Walnut Creek Wetland Center

architect Frank Harmon, FAIA. After collecting a City of Raleigh Environmental Design Award at the Marbles Museum in downtown Raleigh, he dashed over to the NC Museum of Art in west Raleigh just in time to collect another award from the Triangle section of the American Institute of Architects’ North Carolina chapter.

On the same night, the state’s Capital City praised Harmon’s Walnut Creek Wetland Center for demonstrating green design concepts and a positive ecological footprint, and AIA Triangle bestowed a Merit Award for overall design excellent on the firm’s Lath House for N.C. State University’s JC Raulston Arboretum.

“The Walnut Creek Wetland Center was the result of nearly a decade of advocacy by the board of Partners for Environmental Justice,” Harmon said. “It was a privilege to help them build an environmental center that will serve generations of children. As Walnut Creek nurtures children, the Lath House shelters plants, and both aspire to make North Carolina a better place.”

The City of Raleigh created its annual Environmental Awards Program to recognize individuals and organizations that demonstrate “outstanding work in sustainable development and environmental stewardship.”

The Walnut Creek Wetland Center, phase one of a project that is transforming abused wetlands near downtown Raleigh into a natural resource and learning center, won the Green Design (Built Environment) category. The 7000-square-foot building is poised six feet above the wetlands flood plain. All-wood construction utilizes recycled materials wherever possible, and windows welcome the surroundings into the building as they facilitate natural ventilation and illumination. Circulation occurs outside the building across a large porch that projects out into the environment. A geothermal system provides HVAC needs, photovoltaic panels generate electricity, and the metal roof’s deep overhang protects the interior from the summer sun. Rainwater runoff is collected in cisterns and storm water runoff is filtered before it returns to Walnut Creek.

Designed by Harmon’s firm as a pro bono gift to the JC Raulston Arboretum, the Lath

JC Raulston Arboretum Lath House at NCSU.

House is an open-air laboratory for experimental horticultural techniques and methods. Designed as an abstract of a tree spreading its branches to protect the plants, according to Harmon, the structure is comprised of wooden two-by-twos that fulfill the specific light-to-shade ratio young plants need in the spring and shelter the plants as they prepare to be transitioned into larger gardens in the arboretum. The Lath House also provides an accessible community garden for the City of Raleigh, and an educational asset to the State of North Carolina within this nationally acclaimed arboretum.

Both the Walnut Creek Wetland Center and the JC Raulston Arboreum Lath House have already received international attention, appearing on ArchDaily.com, one of the largest architectural websites/ezines in the world.

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

Raleigh architect will discuss modern, sustainable design in San Antonio

Frank Harmon, FAIA

March 1, 2011 (Raleigh, NC) — Frank Harmon, FAIA, principal of Frank Harmon Architects PA in Raleigh, will be the featured speaker for the AIA Lecture Series in San Antonio, Texas, on March 30, beginning 6 p.m. in the historic Pearl Studio conference center on Grayson Street.

Harmon is a multi-award-winning leader in modern, innovative, sustainable architecture, and frequently lectures on the importance of regionally appropriate architecture – which address the particulars of climate, topography, forms, colors and culture of a region — as a means of creating both environmentally friendly architecture and a sense of place.

“A simple pleasure I enjoy each day is drinking tea from a hand-made bowl,” he explains. “I know that a potter made the bowl, and touching its shape I indirectly touch his or her hands. It’s also possible to imagine the creek bottom where the clay was dug, and the geology that millions of years ago laid down the earthy sediment that I now hold in my fingers. In this way, however small, I feel a connection to the world.

“I believe that one of the primary goals of architecture is to make it possible for people to understand the world around them. If we sense that a building is rooted in the earth and warmed by the sun, that fresh air flows through its windows and its materials are friendly to the touch, then we may feel that the building belongs to its place, and so do we. I’m not certain that architecture, whether a house or town, can always have the friendly familiarity of a hand-thrown clay bowl. But I am certain there is virtue in trying.”

The AIA San Antonio Lecture Series began in 1999 as a collaborative effort between the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the University of Texas at San Antonio. It is now presented independent of the University and focuses on architects’ professional development and continuing education credits.

Harmon’s lecture and all others in the series are free and open to the public. For more information on the entire series, visit www.aiasa.org.

