We're pleased to announce that our much-belabored (and beloved) building sign was selected as the 2015 winner of the Urban Fragments category of the Fort Collins Urban Design Awards!

The "Urban Fragments" category was defined as "a single, small-scale piece of a building or landscape that contributes significantly to the quality of the public realm." In our submittal, we discussed the sign's subtle scale and materiality, it's sustainable features, strategies for graceful aging, and it's presence as an urban object and catalyst for the River District's continued renewal.

You can read more about the design and construction process at the project page and the original blog post.

Accolades are always rewarding, and although we enjoyed the process tremendously, it's also nice to know that other people like the end result as much as we do. 

Thank you Fort Collins!

We are pleased to announce that [au]workshop's recently-completed Block One project has just received two local and state awards!

First, Bock One was selected as a 2015 winner in the Architecture category of the Fort Collins Urban Design Awards, which has celebrated and advocated for great urban spaces of all sizes since its inception in 2006.

Serendipitously, the project was also selected as the Best New Addition to a Downtown, in the major city category of the 2015 Downtown Colorado Inc. Governor's Awards for Downtown Excellence, which similarly recognizes projects with a positive community impact.

If you'd like to find our more about the project, please check out the project page here. And, please feel free to join us for a presentation of the project at the Urban Design Awards ceremony on Wednesday, October 7, 2015 from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. at the Midtown Arts Center at 3750 S. Mason Street. 

Though the architecture and urban design is it's own reward for us, we are of course thrilled that the project has received these accolades. The community's response to the completed project has been overwhelmingly positive, and it is thoroughly exciting to see the public share our passion for great urban spaces and architecture. 

Thank you to Fort Collins and Downtown Colorado Inc!

The leaves are changing, and it's beginning to feel like fall, but here at the office we've been holding onto summer by designing a number of different pool houses for various clients. We're excited about the possibilities of such a fun and layered program, so we thought we'd share a few of them and how they're shaping up!

The first is currently just a sketch for an apartment complex leasing office and clubhouse. It's a strongly axial form that spans across an olympic-length linear pool, providing customizable degrees of sun and shade, and a highly recognizable silhouette. 

Our second project is part of a mixed use district in Thailand; we were asked to develop a rooftop bar and "beach" that would draw a diverse population to enjoy the views of Bangkok's skyline. A glass-enclosed VIP zone provides a luxury experience, while an infinity-edge pool, glass-bottomed overlook, and a really-big-tree mean that there's something for everyone. 

The third project is at a more evolved stage, but is still early in schematic design. We've worked closely with the client to understand their needs for a uniquely nesting program. Working around an existing building, we designed around the existing pool equipment to avoid the costly process of moving water lines, while also meeting myriad criteria for security, safety, privacy, functionality, and efficiency. 

Our solution is simple, but nuanced: to maximize efficiency, the building is split into two halves: a winterized portion, that serves the tennis facilities year-round, and a summer-only portion that serves the pool. A "cut" into the corner of the plan then negotiates between the tennis court axis and the angled pool axis, allowing the building to serve and be welcoming to both. 

Pool Side

A cut in the building form allows both for a change in axis, orienting the building to the pool, and for a covered seating area.

Entrance

We sought a relatively blank facade with just a hint of the excitement within. 

Schematic Floor Plan

A "cut" into the corner of the plan negotiates between the tennis court axis and the angled pool axis, allowing the building to serve and be welcoming to both. 

To maximize efficiency, the building is split into two halves: a winterized portion, that serves the tennis facilities year-round, and a summer-only portion that serves the pool. 

We've been really enjoying the highly charged mix of programs and activities that pool houses offer, so if you're interested in learning more about these projects, or if you'd like to pursue a similar project, please feel free to get in touch with us!

[au]workshop is pleased to announce that the Strategic Growth Bancorp Headquarters in Old Town Albuquerque has won an Engineering News Record Southwest Best Project award in the Interior/Tenant Improvement category!

An article about the project and award is available on the ENR Southwest website. Please also see our own project page for more information.

[au]workshop worked closely with The Mall Group and a wide-ranging design team to develop the recently-completed EmQuartier, particularly in regards to space planning, circulation, and interiors. Below is the article from Monocle (click to enlarge). Be sure to check out our Facebook page for a shot of the facade-wrapping projections in action!

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[au] is presently working with The Mall Group to design the third pillar of the Em District: Emsphere, so more to come soon!

[au]workshop is excited to announce the hire of our newest team member: Mr. Nathan Pepper. 

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Nathan, a designer, is a recent graduate of University of Colorado Denver, where he received his Master’s of Architecture degree. During his time at UC Denver, Nathan was a Design Excellence Award winner for his Comprehensive Studio design project, and also won a Young Architects Award (YAAG) in the Architectural Craftsmanship category for his outstanding model craft. Going forward, his primary architectural interest is in cultivating a productive relationship between design, site, and context.

