Outstanding Juries Named for Professional and Student Awards Programs

The American Society of Landscape Architects has released its 2012 Awards Call for Entries for the 2012 professional and student awards, the premiere awards programs for the profession. Award recipients will receive featured coverage in the September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine and in many other design and construction industry and general-interest media. Award recipients, their clients, and student advisors also will be honored at the awards presentation ceremony during the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Phoenix, September 28 – October 1, 2012. The award winning projects will be featured in a video presentation at the ceremony and on the awards website following the event.

The prestige of the ASLA awards programs relies on the high-caliber juries that are convened each year to review submissions. Members of this year’s professional awards jury are:

• José Almiñana, ASLA, Andropogon Associates, Philadelphia, Jury Chair
• Stephen T. Ayers, AIA, The Architect of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.
• Gail Brinkmann, ASLA, City of Phoenix Street Transportation Department, Phoenix
• Kathryn L. Gleason, FASLA, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
• Christopher Hawthorne, Architecture Critic, Los Angeles, Times, Los Angeles
• Mikyoung Kim, ASLA, Mikyoung Kim Design, Boston
• Tom Leader, ASLA, Tom Leader Studio, Berkeley, Calif.
• Thomas R. Oslund, FASLA, oslund.and.assoc., Minneapolis
• Jim Schuessler, ASLA, BNIM, Kansas City, Mo.

Members of the student awards jury are:

• David Yocca, FASLA, Conservation Design Forum, Elmhurst, Ill., Jury Chair
• Sheila A. Brady, FASLA, Oehme, van Sweden and Associates, Washington, D.C.
• Mark A. Focht, FASLA, Fairmount Park Commission, Philadelphia
• M. Paul Friedberg, FASLA, M. Paul Friedberg & Partners, New York City
• Paul H. Gobster, FASLA, USDA Forest Service, Evanston, Ill.
• Debra Guenther, ASLA, Mithun, Seattle
• Linda Jewell, FASLA, University of California at Berkeley
• Chris Reed, ASLA, Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Boston
• Andrew Wilcox, ASLA, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Calif.

Both the ASLA professional and students awards feature five categories: General Design; Residential Design; Analysis and Planning; Communications; and Research (the Professional Awards are co-sponsored by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture). The Professional Awards also include The Landmark Award, while the Student Awards include the Student Community Service Award and Student Collaboration categories.

Entry forms and payment must be received by:

• Friday, February 3, 2012, for ASLA Professional Awards
• Friday, April 27, 2012, for ASLA Student Awards

Submission binders must be received by:

• Friday, February 17, 2012, for ASLA Professional Awards
• Friday, May 11, 2012, for ASLA Student Awards

In need of inspiration? View the ASLA 2011 professional and student award-winning projects.

Interior designer Kimberly Joi McDonald, principal of Las Vegas-based Designing JOI, LLC, has completed the renovation of beach villas at Del Mar Beach Resort for Marine Corps Community Services at Camp Pendleton, California. The private resort for authorized active duty, retired and family members of the Marine Corps, includes RV sites, plus some 65 villas, all with private bedrooms, full kitchens and beachfront locations.  Working with Marine Corps staff, McDonald updated the villa’s previous 1980s decor with leather seating, dark wood case goods and dining furnishings, new headboards and bedroom furnishings, plus new art and accessories.  Kitchens were also modernized with new cabinetry, appliances and countertops.

   Before                                                             After

Arizona Tile has become the newest distributor of Samsung’s Radianz Quartz product line. The engineered stone contains 93 percent naturally mined quartz content, offers uniform color and texture, is resistant to damage and is also non-porous. The product comes in 28 colors, with more due to be unveiled this year, and is suitable for commercial and residential applications, such as countertops, table tops, backsplashes, shower walls and more. www.arizonatile.com or www.staron.com

The Reference Library Box Lunch/Breakfast Schedule for January 2012.

Click here to download the schedule.

