes, has been signed by a total of 31 artists, architects, designers, and educators, including, as mentioned, seven of the architects and designers featured in the upcoming MoMA exhibition. Diana Budds at Curbed was the first to report on the letter, which was initiated by and published on the Instagram account of the Johnson Study Group.

Formed this past summer amid the historic Black Lives Matter-led social justice and anti-racism movement, the largely anonymous collective is dedicated to examining Johnsons lasting influence on MoMA and design institutions as a whole while considering his significant and consequential commitment ties to white supremacy.

Along with members of the Johnson Studio Group, signees of the letter include Amale Andraos, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; artist Xaviera Simmons; Alvin Huang, founder and design principal of Synthesis Design + Architecture and associate professor at the USC School of Architecture; Bryan C. Lee Jr., design principal of New Orleans-based Colloqate Design; Jennifer Newsom of Minneapolis-based practice Dream the Combine, and Kate Orff, founding principal of landscape architecture and urban design studio SCAPE.

V. Mitch McEwen, co-founder of Atelier Office and assistant professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture, was among the signees who is also a member of the Johnson Study Group and a featured architect in Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. The other letter-signing architects and designers featured in the exhibition, which runs from February 20 through May 31, are Felecia Davis, Sekou Cooke, Emanuel Admassu, Olalekan Jeyifous, Germane Barnes, and J. Yolande Daniels.

As detailed in the letter, the openly gay, Cleveland-born Johnson used his early tenure at MoMA (he worked in various capacities at the museum from 1932 through 1988 including heading the Department of Architecture and Design from 1932 to 1936 and then again from 1944 to 1954) as a pretense to collaborate with the German Nazi Party, including personally translating propaganda, disseminating Nazi publications, and forming an affiliated fascist party in Louisiana. In his curatorial role, he also omitted the work of Black architects and designers from the collections under his purview. He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in the field of architecture, a legacy that continues to do harm today, the letter explained.

The inaugural Pritzker Prize winners decidedly more-than-flirtatious relationship with fascism has been explored in-depth since his death in 2005, including in Mark Lamsters 2018 book, The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century. His Nazi associations were even the subject of an FBI investigation although he was ultimately never prosecuted.

The letter concludes by calling on all members of MoMA and alumni of Harvard GSD to cease supporting these institutions until Johnsons name is scrubbed from all titles and places. It specifically implores white allies to step up: Organize. Spread the word. Further the impact. We must not only speak of undoing the work of white supremacy, we must call it out by name and uproot it.

AN has reached out to Justin Garrett Moore, executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission and a signee of the letter, and Barry Bergdoll, former Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design (2007-2013) at MoMA and current Meyer Schapiro Professor of art history in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, for further comment and insight.

We have also reached out to the MoMA for comment and will update this article accordingly.

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Architects and designers call on the MoMA to remove Philip Johnson's name - The Architect's Newspaper

When it comes to the playbook for architects who specialize in designing healthcare facilities, COVID-19 came like a wrecking ball. The years-long migration to fewer private offices and more collaborative workspaces? The friendly trend of checking patients in without a desk? The vast multispecialty clinics, with common areas meant for lingering? Gone, gone and gone.

Weve spent so much time over the last decade making waiting rooms cozier, like living rooms, says Jennifer Arbuckle, a Vermont-based partner in E4H Architecture, which specializes in healthcare offices and facilities. Now were trying to make them more spread out.

HVAC issues are top of mind also, as are square-footage conundrums. But each question Should patients wait in their cars? What about those who cant come in alone, like a mom with three kids in tow? What services work in a drive-through? cascades into so many other questions, she says. Right now, everyone is trying to figure it out.

Despite the question marks, experts seem sure that even if a vaccine brings a return to normalcy within months, this pandemic is driving long-lasting design changes.

Making room for technology

The transition to telehealth is the most massive change, says Sheila F. Cahnman, president of JumpGarden Consulting, a healthcare planning and design firm based in Wilmette, Illinois. While that shift had long been underway, the pandemic vaulted adoption rates years ahead of schedule.

Doctors like it. Patients like it. And as long as insurance companies and Medicare continue to cover it, its going to be a permanent part of their practice, she says.

That calls for plenty of small, well-lit offices where providers can offer telehealth in privacy. And because many patients wont have the required technology or broadband at their homes, healthcare facilities will need to make video-equipped rooms available to patients when they come into their offices.