Outside of architecture, Nathan enjoys spending time in the mountains with his wife Kristin, being a new dad to a baby girl, and partaking in various endurance sports.

Randy and Jason, together with Confluence, have been featured in (and on the cover of!) the August 21 issue of BizWest! We won't repeat too much here, but suffice it to say that the article provides a good summary of Randy and Jason's views on the rapidly developing Fort Collins River District. Click on the image below for the full article, or you can check it out over at BizWest.

We are always on the lookout for the most effective and beautiful ways of presenting our designs. On the one hand, we love the detail and richness of materials that contemporary computer generating renderings can provide, but on the other hand, we sometimes yearn for the reductionistic simplicity of a good-old-fashioned basswood model. 

So, we've been exploring a rendering technique that simply maps a basswood texture to all of the surfaces of the digital model, and manipulates subtle cues (like the texture's scale and the camera's depth-of-field) to mimic a photograph of a real-world scale model.

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Our first attempt at the basswood rendering technique, for the Confluence project. A basswood texture at a very large scale is set as the global material override, giving the model a small appearance with minimal editing to the model itself. We think it turned out pretty well, but we wanted to push the process further with better scale-model trees and more attention to materiality.

We think that, like a traditional basswood model, these images allow us to minimize the number of visual variables, so that the image can focus on massing and the way a project fits into its context. This focus makes this type of image powerful both as a presentation tool and as a working drawing that allows us to study these issues more carefully. 

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A more recent experiment, with a more time-consuming treatment of materials and more realistic trees. We appreciate, however, that this allows us to differentiate the project from the context. Both images were processed in photoshop to control depth of field; here, lines from the model were also added to enhance some details.

As a workshop, we would, of course, prefer to build real-world, physical models, but we're excited about this technique as a time-effective alternative. 

As always, if you have questions about how we produced these images, or if you're interested in doing something similar (or, even better, a real model!), please feel free to get in touch with us!

[au]workshop was surprised the other day to find several newly planted trees missing from the rear of the recently-completed Block One. Closer inspection revealed the damaged saplings to be the work of a beaver or beavers.

We'd be lying if we said we weren't just a little chagrinned, but we have to admire a fellow designer just collecting building material, irony and all. It's just one of those unanticipated challenges of locating a project so close to the river. 

That said, we're working with Encompass Technologies, the building owner, to protect the remaining saplings from harm, and to replace the two downed trees. Admiration or not, the beavers will need to find their lumber somewhere else. 

It's been a long road, but our project at 888 Devon Avenue, on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, has received unanimous neighborhood Design Review Board (DRB) approval. We're pretty proud of the result, and we thought we'd share some more information about the process.

We were brought into the project early in 2014, after two unsuccessful preliminary DRB reviews, to help negotiate the project's unique (and small!) lot, the aesthetic demands of a project on such a famous street, and the delicate relationship to the adjacent National-Historic-Register-listed chateau.

The images below document the design's evolution. (click to enlarge.)

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During this process, we revised the project heavily, relocating the driveway from Wilshire to the quieter Devon to mitigate traffic issues and noise, providing additional setbacks, reducing the number of units, reducing the number of parking levels (to two), decreasing the project height, adding two-story penthouse units, revising the materiality, and adding an accessible green roof and generous private terraces. 

The process also gave us the chance to explore additional details that are normally explored later in the design process: irrigation and water management systems, lighting fixture selection, balcony details and a host of other small details of functionality and comfort. 

We presented the final project design to the DRB again in early July, where we received an almost unheard-of unanimous verdict of unconditional approval. We also received the full support of the neighboring Chateau residents, having revised the project to ameliorate all of their concerns. The project is currently on its way through the next steps in the city's approval process, and we're excited to resume work on it soon. In the meantime, please head over to the project page here for more images and information on the project.

We moved into our new workshop space in November of 2014 and we finally had a few photos shot this month.  This space was carved from a wood-framed three bedroom house circa 1903.  Nary a wall or floor is straight as a result of the 100 year-old rubble foundation.   The exterior remains as-is for now--we think it is a bit like a rat rod ...to see the exterior, see our earlier post on this page about the workshop sign.

The San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity (SGVHH) recently recognized the design contributions of [au]workshop at its gala celebration in the iconic courtyard of Pasadena California's City Hall.  Randy Shortridge began providing pro-bono design concepts in 2006 for SGVHH when they were vying for the opportunity to redevelop the Desiderio Army Reserve Center in the Arroyo Seco, just south of Pasadena's historic Colorado Boulevard bridge.  The winning plan created a 3.8 acre park and a nine home bungalow court on 1.3 acres.  Project architect Brian Betsill was also honored for his myriad contributions.