As seen in Sources+Design
November 2011 Issue

Freight Project, Denver, Colorado
Stephen Dynia Architects
Jackson, Wyoming
Photography by Ron Johnson

Just north of downtown Denver, in an industrial area wedged between the Platte River and a tangle of railroad yards, an abandoned trucking terminal has been transformed into modern office building, attracting youthful, entrepreneurial firms, and winning design awards for the architect and accolades for the developer.

Much of the original freight terminal was kept intact for the office renovation, including deep overhangs and garage bay openings. The new addition to the right is clad in metal panels that evoke the movement of freight rail cars.

The 20,000-square-foot project, Freight, is part of the 20-acre Taxi mixed-use development that has revived the River North neighborhood, thanks to the out-of-the-box approach of a Denver development firm, Zeppelin Places. The firm, run by the father and son team of Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin, has also been responsible for such forward-thinking projects as Cadillac Lofts, pioneering LoDo projects and Curious Theatre.

The Freight project began in 2007, explains architect Stephen Dynia, AIA, who was asked to transform the circa-1950s terminal. Though a softening economy stalled the project, it was restarted in 2010.

“We wanted the new offices to be friendly towards smaller businesses,” explains Dynia, who also maintains a satellite office in Denver. “We also wanted to continue what the Zeppelins started with Taxi, which is adjacent to Freight.” Working with a team that included Doug Staker, AIA, LEED AP, Dynia suggested a design that left much of the building’s raw, trucking past intact–including the deep overhangs and garage bay openings–and inserted some vividly modern new elements.

A long hallway, punctuated by a curving plywood wall and a narrow skylight, links the offices.

At the eastern end of the rectangular building, Dynia, Staker and the design team created a new wing of offices, reusing trusses from the razed administrative quarters of the old trucking firm and cladding its exterior in metal siding that’s a subtle reference to the movement of nearby rail cars. On the north side, a pre-fab, shed-style building was re-skinned and pierced with windows to create yet another wing of offices. An angled entry ramp was added next to the re-skinned addition to lead visitors from the main parking area to the building’s entrance.

Indoors, the Dynia team created a floorplan with a long, skylit circulation spine that connects offices, shared conference areas, a kitchen and lounge, and restrooms. A sculptural plywood ribbon wall softens the circulation hallway, and individual offices are linked to the outdoors with retractable, garage-style glass doors. The scarred concrete floors and existing walls were left untouched as reminders of the building’s past, but new walls and metal details were enlivened with a bright, international orange hue.

The actual office sizes vary in size and look, but are linked by common materials. “We gave the tenants a kit of components that they could use to personalize their spaces,” says Dynia. The kit included reclaimed glass panels from a hockey rink that could be used as partition walls, industrial shelving and salvaged bowling alley floors that could be made into countertops, benches and tables.

Completed in February 2011, Freight’s raw, urban appeal was an immediate hit. It opened fully occupied, to new-economy firms as varied as an early-childhood education center and a cracker company to a filmmaker and a wildlife conservation organization. In July, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper used the success of the development as a backdrop to launch a new economic initiative.

New retractable glass garage doors allow individual offices to have access to breezes and views of Denver's skyline.

“These are interesting companies that opened at Freight because it’s not a stodgy, suburban environment,” reflects Dynia. “The building and its location next to Taxi lets the tenants connect to an immediate culture.”

Business success notwithstanding, Freight has also won numerous 2011 design awards, including ones from AIA Western Mountain Region, AIA Colorado, AIA Wyoming and AIA Denver.

Architecture: Steven Dynia Architects, 1085 W. Broadway, Jackson, WY 83001; (307) 733-3766 or www.dynia.com

General contractor: White Construction Group, 18 S. Wilcox St., Suite 100, Castle Rock, CO 80104; (303) 688-6924 or www.whitecg.com

Landscape architecture: Groundworks Design, 1701 Wynkoop St., Suite 170, Denver, CO 80202; (303) 623-3379 or www.groundworksdesign.net

As seen in Sources+Design
November 2011 Issue

Showroom
Excellence Upholstery & Design
Phoenix, Arizona

Matt Cepkauskas of Excellence Upholstery & Design is somewhat like the Sigmund Freud of sofas and chairs. Bring in a client, and he’s likely to gently size the person up, asking them where the proposed seating will be used, how it will be used and by whom. Cepkauskas will also ask the clients to sit in one of four different “test” armchairs, all done in a neutral beige fabric, to determine which seat depth and back height is best.