Those will gobble up the square footage now used as open areas, designed to promote more teamwork between doctors, nurse practitioners and other providers. Ive been doing this for 25 years, and weve spent the last 10 or 15 years urging practitioners to share space and collaborate more, says Arbuckle. This [division of space] is a new direction.

Doctors homes are now part of the equation too, as many want to continue working from home more. That brings up all the same issues and considerations that face other remote workers, she says. Do the doctors have the right secure technology at home? Enough broadband? Do they have young kids, which makes it hard to concentrate?

And all tech questions intensify the ongoing effort to develop solutions for balancing the demand for more screen time from doctors without dehumanizing patients. About two-thirds of most visits are spent talking, says Cahnman, who is also a board trustee for the American College of Healthcare Architects. How can you design offices that are tech-friendly yet make patients feel heard?

Underscoring every technology is heightened security. More telemedicine means more potential leaks, just as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issues increased warnings about ransomware attacks.

Solving real-estate riddles

For years, smaller practices have been affiliating with larger health systems, with mega ambulatory centers. These bigger facilities attract a higher volume of patients than a small practice, offering patient-friendly conveniences like plenty of parking and on-site labs and imaging centers.

But higher patient volume means a greater risk of infections, and patients are staying away. That means lower revenues for the facilities.

I dont think these large centers are going away, says Arbuckle. For one thing, theyre space savers. Because many functions, like restrooms and administrative office spaces for things like copiers, can be shared, providers in these larger facilities can save about 500 square feet per provider, as compared with smaller practices. And patients love them because theyre a one-stop shop. But they are going to need many modifications.

Facilities that flex

COVID-19 has shown healthcare executives that even the most massive bureaucratic organizations can move fast when they need to, making them more open to quick changes. Among these? Traditional exam tables that look more like seats but quickly convert to flat surfaces (in case of disease surge) and deeper reception desks to create more distance. Drive-through options, such as those used for COVID-19 testing, will continue, and so will sensor technology, making everything from sinks to doors to light switches completely hands-free.

In a survey of its members shortly after the pandemic began, the American College of Healthcare Architects found that more than 60% of members said theyd been asked to create more bed space. And more than 70% believe that designing for mass patient surges will be an important design element for hospitals.

Thats true for medical offices, too. More offices will have soft spaces, especially in multifunction areas, that can quickly be converted to exam rooms, offices or hoteling space.

Adaptability means designing rooms, usually of similar size, that can have many uses, Cahnman says. That was a trend before, and COVID has accelerated it.

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How Architects and Designers Are Rethinking Healthcare Facilities After COVID-19 - Medical Bag

Revolver has teamed with Architects on an exclusive "Blue Dream Splash" 2LP variant of their new album,For Those That Wish to Exist, limited to 500 worldwide. Order yours before they're gone!

Architects have been a band for over 15 years. In that time, they've put out eight albums, endured numerous lineup changes, and sadly lost their founding guitarist Tom Searle to cancer in 2016. The English metalcore quartet have been through a lot but they've managed to secure longevity in a genre where young acts have historically burned bright and fast. At this point, Architects are lifers with one of the most passionate fan bases in the scene, but they'd be lying if they said they weren't nervous to release their ninth record, For Those That Wish to Exist.

"I feel discouraged from taking creative risks because I find the prospect of being at the wrong end of an internet onslaught difficult," says drummer Dan Searle during a Zoom call with vocalist Sam Carter and Revolver. "People will call me a snowflake and all sorts of things for that, but it's a scary thing to do these days, to take a chance. Because it's almost harder when the band is more established and, if we're being totally transparent, this is our way of making a living. This is how we pay our bills and feed our families, so there's a lot of risk involved."

Searle's anxieties aren't unfounded. The 15-song, hour-long album weaves a sprawling tapestry of French horns, strings, synths, and alien-like vocal processors into their signature breed of stadium-sized metalcore. Compared to their already grandiose 2018 album Holy Hell, everything on this record is even bigger the melodies, the sheer breadth of the arrangements, and the scope of its concept, which navigates the push-pull of hope and nihilism in a world that's falling apart. It's the most ambitious album they've ever made, and although it felt incredibly liberating for them as creators, they know that it's going to be a challenging listen for some metalcore purists.

