The symposium is sponsored by the UNCG Biology Department with financial support from Syngenta. The theme for the 2010 symposium is “Practical Steps Toward Sustainability.”

As a designer and educator, Frank Harmon has been a leader in “green,” or sustainable, architecture for decades – long before the concept entered the general lexicon. He has spent years educating the public through speaking engagements at conferences and conventions across the country, including Dwell Magazine’s annual “Dwell on Design” convention and several national conventions of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

He has also spent years educating his clients on the imperative for sustainable, regionally appropriate design and recently completed three thoroughly “green” projects: the NC Botanical Garden’s Visitor Education Center at UNC-Chapel Hill (slated to become the state’s first LEED Platinum building), the Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Park Education Center in Raleigh, and the Merchants Millpond State Park Visitors Center in Gatesville, NC.

Among the current “green” projects Harmon’s firm is working on are the Oyster Research Hatchery at UNC-Wilmington, the UNC-Asheville Craft Campus, and AIA North Carolina’s Center for Architecture & Design in downtown Raleigh.

The other three speakers at the symposium are: Dr. Robert Jackson, director of Duke University’s Center on Global Change who will discuss the problems of nitrogen pollution; Dr. Patricia Gober, co-director of the National Science Foundation’s Decision Center for a Desert City, who will discuss water resource sustainability; and Dr. Susan Smalley, director of the Michigan State University C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems, who will discuss community-based food systems.

UNCG’s Environmental Symposium 2010 is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.uncg.edu/bio/index.

For more information on Frank Harmon, go to www.frankharmon.com.

Appetite 4 Architecture (A4A) is sponsored by Triangle Modernist Houses (TMH) as a way for the general public to dine with prominent members of the Triangle’s design community in an intimate, small group setting. Dinner guests will be able to discuss anything they want with the designers, from their dream home or renovation project, to the designers’ work or a house they’ve admired.

Frank Harmon is best known for his work in modern, innovative, environmentally sustainable and regionally appropriate architecture. Two houses he designed – one in Raleigh, the other in Charleston, SC — received the 2009 Custom Home Design Awards in the “less than 3000 square feet” category from Custom Home Magazine. His design of a vacation home in the Bahamas has been featured in numerous journals and books on green architecture and was included in a special exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. His residential work has also been featured in the Raleigh News & Observer’s “Home of the Month” series in association with the NC State University College of Design.

Currently, Harmon is working closely with David Crawford on the future AIA NC Center for Architecture & Design. Harmon won the commission in a professional design competition.

“A4A dinner events are rare opportunities to enjoy free-ranging discussions in an informal but upscale dining environment,” said TMH founder and director George Smart. “Participants will have access to some of the area’s best residential architects and professionals, many of whom are mentioned on TMH.  Explore architecture, homebuilding, the economy for design, furnishings, real estate – or anything else on your mind.”

Tickets to the Harmon/Crawford dinner are $59 per person. Dinner will begin at 6:30 p.m.

TMH is hosting nine A4A dinners. For information on the special guests for each dinner, the dates, and locations, go to www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/a4a.htm.

To reserve tickets for the Harmon/Crawford dinner or any of the others go to www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/a4a.htm.

Harmon, a multi-award winning architect and frequent speaker at seminars and symposia on design, will again make his case for sustainable building and development at the Center for Design Innovation in Winston-Salem, NC, when he participates in the CDI’s Idea Exchange on Tuesday, February 16, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

CDI is a multi-campus research center for the statewide University of North Carolina. According to its website, the Idea Exchange is “a public forum for considering creative processes, digital techniques, business strategies, and other interests related to developing the knowledge economy of North Carolina’s Piedmont region.”

Frank Harmon is well known nationally for his firm’s modern, innovative, “green” and regionally appropriate architecture. From September to November 2009, he saw the completion of three high-performance, or “green,” projects in North Carolina, including the NC Botanical Gardens Visitor Education Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill that is slated to be the state’s first LEED Platinum building – the highest level of certification given by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system.

“It seems natural to me to design green buildings,” he said, “to catch the sun, accept the breeze and grown naturally out of the earth.”

In lectures and seminars, and as a Professor in Practice at NC State University’s College of Design, Harmon frequently asserts the necessity for modern buildings to be regionally appropriate – to address the specific context, materials, textures, colors and forms of a special region, using both traditional and non-traditional methods.

“The most sustainable – and liberating – thing we can do is acknowledge the places we are in,” he told Dwell magazine in January of 2008 when he was featured in the magazine’s “Conversations” section.

