awards and news

“From site, client, and experience, Frank Harmon spins a highly specific, easy-living modernism.” - Vernon Mays, Residential Architect magazine

Raleigh Designers Confront Sprawling Development In The Triangle On NBC 17’s “At Issue”

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

August 3, 2005 (RALEIGH, NC) –  On Sunday, August 14, Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA, and landscape architect Dick Bell, FASLA, will appear on NBC 17’s “At Issue” with host Monty Knight, to tackle the subject, “Development: Two Much Too Fast or Worth The Price?”

“I think it’s a big mistake to equate development with progress,” Harmon said recently. “The progress w need is community development, not this proliferation of suburbs. We need participation — in community well-being and in living sustainably with the earth. If I have a theme, it’s participation with the natural world and the community.”

In a May 2, 2005 “Point of View” column in the Raleigh News & Observer, Dick Bell wrote, “With wanton disregard for our natural systems and disrespect for our regional history and culture, we have embraced a throwaway society that will leave our children a shadow of what could have been… We may not have intended a throwaway society, but we’ve been living it for at least 65 years. As a result, our landfills are stuffed with the debris of our existence. We trash our finite natural resources. We trash our future through overindulgence and waste. And we trash the futures of our children by not showing them the world they will inherit from us — a world deplete of resources and opportunities — if we don’t put a stop to rampant, throwaway development.”

Joining Knight, Harmon, and Bell will be regular panelists Cash Michaels, Donna Martinez and other guests.

“At Issue” airs every Sunday on NBC 17 at 11 a.m. following “Meet The Press” with Tim Russert. For more information, visit www.nbc17.com.

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

Raleigh Designers Present Seminars at Major East Coast Conference & Expo

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

June 7, 2005 (RALEIGH, NC) Architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA, and landscape architect Dick Bell, FASLA, both of Raleigh, will present seminars at the 17th annual Architecture Exchange East Conference and Expo (ArchEx) to be held in Richmond, Va., November 3-4, sponsored by the Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects. ArchEx is a major educational and professional forum for all building and design professionals and related industry along the east coast.

Harmon’s seminar, entitled “Architecture With A Conscience: Designing Contemporary Regional Architecture,” will illustrate “the importance of place and region to innovative, appropriate and sustainable design,” he said, using his and other architects’ projects as examples. He hopes participants will learn “why clients’ needs are an architect’s greatest creative source; how attention to climate, wind patterns and hydrology can liberate architecture; and how the roots of sustainable design are found in our vernacular architecture.”

Bell’s seminar, entitled “The Creation of Sustainable Environments: The Genesis Of Two Projects,” will “shed light on what it takes to create an urban project of value within a sea of suburban mediocrity,” he said, “using two of my own projects as case studies.” Those projects are North Carolina State University’s “Brickyard” plaza and a proposed mixed-use redevelopment for Bell’s own Water Garden Office Park on Raleigh’s Glenwood Avenue. His objective is to give participants “a keen grasp of the fact that landscape architecture must encompass land planning within the natural systems it effects.”

ArchEx, promoted as “three days of learning, networking and exchanging ideas,” is open to architects, landscape architects, engineers, interior designers, contractors, planners, students and industry leaders. It includes 67,000 square feet of space of industry support exhibitions as well as Design Showcase, which features works by architects, landscape architects and interior designers. For more information and registration, visit the website: www.archex.net or contact Dr. Linda Halstead, Director of Professional Development by email: lhalstead@aiava.org.