"There were definitely points when we were writing some things where it was like, 'Well, this moment in this song is gonna really piss some people off,'" Searle says matter-of-factly.

After releasing Holy Hell, their first without Searle's late brother Tom and the final entry in a trilogy of records that boosted their sound from rabid mosh-pit fodder to stadium-tier metal anthems, Architects felt like they had solved that puzzle and they were ready to try something different. While Searle was listening to Kendrick Lamar's 2015 jazz-rap masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly a stark pivot from the gangsta rap of his previous work he began to question why that type of experimentation doesn't really exist in the world of metalcore.

"There's a lot of 'don'ts'," Searle says. "I was just noticing how when you listen to a hip-hop record, there's one thing that's consistent and that's the vocals. But you can go anywhere you want. It can be jazz ballroom, but as long as it has the vocalist on it, it's fine But with us, it felt like, 'Well, it's got to be two distorted guitars, bass, drums, and a guy screaming.' I don't want to sound like I'm throwing shade at the genre because we like the music, but I just felt like, Well, can we rip this up a little bit?"

The result is a record that Searle defines as being influenced by metalcore, but not metalcore itself. He and Carter elaborated on their intentions behind this sonic pivot, the record's topical lyrics, and finding a strange sense of comfort in accepting that we're all going to die and that's alright. Our conversation has been condensed for clarity.

WAS THERE ANYTHING YOU KNEW YOU WANTED TO DO GOING INTO THIS RECORD, EITHER LYRICALLY OR MUSICALLY? SAM CARTER It felt like it would be real easy to carry on where we were going because the last three before this were in a similar sort of vein. So after a while it's like football: if you take the same free kick enough times, more often than not, you know that it's going to go in. So every now and then it's nice to move the ball to feel a little bit out of your comfort zone. And just get that general feeling of excitement that you're doing something that you haven't done before.

DAN SEARLE I think Holy Hell would've been a very different record if Tom had still been here, and it was more in the same vein as the previous two records because we felt like we needed to consolidate and readjust as a band without Tom. And it wasn't the time for us to change the script. Whereas with this album, it just felt time to spread our wings a little bit and challenge ourselves and take it somewhere new.

WHAT ABOUT THIS RECORD FELT THE MOST OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE?CARTER Everything feels a lot grander than before and it feels a lot bigger and it feels like we were in a position to do the ideas justice. Whether it be having French horns on a song and actually having French horns properly recorded or writing with that sort of stuff in mind and knowing that we would be able to do it.

SEARLE When you're a band for a decent amount of time, the sound of your band is to some degree governed by the rules you self-imposed. What you are allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do I think when we were writing it, it was more about asking ourselves whether we liked what we were writing, rather than what other people would think. And to be honest, the way we're talking about this, you people are going to expect it to be a ska record. We didn't throw the baby out of the bathwater, we just stripped back what we were allowing ourselves to do.

THE ALBUM IS CALLED FOR THOSE THAT WISH TO EXIST. TELL ME ABOUT HOW YOU LANDED ON THAT PHRASE IN PARTICULAR.SEARLE I felt like it sounds like something that could be really cryptic, but I actually see it as being really blatantly obvious. The album is generally about: Wow, we're really messing this up but we're all struggling so much to get through the day. How do you save the world when you can't make ends meet or you're struggling with your mental health? We've got a lot of challenges on a personal level, so when we're dealing with the micro it's hard to even address the macro.

So that's what the album is looking at broadly. Like, "What the fuck are we doing?" It's not so much a finger-pointing, "Fuck authority the government are trying to screw us." It's kind of like, "Oh my god, I'm finding it so hard to deal with my own life. How the hell are we gonna get out of this?" So it's that feeling of being overwhelmed and kind of that sense of powerlessness.

CARTER The same with so much of life, I think your overall mood when you go into the record depends what you take from it as well. Because sometimes you really do have that will to fight and talk about what you think is important and you're ready to take the hits from people who will criticize you for it and you're ready to take the hits from putting yourself out there and feeling brave enough to do it. And other times, like Dan says, you got your own shit going on and you don't want to take the punches to try and do something good.

