Archive for February 2010

HC Front
  • Steven Thomson
  • Feb. 24, 2010
  • 9:38 AM

Sustainable Workplace

On Wednesday evening, the lobby of Williams Tower held court to an exclusive book launch event for The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment and the Bottom Line, authored by HOK Vice President, Leigh Stringer. The event was in every way HOK-centric — a book written by an HOK board member, presented at HOK’s Houston headquarters, and co-hosted by the company — risking the impression that the book is primarily a method of branding a corporation as a leader in green design.

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NHG_model_small

Model of Cave of New Being and meditation pond

  • Steven Thomson
  • Feb. 10, 2010
  • 9:44 PM

Cave of New Being

With the growing genre of architecture generated by biomorphic design and biomimetic processes, a reevaluation of Frederick J. Kiesler’s work is ever more timely. During the mid-20th century he became increasingly occupied with the relationship of structure and natural form in architecture. The Cave of the New Being (also known as the Grotto for Meditation), proposed in the 1960s for New Harmony and contracted by Mrs. Blaffer Owen, represented the designer’s pièce de résistance, embodying all of the intellectual currents of his era, from surrealism to biotechnics, yet it was never realized.

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