The CDI’s Idea Exchange is held in the Winston Tower, Suite 2105 (21^st floor) at 301 North Main Street in downtown Winston-Salem.

Currently CDI’s constituent schools are the UNC School of the Arts and Winston-Salem State University, collaborating with Forsyth Technical Community College. Sessions are recorded and web-streamed for remote access. For more information, go to www.centerfordesigninnovation.org.

For more information on Frank Harmon, visit www.frankharmon.com.

Sponsored by the College of Design and the Triangle section of the American Institute of Architects/North Carolina, the annual lecture is endowed by the estate of the renowned architect Harwell Hamilton Harris, FAIA (1903-1990) who served on the faculty of NC State’s College of Design from 1962 to 1975.

Frank Harmon is a fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and a Professor in Practice at the College of Design. He is the founder and principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA, a multi-award-winning, LEED AP, green architecture firm established in 1985. He was also a close friend of Harris for many years, and he credits Harris with steering his design sensibilities towards modern, innovative and regionally appropriate design.

In 2005, when Harmon’s firm was named Top Firm of the Year by Residential Architect magazine, he told writer Vernon Mays, “[Harwell Harris] taught me that every client and every situation is different and new. And it is the architect’s job to understand the needs of every situation and every client. He loved to say that the house is a portrait of the client.”

Harris also taught Harmon to infuse warmth and familiarity into modern architecture by embracing what Harris called the “sticks and stones” of the place:  the landscape, materials, climate and culture specific to the region in which a building will be built.

“What people thought was cold and threatening modernism, he made warm and approachable,” Harmon says.

Harmon’s lecture will focus on “why Harwell Hamilton Harris is important today,” he said. “His work embraces the whole of the environment – from the living room to the city – and all the particulars that go into making a building. He was also the first architect to write about the importance of regionalism in modern architecture.”

Harmon will discuss specific Harris projects – including his personal home and office on Cox Avenue in downtown Raleigh and St. Giles Presbyterian Church in North Raleigh – that strongly influenced Harmon’s own work.

Originally from California, Harwell Hamilton Harris was a sculptor who changed careers after he visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Los Angeles. He worked with Richard Neutra from 1928 until 1932 then merged the ideals of modern and California regionalist architecture into his residential work of the ‘30s and ‘40s. He served as Dean for the University of Texas School of Architecture from 1952-1955 and practiced in Dallas until 1962 when he moved to Raleigh to teach at NC State. He retired from teaching in 1973 but continued to practice until shortly before his death. He was a professor emeritus at the university when he died at the age of 87.

The Harwell Hamilton Harris Lecture is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Coliseum parking deck. Limited parking may also be found in the Riddick or Peele parking lots after 5 pm. Parking along campus streets is not permitted unless otherwise noted.

For more information on the lecture call 919.515.8350.

For more information on Frank Harmon, go to www.frankharmon.com.

The Havens House designed by Harwell Hamilton Harris, FAIA. Photo by Man Ray.

]]> http://blog.frankharmon.com/press-releases/frank-harmon-to-deliver-special-lecture-at-nc-state-university/feed/ 0 http://blog.frankharmon.com/press-releases/future-aia-nc-center-for-architecture-design-featured-on-architects-artisans/ http://blog.frankharmon.com/press-releases/future-aia-nc-center-for-architecture-design-featured-on-architects-artisans/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:31:10 +0000 kweiss http://blog.frankharmon.com/?p=615 January 26, 2010 (RALEIGH, NC) – Under the headline “David vs. Goliath in Downtown Raleigh,” the new design-oriented blog Architects+Artisans: Thoughtful Design for a Sustainable World looks at the future AIA NC Center for Architecture & Design in downtown Raleigh and its location near the state Government Complex.

The post includes a video of the building model as it transforms into a real structure in space via computer-generated imaging.

Writer and editor for the blog, J. Michael Welton, spoke with architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA, the firm that won the project through a professional design competition in 2008. Harmon explained how he approached the “pork chop” shaped site (his description) and the context, which includes the monolithic Archdale building overshadowing Peace Street along which the Center will be built.

“Ours is a horizontal statement,” Harmon told Welton. “The real face of the building is to the south, looking toward the State Capitol.” He also notes: “It’s on less than an acre, and we placed it parallel to Peace Street. It’s a long, thin building with a porch on the south side. You’ll find that all over the South – at Mount Vernon, for example – so we knew that was a good pattern to follow.”

The new building, a thoroughly “green” structure that will embrace all the high-tech as well as low-tech principles of sustainable design, will serve as headquarters for the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects. According to the AIA NC website, it is also intended to serve as “an architectural example for the entire state.”

