June 23, 2004

Design Detailings: SMPS honors marketers Thursday

The Society for Marketing Professional Services will honor local marketers at its annual Markee Awards ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The event will be held at the Columbia Tower Club, 701 Fifth Ave.

Entries were received from Architects BCRA, Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Joseph Greif Architects, Julian Rogers, KPFF Consulting Engineers, Perteet Engineering, Quantum Consulting Engineers, RoseWater Engineering, Sparling and Studio Lux.

Winners will be announced in the following categories: Brochure, Corporate Identity, Direct Mail, Holiday Card, Special Event, Web site and Client of the Year. In addition a Best of Show/Judge's Choice award will be presented and attendees will vote for the People's Choice Award.

This year's guest speaker is Randle Pollock, national president of the Society for Marketing Professional Services. The cost is $75 for members and $85 for non-members. The event includes appetizers, dessert and drinks. For more information, contact Mary Mader of ESM Consulting Engineers at (253) 838-6113 or mary@esmcivil.com. To register, contact Grace Vigil of Parametrix at (425) 822-8880 or gvigil@parametrix.com. Also, visit http://www.smpsseattle.org.

Piece County landscapers meeting

The Pierce County chapter of the Washington Association of Landscape Professionals meets at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Olympic Lawn Center, 9614 40th Ave. S.W., Lakewood.

Cost is $7. Contact Andy Flood at (253) 584-3422, or andy@olympiclawncenter.com.

Straw bale house tour in Spokane

Northwest EcoBuilding Guild hosts a tour on Saturday of two straw bale houses in the Spokane Valley. The tour begins in Spokane Valley and takes place from 1 to 5 p.m.

Architects, owners and the builders will be on hand to answer questions. The Spokane County Conservation District has promoted straw bale housing after a ban on field burning in 1998.

For more information, call Cherie Peacock (509) 928-3326 or Deborah Warner (208) 683-1649.

Buechel now heads Shannon & Wilson

Shannon & Wilson announced the appointment of Gerard Buechel as president.

Buechel, who manages the Seattle branch of the firm, joined Shannon & Wilson in 1980. Since that time, he has been involved in complex projects including the second Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the Seattle Monorail Project Green Line, Boston's Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project, and three Corps of Engineers dams.

Buechel has served as a member of Shannon & Wilson's board of director's since 2001.

Greg Fischer was appointed chairman of the board for 2004-2005. Fischer has been with the company 18 years. He is manager of the firm's Denver office. Also named to the board of directors were Hollie Ellis as secretary, Richard Frueh as treasurer, and Murray Meierhoff, Red Robinson and David McDowell.

BOORA to plan new Stanford quad

BOORA Architects of Portland was recently awarded a commission to develop a master plan and design guidelines for the new Science and Engineering quad at Stanford University. Finalists for the project included Sasaki Associates, Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

The project includes four new buildings, with more than 500,000 square feet of construction on 8.2 acres. Together, the components will be the first new quad on the Stanford campus since the completion of the historic main campus by Fredrick Law Olmsted at the end of the 19th century.

BOORA will work in collaboration with landscape architects Hargreaves Associates and the San Francisco office of Arup Engineers to determine building footprints, building massing and exterior character, landscape character and an overall sequencing and phasing strategy.

The project will include planning for open space to create a new interdisciplinary center for Science and Engineering. BOORA will set design guidelines for the university to follow over the course of the next decade as the projects progress.

22,000 attend AIA convention

A record number of architects, exhibitors and design industry professionals attended the recent national convention of the American Institute of Architects in Washington D.C. The convention attracted 22,159 registrants.

Delegates at the 136th convention voted to remove restrictions imposed by the AIA's bylaws on the number of consecutive terms that a regional director may serve on the board, and allow each region to make that decision for itself.

In other action, delegates:

<@_Round Bullet>l<@$p> Voted to add a fourth AIA vice president, and stagger two-year terms for all vice presidents.

<@_Round Bullet>l<@$p> Approved an increase of $50 in the dues paid by each architect member beginning in 2005, to support advertising campaigns.

<@_Round Bullet>l<@$p> Adopted a resolution to support research on diversity in the architecture profession.

Parametrix designs

SR522 widening

The Washington State Department of Transportation is widening State Route 522, from SR 9 to US 2 in Monroe. The five-staged project began in the early 1990s with preliminary design. A groundbreaking ceremony for construction of the second segment of the corridor -- Fales/Echo Lake Road Interchange at SR 522 -- will be June 30. Parametrix was contracted to complete the design of this segment of roadway in 2001.

The Parametrix team, including ABKJ, Hong West Associates and Mirai Associates, proposed a nontraditional design alternative to lessen the environmental impacts and accommodate other design challenges. The single point urban interchange design was chosen for this rural location to reduce the footprint of the project. This allowed for a substantial reduction in wetland impacts and reduced the amount of right of way to be acquired. Wetland impacts were reduced from 4.6 acres for the original diamond interchange design to 2.5 acres.

The project is being designed to meet the Department of Ecology and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations to protect water quality and prevent erosion. The design calls for the replacement of several standard culverts with 12-foot diameter fish passage culverts to protect fish habitat. Two wetland mitigation sites totaling 3.8 acres will be constructed. An innovative turf/sand filter for water quality treatment was incorporated into the design. The turf/sand filter site will treat the interchange runoff as well as runoff from three miles of future SR 522 widening.