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

By Alison Furuto

After two years of planning and waiting for financing, the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects, designed by Frank Harmon Architect PA, finally held its official, public groundbreaking ceremony for its new headquarters building and design center on Thursday, December 9, at 11:30 a.m.

The building will be constructed on an oddly shaped, previously unused lot on Peace and Wilmington streets between Peace College and the NC Government Complex.  The new building will also be designed to meet LEED standards at the Platinum level. The AIA NC Center for Architecture & Design will be “a modern building with a green heart,” as Frank Harmon, FAIA, likes to call it, whose firm won a professional competition for the project in 2008. More images and project description after the break…

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Future LEED-Platinum building breaks ground in downtown Raleigh.

December 8, 2010 (RALEIGH, NC) – After two years of planning and waiting for financing, the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects will finally hold its official, public groundbreaking ceremony for its new headquarters building and design center on Thursday, December 9, at 11:30 a.m. The building will be constructed on an oddly shaped, previously unused lot on Peace and Wilmington streets between Peace College and the NC Government Complex.

Designed by Frank Harmon Architect PA after the firm won a professional competition for the project in 2008, the AIA NC Center for Architecture & Design will be “a modern building with a green heart,” as Frank Harmon, FAIA, likes to call it.

The building has been designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards at the highest Platinum level, and AIA Committee On The Environment (COTE) goals, which include regional appropriateness and the use of regionally available materials, land use and site ecology, sustainable materials and methods of construction, reduced water usage, and increased energy efficiency.

“As we come out of the recession, we won’t be building in the same wasteful ways,” Harmon said. “With new emphasis on alternative energy and sustainable design, the AIA NC Center will show us a new way to build.”

Harmon also believes the Center will be a compelling example for responsible revitalization of the cores of towns and cities across the state, including Raleigh.

“It will demonstrate sustainable urban development and put Raleigh ‘on the map’ as a leader in this endeavor,” he noted, “from re-using every shovel of earth removed for the footprint, to the porously paved parking garden and state-of-the-art ‘green’ technology.”

Deferring to the natural topography, the new building will be situated along the edge of the property and porously paved so that the majority of the site will be park-like – a public park in an area of the city that doesn’t have one. This will provide an outdoor gathering space for AIA NC and community events and effectively expand AIA NC’s outreach program.

“One of AIA NC’s goals is to contribute to the vitality of that section of downtown by transforming an awkward, unused piece of property into a ‘people center’ that will, in turn, impact the businesses around it,” Harmon said.

Architecturally, the overriding objective of the building’s concept is “to demonstrate and encourage aesthetic and ecological integrity – to create a flagship for green architecture in North Carolina that is architecturally, environmentally, socially, and aesthetically inspiring,” Harmon said.

Construction should be completed in 10-12 months.

For more information on the building’s design, visit www.frankharmon.com/current/3/. For more information on AIA NC, visit www.aianc.org.

By J. Michael Welton  

When it breaks ground on its new headquarters building in downtown Raleigh on Dec. 9, the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA NC) also will be deploying three essential tools needed to scale this cliff-like economic downturn known as the Great Recession.

They are vision, courage and leadership.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

photo by Richard Johnson

By Mike Welton

On what was, a decade ago, a toxic dumping ground in southeastern Raleigh, an urban wetlands center now triumphantly embraces nature while it hovers lightly near a creek-fed, 30-acre forest.

“Our goal was to return it to the people,” said architect Frank Harmon of the Walnut Creek Urban Wetlands Center.  “We wanted to make it a symbol of environmental sustainability and accessible to everyone.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

by Vernon Mays

Natural beauty is what draws people to Merchants Millpond State Park in Gatesville, N.C. Its 760-acre lake and adjacent swamp are home to towering bald cypress and tupelo gum trees, primitive species of fish, and a countless variety of birds. Helping visitors understand the park’s unique ecosystem is a challenge, fostered by a new 7,500-square-foot visitor center, which demonstrates that even small buildings can have an important, and positive, environmental impact.

Designed by Frank Harmon Architect, of Raleigh, N.C., the modest, wood-framed structure­ incorporates a low-tech approach to sustainable design and recalls a historic mill that once occupied the site.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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.

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.

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.