To read the entire post and to see the video of the future building, go to architectsandartisans.com and click on “David vs. Goliath in Downtown Raleigh.”

For more information on Frank Harmon and to view more images of the AIA NC Center for Architecture and Design, visit www.frankharmon.com and click on “current” projects.

About Architects+Artisans:

Architects + Artisans is a sophisticated, well-informed provider of content, images, and knowledge concerning excellent architecture, artisanship and sustainability for the 21st century.  It is not just about designers – but about the people and products that make a well-designed place ring true. It is written and edited by J. Michael Welton, whose work on architecture, design and travel has appeared in The New York Times, Interior Design, Dwell, Green Source and Travel + Leisure. Visit http://architectsandartisans.com.

January 15, 2010 (RALEIGH, NC) – Award-winning architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA in Raleigh, NC, will serve as moderator for a panel discussion entitled “Architecturally Speaking: Discussions on Staying Current in Architecture Curricula” during the Winter Symposium presented by American Institute of Architects’ Atlanta, GA, chapter.

The symposium, including a question-and-answer session following the panel discussion, will be held at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture on Tuesday, January 19^th, from 6-8 p.m.

Bringing together three schools of architecture in Georgia, the panelists include George Johnston, director of the Georgia Tech Graduate Program in Architecture; Brian Wishne, dean  of the School of Building Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design; and Tony Rizzuto, associate professor of architect at Southern Polytechnic State University.

The following evening, January 20^th, Harmon will present a lecture entitled “Grits, Glass and Steel: The Evolution of Modern Architecture in the South.”

Harmon, an award-winning architect recognized nationally as a leader in modern, innovative, sustainable design, has spent decades studying vernacular buildings – what he calls “buildings with a conscience” — and lecturing on the lessons he has learned from them across the nation.

“Buildings with a conscience have existed in Southern farmhouses and barns for as long as farmers have erected them,” Harmon says. “These are simple structures built of wholesome, vernacular materials, perched on stone piers so rainwater flows under them. They nestle lightly into the hillsides without disturbing the land. They are rooted in their region and embody the principles of livability. And they speak of the Southern culture as eloquently as bluegrass music or clay pots.”

His lecture will examine the elements and themes that inform contemporary Southern architecture — landscape; materials and construction (the “sticks and stones” of a place); weather and climate; roof forms that shelter or collect; and clients — and illustrate the importance of ‘place’ in the process of creating innovative, sustainable, and appropriate contemporary design.

Harmon, who also serves as Professor in Practice for North Carolina State University’s College of Design, notes frequently that these vernacular structures were always “green,” or sustainable, because they had to be.

“Farmers had an instinct for understanding their land,” he said during a radio interview on “The Story” with Dick Gordon. “They never built on the best part of their land; they saved that for their crops, because that was their sustenance. They typically built on a low-rise for good drainage. They knew exactly where the breezes came from to cool their houses and their barns… They knew how to plant trees to shade their houses in the summer… All of these things the farmers did quite naturally. But it was also for survival.”

The AIA Winter Symposium will be held in Georgia Tech’s Reinsch-Pierce Family Auditorium. For more information contact Brian Buckner at 404-688-4990, ext. 27.

For more information on Frank Harmon, visit www.frankharmon.com.

About Frank Harmon Architect PA:

Frank Harmon Architect PA is an award-winning architectural firm based in Raleigh, NC, that was ranked 26^th among the top 50 firms in the nation in Architect Magazine’s “Architect 50” ranking for 2009.  Frank Harmon, FAIA, founder and principal, is a frequent design awards jurist and a sought-after speaker on the subject of sustainable and regionally appropriate architecture across the nation. His work has been featured in numerous professional and shelter magazines and in international books on architecture. In 2008, a vacation home he designed in the Bahamas was included in a Wall Street Journal list of “the most influential and inspiring houses built during the past decade.” His firm has received more North Carolina design awards than any other firm in the state and recently won three national accolades: two Custom Homes Magazine’s 2009 Design Awards for residences in Raleigh, NC, and Charleston, SC; and an American Institute of Architect’s 2009 Housing Award for the Charleston home.

The 7,500 square-foot Visitor Center and 600 square-foot Open Air Classroom, owned by the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation, is located in Merchants Millpond State Park. A Registered Natural Heritage Area that covers 1900 acres, the park includes the millpond and part of Lassiter Swamp. Parks & Recreation is charged with preserving the park’s diverse biological, scenic, archaeological, geological and recreational values and providing park experiences that promote pride in and understanding of North Carolina’s natural heritage.

