Ever since Frank Harmon won the competition for the AIANC Center for Architecture & Design in January 2008, not much had been made public about how the project was progressing. Even some of our sources close to the project seemed skeptical that the project would be built soon. Given the current state of the field and economy in general, it would have been understandable if the AIA had decided to put the project on hold. It might not have sent a positive message to its members, but understandable nevertheless.

Fortunately for us, that’s not the case. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

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.

Harmon’s seminar examined certain elements and themes that run through regional architecture — landscape; materials and construction (the “sticks and stones” of a place); weather and climate; roof forms that shelter or collect; and clients – and demonstrated how they can and should be used to create innovative, sustainable and appropriate contemporary buildings. Harmon used his and other firms’ work to illustrate the principles, then led a Q&A session between the day’s speakers and the audience.

Frank Harmon is also an associate professor or architecture at the N.C. State University College of Design and is a frequent speaker at architectural events and conferences, including American Institute of Architects’ National Convention, which was held in Los Angeles, CA, in June. He will address the Canadian Wood Council’s “Wood Design & Building Expo,” in Anaheim, CA, in November.

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

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.

The Triangle Section of the American Institute of Architects’ North Carolina Chapter presents the awards annually. AIA Triangle’s membership includes over 600 architects from a 10-county area. Of the 76 projects submitted to this year’s awards program, the Penland School received one of only four Honor Awards. The metal screens received the only Detail Award.

This is the fourth design award for The Penland School, which has received an NCAIA Honor Award, a South Atlantic Region/AIA Merit Award, and was chosen as one of only 10 international projects to receive a Business Week/Architectural Record Award. According to Harmon, the 5500-square-foot structure was designed “to embody the spirit of craft-making by clearly revealing how it was made.” Classes of 12 students use the building to design, fabricate and finishing iron objects ranging from three ounces to three tons.

The AIA Triangle Award is the second honor for Harmon’s metal screens, which he devised to both shade and protect a glass-fronted house he designed along Charleston’s Shem Creek. They also recently received a 2005 “Architectural Objects” Award from Inform, an architectural journal based in Virginia that covers four mid-Atlantic states. Fabricated by Christian Karkow of Raleigh, the screens weigh 800 pounds each yet can be easily manipulated by a single person.

Judges for the 2005 Awards were New Orleans architects Steve Dumez, AIA, and Trey Trahan, AIA, with Reed Kroloff, dean of Tulane University’s School of Architecture.

The awards were presented on April 13 at the Doris Duke Center in Durham. An exhibit of all the entries will be on display at various public venues around the Triangle throughout the year.

For more information on Frank Harmon and these two projects, visit www.frankharmon.com.

Sponsors for this year’s awards program and presentation event were Custom Brick, Adams Products, and Triangle Reprographics, Inc.

The University of North Carolina at Asheville has hired Harmon’s firm, Frank Harmon Architect, to design its new Crafts Campus for the school’s Wood, Ceramics, Metal, and Glass Arts majors. The state-of-the-art facility will be designed in accordance with the “green” or sustainable design practices for which Harmon has become known, and, consequently, will underscore the university’s stated commitment to sustainability.

“There couldn’t be a better discipline than craft to serve as a champion for the regional and global need to create places that respect our natural, sustainable resources,” Harmon said. “Arts and crafts could not exist without access to those same resources.”

The setting — an old Buncombe County Landfill – will also serve as a “laboratory” for ecological site planning and renewable energy evaluation and demonstration.

According to Harmon, this project is also “a canvas on which to build a structure that honors and celebrates the beauty of the North Carolina mountains in general and the UNCA campus in particular.”

North Carolina’s Division of Parks and Recreation hired Harmon recently to design a 6500-square-foot visitor’s center plus outdoor educational building at Merchants Mill Pond State Park in Gatesville, NC. Merchants Millpond is a Registered Natural Heritage Area that covers 1900 acres and includes the millpond and part of Lassiter Swamp.

Originally known as Norfleets, the millpond was formed when Bennetts Creek was impounded to serve as a grist and sawmill in 1811. It became known as Merchants Millpond in the early 1900s and was the county’s chief trading center. Mill operations stopped just before World War II. A.B. Coleman purchased it in the 1960s. The area became a state park in 1973 when Coleman donated it to the state to protect the area’s natural diversity, which includes old-growth stands of cypress-gum forests. The same year, the Nature Conservancy contributed 925 acres of woodlands to the park.