THE RECORD SEEMS TO BE ABOUT GOING BEYOND POLITICIANS, BUT THAT WE AS A CITIZENRY HAVE TO COME TOGETHER TO STOP CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER LOOMING THREATS.SEARLE Yeah, there's stuff about that and there's stuff about the hypocrisy of both political wings. Just trying to look beyond these pre-packaged tribes that we've been sold into. That you are either the left or you are the right, and these are the things that you will believe. You will believe that taxes should be lower for rich people, but you also disagree with gay marriage. It's not like these beliefs that we hold on the left and the right are intrinsic to our human nature and certain personality types.

THE SONG "ANIMALS" CONVEYS THE AGONY OF THE RECORD'S SUBJECT MATTER, AND THERE'S THIS PUSH-PULL IN THE SONG BETWEEN TRYING TO MAINTAIN A POSITIVE OUTLOOK WHILE ALSO ASKING, "SHOULD I JUST PULL THE PIN?" IS THAT THE CENTRAL TENSION YOU GUYS WERE FEELING DURING THE WRITING OF THIS ALBUM?SEARLE Yeah, and there's always someone saying that change is not possible. And that song is also kind of saying, "Man, a lot of this stuff we worry about doesn't matter." There's lots of contradictions on the record. And I kind of started seeing that coming when I was writing the lyrics and just made my peace with it because that's just human nature, isn't it? Having these different aspects of ourselves that contradict. So I kind of let go of the idea of having a consistent belief or message I was driving out and just surrendered to the fact like, "Well, one day I feel like I can save the world and the next day I feel like we're fucked."

It's a difficult balance. Surrendering to that and not just being OK with terrible things happening all over the world. . .I'm not saying it's about giving up or letting go, just tempering your everyday anxieties with a little bit of a surrender. That no matter what, we'll be OK.

IT SEEMS LIKE THE CLOSER, "DYING IS ABSOLUTELY SAFE," CAPTURES THAT SENTIMENT.SEARLE Yeah, exactly. That was like 14 tracks being pummeled by how bad things are and how terrible I feel about them, and then at the end going, "But it's OK because, chill." Obviously, everybody knows, we've been through this with losing Tom, you do get this blunt hit over the head and for me it was a real brutal sense of nihilism. I just felt like nothing matters.

I felt like after Tom died, a sense of like, "Oh, so that was all for nothing." Like his life was for nothing. What does that mean? When does it become something? You get a key at the end that's like, "I did it, I completed it." It's not like that, you think that you're heading somewhere and then you don't. That's quite a harsh realization but after a while and the dust settled, I realized in this moment I'm OK, Tom is OK. Because as far as I'm concerned, he's OK now. I couldn't say that for some time when he was actually suffering.

CARTER That's the thing I relate to quite a lot with the record is the ups and downs of it. That can work with grief as well. With losing Tom, I'd say 50 percent of the time I still live in a very nihilistic world where I don't give a shit about anything. And then the other 50 percent of the world I feel ready to fight the good fight and find the small things in life, whether it be literally seeing a bird fly into my garden. That can make my day sometimes, and some days I look at that and feel nothing. And that's the rollercoaster of life, trying to understand that you could drive yourself crazy.

SEARLE Circling around to the change in sound on some parts of the record and the length of it and being able to explore more territory and more sounds, is that we were kind of able to give a background of us riding those waves of how you feel day to day. That's why "Black Lungs" is more of a fist-in-the-air, let's save the world song. It's more of an anthemic, everyone together, we can do this thing. And then other parts of the record are much more bleak. And perhaps a bit more downbeat and less hopeful, and I feel like because we were able to diversify more, we were able to more honestly express a more complete picture of the human experience.

See the article here:
Death, Hope, Nihilism: How Architects Found Peace on Boundary-Pushing New Album - Revolver Magazine

2020 Best of Design Award for Public & Social Impact: Memorial to Enslaved Laborersat the University of Virginia

Designer: Hweler + Yoon Architecture in collaboration with Mabel O. Wilson, Gregg Bleam Landscape Architect, Frank Dukes, and Eto OtitigbeLocation: Charlottesville, Virginia