The Visitor Center is situated uphill from the pond and parallel to the bank so that every space along the southeast side of the building has a view of the natural surroundings. A porch is also located along that elevation so visitors can easily step from the building into the outdoors. Clerestory windows on the northwest face of the building allow the exhibit space, auditorium, classroom, reception area and offices to enjoy natural lighting from two sides of the spaces.

The auditorium and classroom were designed to be as flexible as possible to accommodate a variety of functions. From the classroom, a trail leads to the detached, Open Air Classroom Building at the edge of the pond. This is also the point of arrival and departure for canoeing in the Millpond.

According to Erin Sterling, AIA, of Frank Harmon Architect PA, Parks and Recreation wanted the Visitor Center to be as sustainable as possible since it is Parks and Recreation’s first LEED rated building. As a result, the project features a sensitively designed parking lot that maintains trees for shade, geothermal heating and cooling, recycled materials, locally harvested materials, rainwater cisterns for landscape irrigation, low voc paints and adhesives, daylighting and natural ventilation. The project is currently pursuing LEED Gold Certification.

Construction materials and devices include recycled steel structural members, concrete block with high fly ash content, exterior cypress wood siding harvested from felled trees as a result of hurricane Isabel, standing seam metal roof which allows for high solar reflectivity, daylight sensors that contribute to energy savings by only allowing certain lights to come on when needed, low flow plumbing fixtures in restrooms.

“The design of the building was inspired by photographs of the old wooden mill building that once had a magnificent presence on the pond. The new Visitor Center’s most important space is the entry lobby located under a dramatically sloping roof supported by exposed wood beams and columns. A two story window at the end of the lobby captures a view of the millpond beyond. The floor material in this space is 100 year old reclaimed heart pine. Our client’s goal was to give visitors a welcoming feeling by using a similar language to the materials and construction of the old mill.” said Sterling, who served as Project Manager for the project.

The opening of the Merchants Millpond Visitor Center and Open Air Classroom Building comes on the heels of the openings of both the NC Botanical Garden new Visitor Education Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Education Center in Southeast Raleigh – both public-serving and thoroughly sustainable projects. The Botanical Garden is slated for LEED Platinum certification, the “greenest” certification a building can receive.

For more information on Merchants Millpond, go to www.stateparks.com/merchants_millpond.html.

For more information on Frank Harmon Architect PA, visit www.frankharmon.com.

About Frank Harmon Architect PA:

Frank Harmon Architect PA, a multi-award-winning firm headquartered in downtown Raleigh, has extensive experience with projects that blend architecture with enhancement of and education about natural resources, including the recently completed Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Park Educational Center in Raleigh, Duke University’s Ocean Science Teaching Center in Beaufort, NC, the Walter B. Jones Center for the Sounds, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Columbia, NC, and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences’ Prairie Ridge Eco-Station in Raleigh. The firm is currently anticipating the opening of the NC Botanical Garden’s new Visitors Center in Chapel Hill and Merchants Millpond Outdoor Educational building in Gatesville, N.C. For more information, go to www.frankharmon.com

photo by Timothy Hursley

Featured in Architectural Record magazine in November 2006, the Prairie Ridge Open-air Classroom is a 1400-square-foot observation deck and screened-in educational space perched like a tree house on a hillside overlooking a 38-acre urban prairie in Raleigh, NC.

Harmon designed the simple, rustic facility so that everything about it could be used as a tool for teaching sustainability to students and other visitors at Prairie Ridge, from the use of recycled and indigenous materials to the method by which the open-air interior is comfortable nine out of 12 months of the year. Screened in on three sides, the classroom catches southwesterly breezes all year while its deep, south-facing roof overhang maximizes sun exposure in winter and shade in summer.

In 2005 the Prairie Ridge Open-air Classroom received a Merit Award from the AIA/North Carolina. In 2006 it received an Honor Award from the Triangle Chapter of AIA/NC and from Inform Magazine, which is published by AIA/Virginia.

The SAR/AIA awards were presented during a conference held October 4-7 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Frank Harmon also served as a speaker. He presented “Sustainable By Example,” a case study of the AIA/NC Center for Architecture & Design, which will be built in downtown Raleigh. Harmon won the professional design competition for the project in early 2008.

Of the 238 projects entered in the SAR/AIA design awards program, 23 received awards. The South Atlantic Region includes North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

For more information on Frank Harmon and the Prairie Ridge project, visit www.frankharmon.com.

October 13, 2009 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) – Frank Harmon Architect PA of Raleigh, NC, has completed the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s new and thoroughly “green” 29,656-square-foot  Education Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Governor Beverly Perdue attended the dedication ceremony and praised the project for being slated as the first LEED Platinum certified building in the state.

