Great River Energy (GRE) is a not-for-profit, member-owned electric utility cooperative in the state of Minnesota. GRE’s headquarters is housed in a 166,000 square foot, four-story office building with a concrete frame and glass curtain walls. The building is LEED Platinum certified and was completed in 2008. The headquarters was designed to boost productivity and minimize the effect on the environment, as well as bring to customer awareness GRE’s commitment to green energy.

The interior of the building focuses on large community areas, while prioritizing natural light for maximum employee productivity and happiness.  The building is roughly 166,000 square feet, allowing for the GRE to grow into the building. Plans to also include a parking deck to reduce the amount of non-permeable land use, thus reducing the amount of run off the site produces.

Here the building can be seen overlooking arbor lake.

VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre based in Vancouver British Columbia was designed by Perkins and Will to meet the Living Building Challenge (a strict green building standard) and the LEED Canada Platinum certification (green building endorsement). This building uses multiple systems to recycle its own waste and utilize heat from the sun for water heating and electricity. This structure is the definition of what an ultra-green future can look like. The building is not only green conscious, but the whole design of the building has considered the environment. With green roofs and the appearance of soft waves going throughout the building, it is a masterpiece in design. The eye-appealing form of the building is smooth and very functionable. I’m not going to lie, I’m fangirling hard over this building. I love it.

The whole building seems to be suspended in a windblown state, and the lines and curves of the wind just flow throughout the design seamlessly, leaving me with a peaceful feeling of awe. My eyes are unconsciously being drawn towards the organic shapes represented.

Looking at the flow of the ceiling is mesmerizing, along with the tall ceilings and ample amounts of natural light. I haven’t seen one design choice that I haven’t liked in this building. 10/10

Good job Perkins and Will!

The Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick is a love letter to the architectural style of Brutalism and was said to be heavily influenced by the philosophy of Le Corbusier. Completed in 1972, the campus was designed by the New York architecture firm of Perkins and Will. The campus was designed to house all academic, social and recreation facilities in one building.

The building’s exterior is constructed of concrete and can range up to six stories tall. While I don’t know enough about brutalist architecture to give a professional analysis of how close to form it stays. However, I will say it does reek of what I think brutalism is, from the repeating, simplistic modular elements to the poor window placements, the overuse of cement to the way it terminates into a semicircle , hiding none of the interior building dimensions . It does what it is supposed to do, be so visibly jarring and unnatural that only man could inspire such a building. Nothing in nature could hope to emulate the dread of entering an unholy temple to man’s dominance over nature.

Hope you enjoyed an amateur glimpse of brutalism.

Thanks for reading.

Reece

Located in Chicago, Illinois (specifically the Chicago Loop) the Chase Tower was completed in 1969.  Being the 40th tallest building in the United States, the Chase Tower stands 869 feet (259 m) tall. The Chase Tower is home to the commercial and retail branch of the Chase Bank company.

The architects responsible for this iconic structure are C.F. Murphy Associates, Stanislaw Z. Gladych and Perkins and Will. The building is well known for its distinct curve, as the building extends into the sky. This eye-catching feat is achieved by slowly decreasing the width of the building as seen in the picture above.

The Chase Tower is also known for its plaza at the base of the building. This popular meeting place totes an elegant, sunken pit with a jet fountain and public space for eating. A large, colorful, ceramic wall mural known as the “Four Seasons” (gifted to the city by the artist Marc Chagall) sits above the sunken plaza with plants accenting the edge of the pit. The glass at the walls of the pit is Chicago’s largest Chase Bank branch touting 22 ATMs.

The IMPATIENT OPTIMIST is located at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s branch in Seattle Washington. This sculpture is supposed to visualize the “shape of a day” and the “physical manifestation of connectedness”. The art installation at night, is very beautiful and truly a work of art.

However, during the day it has quite the opposite effect. It looks like a poorly placed suicide net.  How bad is it at the this charity? What is Bill & Melinda doing to their employees? All jokes aside, they should have thought about what the sculpture will look like during the day. I feel like they completely forgot about the other half of the day. It was a missed opportunity.

Citation:

Impatient Optimist, Seattle, WA, 2015. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.echelman.com/project/impatient-optimist/

The Choctaw Metropolitan library is where my mother would take my brother and I every Saturday to go checkout books. I usually checked out a book about space and my brother checked out a book on dinosaurs. We would then rush to one of the nearby desks and start to read the books. We would speed read through the book and then grab another, we did this until lunch time. Then we would check out the book we liked most from our speed read session and go home.

The Choctaw Metropolitan library was renovated when I started going to the library regularly. The building was the only modern designed building I had regular contact with. It showed the minimalist styles of the modern era in a town that was still dressed in 60s garb. The library was a pillar of change that showed the old dreary town that the modern era was upon us. I embraced the design of the library and have had a sweet spot for modern design ever since.

The Carson Engineering Center was completed in 1965, and was opened for the 75th anniversary of the University of Oklahoma. The Carson Engineering Center is currently home to the offices of the Dean of Engineering.

This building is where I had my first true engineering course. Digital Design was a class that focused on basic digital design logic and theory. On the second floor, in room 222  is where I started to feel like I could do the engineering thing. The building itself was uninspiring, but what the building stood for is what inspired me. The building stood as the entry point to my formal education and development as an engineer.

While the outside of the building can be considered pleasing, the interior is a product of its time. The building is functional and serves its duty as a building for classrooms and labs. It provides what you expect from an engineering building, function over form.