The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia (UVA) honors the lives, labor, and perseverance of the community of enslaved African Americans who built UVA and sustained the daily life of faculty, students, and administrators at the university. Nearly a decade in the making, the memorial was designed by Hweler + Yoon in collaboration with historian and designer Dr. Mabel O. Wilson of Studio&, Gregg Bleam Landscape Architect, community facilitator Dr. Frank Dukes, and artist Eto Otitigbe. The sites formal dedication has been postponed because of the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, but in the interim, the memorial has been spontaneously inaugurated as a gathering place for group and individual contemplation during the national protests against racialized violence.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Conference House Park PavilionDesigner: Sage and Coombe Architects

Project Name: FDNY Rescue Company 2Designer: Studio Gang

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Concourse D AnnexDesigner: HOK

Project Name: High Line Section 3, Phase 2Construction manager: Sciame ConstructionArchitect: Diller Scofidio + RenfroLandscape architect: James Corner Field Operations

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Javits Center Medical Station & Temporary HospitalDesigner: di Domenico + Partners

Project Name: MLK1101 Supportive HousingDesigner: Lorcan OHerlihy Architects [LOHA]

MLK1101 Supportive Housing. Designer: Lorcan OHerlihy Architects [LOHA] (Paul Vu)Editors Picks:

Project Name: DineOut NYCDesigner: Rockwell Group

Project Name: Girls Inc. of Memphis, Urban CentersSouth Park & LDTDesigner: archimania

2020 Best of Design Award for Urban Design: The PeninsulaDesigner: WXY architecture + urban design and Body Lawson Associates with Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape ArchitectLocation: The Bronx, New York City

WXY architecture + urban design, in partnership with Body Lawson Associates, was commissioned by the New York City Economic Development Corporation to develop a master plan to transform the 4.75-acre site of the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Center into a mixed-use community with five new buildings containing affordable housing; commercial, retail, and community facilities; light-industrial space; and recreational space. Material choices for the buildings were guided by the residential and industrial context of the Hunts Point neighborhood, with apartments predominantly brick and commercial spaces concrete, steel, and glass. A network of publicly accessible open spaces connects the buildings with the neighborhood. The landscape blends native plants and includes salvaged rock that recalls local natural ledge formations.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Eastern Market Neighborhood Framework and Stormwater Management Network PlanDesigner: Utile

Project Name: Moscone Center ExpansionLandscape architect: CMG Landscape ArchitectureArchitects: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and Mark Cavagnero Associates

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Essex Market and The Market LineDesigner: SHoP ArchitectsAssociate architects: Hugh A. Boyd Architects and Formactiv

Project Name: Mulberry CommonsDesigner: Sage and Coombe Architects

2020 Best of Design Award for Landscape: Mill 19 at Hazelwood GreenDesigner: TEN x TENDesign architect: MSR DesignAssociate architect: R3ALocation: Pittsburgh

Nested within the armature of a former steel mill along Pittsburghs Monongahela River, three new mixed-use buildings are integrated in the shadows of trusses clad with a photovoltaic array. The quarter-mile-long structure celebrates the history of labor and the potential of a revitalized future while creating new landscapes from industrial remnants. An event plaza, a stormwater channel, disturbance-adapted gardens, and a public loggia with salvaged steel furniture define a reimagined public realm that embraces the past.

Mill 19, an LEED v4 Goldcertified project, lays the groundwork for a new type of regional economic hub that celebrates Pittsburghs industrial legacy, initiates renewal, and rebuilds a healthy relationship between the community, the site, and the river.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Chicago Botanic Garden: Regenstein Learning CampusLandscape architect: Mikyoung Kim DesignLocal landscape architect: Jacobs/Ryan AssociatesArchitect: Booth Hansen

Project Name: Water Conservation Garden at Red Butte GardenDesigner: Studio Outside

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Houston Botanic GardenLandscape architects: West 8 urban design & landscape architecture and Clark Condon AssociatesArchitects: Overland Partners and Dykema Architects

Project Name: The Aga Khan Garden, AlbertaLandscape architect: Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape ArchitectsLocal landscape architect and architect: DIALOG

2020 Best of Design Award for Infrastructure: The New St. Pete PierDesign architect: Rogers PartnersExecutive architect: ASD/SKYDesign landscape architect: Ken Smith WorkshopExecutive landscape architect: Booth Design GroupLocation: St. Petersburg, Florida