A multi-award-winning “green” architect, Frank Harmon, FAIA, designed the center as a cluster of eco-friendly buildings, connected by breezeways and covered porches, that nestles into a wooded hillside.

The “Flow of Ideas Exhibit” and Information Hall comprises the center section, along with a gift shop, library, and an area for plant sales. The Reeves Auditorium is located the western section, and the eastern wing houses classrooms and offices.

The cluster composition – or “family of buildings,” as Harmon likes to call it – serves as a gateway to the Botanical Garden and allows visitors to flow through the exterior space to the gardens behind the center and on to the trails and adjacent creek.

A new parking lot with porous paving provides access from Old Mason Farm Road to the Center. New gardens, to be developed over the next two years, will create expanded outdoor spaces.

All systems and materials in the Education Center were designed to minimize environmental impact and support human health. Green technologies include photovoltaic panels, above- and below-ground rainwater cisterns, bio-retention ponds, geothermal heating and cooling, natural day-lighting, and low-flow plumbing. Construction materials were obtained from within a 500-mile radius, including lumber milled from the site. Recycled components include steel beams made out of scrap metal from automobiles.

Embracing all the principles of sustainable design, the NC Botanical Garden Visitor’s Education Center is slated to receive LEED-Platinum certification.

“This is a gentle building with a green heart, embracing its North Carolina hillside and forming a doorway for future generations,” Harmon said.

Director Peter White has called the Center a “generously proportioned, green, and welcoming facility [that] will have a transformative impact on the way the Garden is experienced.”

Harmon noted that all stakeholders in the project — staff, visitors, faculty, Foundation and neighbors – actively participated in the design concept.

“We facilitated 20 design workshops, drawing on the energy and knowledge of all constituents to create the building and landscape design,” he said.

David Swanson served as the landscape architect for the project. Isaac Panzarella PE of Consider Design created the mechanical and green systems design. Carl Simmons PE served as civil engineering and Charles Murphy PE served as structural design. The project manager was Matt Griffith, AIA, of Frank Harmon Architecture PA.

The grand opening and dedication took place October 12 to coincide with University Day, which celebrates the laying of the cornerstone of the first building at UNC-Chapel Hill.

For more information on the North Carolina Botanical Garden and its new Education Center, go to www.ncbg.unc.edu.

For more information on Frank Harmon Architect PA, visit www.frankharmon.com.

The park is transforming 49 acres of abused, polluted wetlands into a living, natural resource for the City of Raleigh. The park’s mission is to promote understanding of and protection for an urban wetland, enhance community pride, and encourage economic development. It will provide an accessible “quiet zone” for communing with nature while preserving the natural beauty of the wetland and protecting the habitat of numerous species.

Phase one of the project is the thoroughly “green” 7000-square-foot Environmental Education Center that houses a bookshop, conference room, small library, and a kitchen, as well as classrooms and a laboratory. It was designed by Frank Harmon, FAIA, of Frank Harmon Architect PA in Raleigh with Robin C. Moore and Nilda Cosco of The Natural Learning Initiative. Other key players in the design were landscape architect Cynthia Rice and civil engineers McKim & Creed, who provided the porous paving and bio-retention design.

“Since the overall goal of Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Educational Park is to conserve and protect a natural wetland, the architectural element had to embrace the same mission,” Harmon said.

The new 7000-square-foot Educational Center conserves and protects the natural wetland by resting lightly upon the land, echoing and embracing the indigenous materials surrounding it. The structure is poised six feet above the wetlands flood plain so its footprint is minimal.

The all-wood construction utilizes recycled materials wherever possible and blends seamlessly into the landscape while an abundance of windows welcome the surroundings into the building. The windows also facilitate natural ventilation and illumination.

All circulation occurs on the exterior of the building across ”the longest back porch in North Carolina,” as Harmon calls it, inviting visitors out into the environment. The metal roof’s deep overhangs protect the interior from the harsh summer sun. A bio-retention system is also in place to filter storm water runoff before it returns to Walnut Creek. Extensive areas of native plants and flowers further blend the building into its surroundings.

The Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Park is part of the Raleigh Parks & Recreation Department. It is the cornerstone of Walnut Creek 2000, an action program developed by Partners for Environmental Justice. It was initiated by a broad base of Wake County citizens.

For detailed information on the entire plan, see www.naturalearning.org/docs/WalnutCreek.pdf. For more information on the green Education center, go to www.frankharmon.com and click on “current” projects.