“I can look at a person on a piece of furniture and tell if something is comfortable for them,” explains Cepkauskas. “It’s all about how far back they sit on the seat and the position of their knees.”

The Excellence Upholstery & Design showroom features a variety of seating options.

Such analytical attention to detail is the hallmark of Excellence Upholstery & Design, a firm that Cepkauskas founded in 2005 with business partner Angel Iniguez. Cepkauskas, who has a background in customer service and wholesale upholstery and drapery workrooms, handles the business, sales and marketing side of things. Iniguez is the artisan, bringing more than 20 years of experience in hands-on upholstery. Their 3,200-square-foot space in the Deer Valley neighborhood of north Phoenix includes an airy showroom and a spacious workroom, where Iniguez and staff create everything from new sofas, chairs and ottomans to more unusual projects, such as an upholstered table and bookcase. “We do reupholstery and slipcovers, too,” says Cepkauskas, “and, lately, we’ve been doing a lot of wall upholstery on site, for home theaters, bedrooms and powder rooms.”

The trade showroom, an ASID Industry Partner, specializes in custom designs. Working with designers’ photographs, magazine images, sketches and descriptions, the Excellence team will create a just-right piece within about six weeks. Fabric is usually C.O.M., but Cepkauskas points out that he’s adding a small selection of fabrics and leathers. The most important aspect of the process, he notes, is the structural integrity of the furniture. “You can hide a multitude of sins under the fabric,” he says, “but we have high quality standards for the construction of the furniture. It makes a big difference in the end product.”

Angel Iniguez, left, and Matt Cepkauskas, the founders of Excellence Upholstery & Design.

Recently, Excellence has begun offering a line of casegoods, in the form of occasional chairs and tables, with the chairs based on exposed wood frames imported from Italy. Additionally, the showroom is offering a selection of outdoor furniture, available with standard or custom cushions.

Despite a less-than-ideal economy, business has been good at Excellence Design & Upholstery, something Cepkauskas attributes to value. “These days, interior designers are finding that their clients don’t want to spend $5,000 or $10,000 for a simple sofa,” Cepkauskas says. “We do quality work and offer value. We don’t up-charge for every little thing. We also include delivery. We want to make sure the piece works and looks right on site.”

The chair- and sofa-fit psychoanalysis, notes Cepkauskas with a smile, is complimentary.

Excellence Upholstery & Design, 2017 W. Rose Garden Lane, Phoenix, AZ 85027; (623) 582-9555 or www.excellenceupholstery.com

Market Watch:  Wallcoverings

As seen in Sources+Design
November 2011 Issue

York Wallcoverings has put the kitsch back in kitchens with its slyly humorous Bistro 750 collection. The retro-inspired wallcovering collection includes fanciful fruit, cutlery, kitchen utensils and coffee cup patterns, served up on background hues that range from mustard, salmon and avocado to peppery black.  www.yorkwall.com

The Reference Library Box Lunch/Breakfast Schedule for December, 2011.

Click here to download the schedule.

Sources+Design and CCS Presentation Systems would like to invite you to attend a special audio visual event for architects and designers. Experience first-hand Christie Digital’s newest technology, including 2D and 3D solutions, edge-blended projection technology, the latest in large scale portrait view displays and more, in an intimate, hands-on environment.

The event includes a free AIA course–Specifying Projection Screens: The Critical Factors To Consider.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 1 p.m.; Scottsdale Studios, 9445 E. Doubletree Ranch Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85258.

Click here for additional details.

Click here to register online.

Cabot Wrenn’s new Auto collection includes a cube and cocktail tables with a design by Alyssa Coletti that’s reminiscent of the continuous looping of a conveyor belt. The tables can be stacked for a storage solution or fitted with a glass, marble or Corian top. Available in maple or walnut in various finishes, Auto’s loop is detailed with a carved edge. The pieces can be used in office, library, institutional, hospitality or healthcare settings. www.cabotwrenn.com