Beyond simply replacing an aging icon, Rogers Partners new St. Pete Pier constructs the basis for a sustainable relationship between the natural and built environments. The 12-acre pier extends the urban and recreational features of St. Petersburg into the bay through a multitude of flexible programs and amenities, including an education center, a tilted event lawn, dining venues, and places for fishing, kayaking, boating, and swimming. Along a naturalized shore edge, a breakwater and coastal thicket improve the water quality and marine animal and shorebird communities. By enhancing existing renewable coastal resources and providing flood-resistant infrastructure, the St. Pete Pier improves coastline resiliency and models the future for sustainable bayside city living.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: BrightlineDesigner: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in association with Zyscovich Architects

Project Name: PG&E Larkin Street Substation ExpansionDesigner: TEF Design

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Grand Avenue Park BridgeDesigner: LMN Architects

2020 Best of Design Award for Adaptive Reuse: MuseumLabDesigner: Koning Eizenberg ArchitectsArchitect of record: Perfido Weiskopf Wagstaff + Goettel Architects (PWWG)Location: Pittsburgh

A historic Carnegie librarys legacy of educational innovation and access is reinvented as the MuseumLab. Opened in 1890, the library was one of the first free public libraries in the United States. It fell into disrepair after lightning struck the librarys clock tower and caused a three-ton piece of granite to crash through the roof. The library closed in 2006. Renovated in 2018, it now offers experimental art and technology programs for youth, a Title I charter middle school, and space for community events. Expedient interior alterations from the 1970s were stripped away to reconnect spaces, reintroduce daylight, and reveal the bones of the historic architecture. The resulting beautiful ruin has challenged conventions for both preservation and educational settings.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Preserve at 620Designer: Nelsen Partners

Project Name: Rejuvenation of a Historic Powerhouse, San FranciscoDesigner: Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects

Editors Picks:

Project Name: 122 Community Arts CenterDesigner: Deborah Berke Partners

Project Name: The MomentaryDesigner: Wheeler Kearns Architects

2020 Best of Design Award for Facades: Victorian Music BoxDesigner: CCY ArchitectsLocation: Aspen, Colorado

This family compound marries a restored Victorian with a music-inspired modern addition affectionately called the Music Box, designed to accommodate guests as well as music recitals. A single material, Galvalume, bent with four-inch exposures, covers the Music Boxs roof and walls in a continuous, perforated, thin aluminum envelope. This skin was inspired by Frdric Chopins Nocturne in E-flat Major, op. 9, no. 2. The perforated aluminum stands off the structure through a batten/rain screen system that allows light to pass through but maintains privacy for those inside. The design team broke down Chopins composition into its discrete elements to create a pattern that daylight superimposes on the buildings elevations.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: 215225 West 28th StreetDesigner: DXA studio

Project Name: Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School ExpansionDesigner: Wheeler Kearns Architects

Editors Picks:

Project Name: Willie and Donald Tykeson Hall, University of OregonDesign architect: OFFICE 52 ArchitectureArchitect of record: Rowell Brokaw Architects

Project Name: Enlace New OfficesDesigner: Canopy/Architecture + Design

2020 Best of Design Award for Cultural: The REACH at the Kennedy Center for the Performing ArtsDesigner: Steven Holl ArchitectsAssociate architect: BNIMLandscape architect: Hollander Design Landscape ArchitectsLocation: Washington, D.C.

As a living memorial for President John F. Kennedy, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts takes an active position among the great presidential monuments in Washington, D.C. Through public events and stimulating art, the Kennedy Center offers a place where the community can engage and interact with artists across the full spectrum of the creative process. The REACH expansion, designed by Steven Holl Architects, adds much-needed rehearsal, education, and varied, flexible indoor and outdoor spaces to allow the center to continue to play a leadership role in providing artistic, cultural, and enrichment opportunities. The design for The REACH merges architecture with the landscape to expand the dimensions of this living memorial.

Honorable Mentions

Project Name: Burke Museum of Natural History & CultureDesigner: Olson Kundig

Project Name: Jones Beach Energy & Nature CenterDesigner: nARCHITECTS

Editors Picks:

Project Name: A New Campus for the Rothko ChapelArchitect: Architecture Research OfficeLandscape architect: Nelson Byrd Woltz

Project Name: Oklahoma Contemporary Arts CenterDesigner: Rand Elliott Architects

Original post:
The 2020 AN Best of Design Awards winners, part 1 - The Architect's Newspaper