St. Louis AIA Helps Young Designers Hit by Recession

The St. Louis Chapter AIA is providing financial assistance in professional development to young designers impacted by firm cutbacks in the face of declining work on the boards. AIA issued the following statement in an email to its members:

"Last week, the trustees of the AIA St. Louis Scholarship Fund met. The state of the economy and its devastating effect on our industry and profession was one of our topics. We know that the number of unemployed and under-employed architects and interns continues to grow. Many firms face extinction as more and more construction projects are placed on hold.

"To assist our profession during these uncertain days, the AIA St. Louis Scholarship Fund is allocating funds to be made available to unemployed/underemployed architects and interns on their pathway to licensure. The funds will be processed through the AIA St. Louis office as interest-free loans, to be paid back when full time employment returns, and then on a mutually agreeable and in a reasonable time frame. These are unique times, and we are undertaking a unique way to support the St. Louis architectural community.

"The funds may be borrowed for ARE testing and preparation, LEED certification testing and preparation, or for computer classes for Revit, BIM or programs that will make you a better architect or intern when you return to work. We will also consider applications for other professional growth and development opportunities.

"We know that there are impending deadlines such as the LEED testing deadline and the 3.1 ARE... We want the funds to be available immediately for these deadlines.

"The AIA St. Louis Scholarship Fund is able to undertake this unique stimulus program because of the generosity of its donors and the ongoing support it receives. We therefore, must express our gratitude to the founders and trustees of the Fund for developing and growing the fund to allow us to continue to invest in our profession."

A link to the AIA application form is available by clicking here. Email the form to Michelle Swatek executive director. Email or call 314.621.3484 for more information.

Making a Building Out of an Anthill

If you're looking for building design ideas that are more energy efficient or building systems that protect the environment, you might literally find them in your own backyard.

A far-reaching trend emerging in green design and sustainability is “Biomimicry” – basically applying the best designs in 3.8 billion years nature to a number of industries – but especially the construction of buildings, cities and communities. On March 19th, Janine Benyus, the world’s foremost expert on biomimicry spoke on the topic Washington University’s Graham Chapel.

The local hook is that St. Louis-based HOK has exclusive alliance with Benyus’ Biomimicry Guild to integrate nature’s innovations into its designs of structures and communities – an asset for a community vying for the Obama stimulus dollars that have a multitude of “green” mandates attached to them.

Biomimicry applies the knowledge of 3.8 billion years of nature to find solutions to challenges in a number of industries. Leonardo da Vinci applied this “nature inspired” design in sketching many of his inventive ideas, such as studying bird flight to concept man-made flying machines. Perhaps the most famous example of biomimicry is Velcro. Inventor George de Mestral came up with the concept after observing how burrs stuck to his clothing and his dog’s fur.

Today, biomimicry is being advanced in the design and construction of buildings and infrastructure in ways that create a more sustainable built environment that coexists in greater harmony with nature. Examples include:

• Termite mounds – In Africa, certain species of termites have built termite mounds that maintain a constant temperature of 87 degrees F to grow a fungus on which the insects feed. The insects construct air vents that keep the temperature at the appropriate level even when the outside air temperature drops to 35 degrees F at night or rises to 104 degrees F in the day. The Eastgate Centre shopping and office complex in Harare, Zimbabwe uses this termite temperature control to regulate temperate with no conventional air condition or heating.
• Butterfly wings – Morphotex is a material that imitates the color shifting properties of a butterfly’s wings. As a fiber material, it manipulates the use of light to create color through refraction, instead of using dyes or pigments, which use more energy to produce and are more harmful to the environment. It has applications for building materials and textiles.
• Lotus plant – researchers have found that the Lotus plant can shed contaminants because its leaves have small bumps and waxy crystals that force water to “ball up.” The bumps raise up dirt -molecules, which are then picked up by the water drops. This “lotus effect” is now being applied to paint and has applications to textiles, wood and glass.
• Mussels – Building products such as plywood and particle board are being produced using a glue that was inspired by a substance secreted by mussels.
• The forest floor – More cost efficient modular carpeting is being produce by mimicking the randomness of colors and patterns found on the forest floor. Rather than uniform colors on the carpet, the randomness makes it very easy to change pieces of the carpet without noticing a difference.
• Whale power – Wind turbines to produce energy for the built environment are being made more efficient thanks to an aerodynamic study of the whale flipper.

Next time you putter in the garden or take a walk in the woods, keep your eyes open. Nature may be telling you something about a better way to build.

Hard Hat Zone

Part of the annual Christmas ritual for my family is a game of “Rob Your Neighbor”. The object of the game is to stick someone else with a particularly unattractive item that has been darkening a corner of your closet. My six siblings, our many kids, and grandkids all get into the spirit. I once unloaded a plaster copy of Michelangelo’s nude statue “David” – only to have it reappear for the next five years dressed in increasingly bizarre outfits.

This year was different for me: I actually WANTED the item I wound up getting. My youngest brother had brought an old hard hat. But it was a hard hat fraught with meaning for me. It has a Day-Glo orange band, an old PRIDE logo in the same orange hue, and – Scotch-taped to the side – the original logo for St. Louis CNR. It was my Dad’s hard hat, the same one that he wore for many years in the “Perspective” column that he wrote for CNR.

The hard hat then, as now, had symbolic value beyond its role as protective gear. The hard hat represents the risk, hard work, and uncertainty that are an inherent part of the construction industry. Ours is an industry that gets things done. At New York’s Center for Architecture the current exhibit is called “Make It Work: Engineering Possibilities.” The exhibit examines new technologies, materials, and building designs that will shape the future. “Make It Work” might be the mission statement for our construction industry.

When we discussing the theme for the March/April CNR cover, Art Director Scott Tripp came up with the idea for the “stimulus drink” that appears in the photo illustration. Originally the idea was to have the model wearing a hard hat holding the can.

I’m glad that the final image focuses only on the can and that there’s no hard hat in sight. Because our industry’s role is not to create the environment in which things are built. The Stimulus Package is not something we have created – it just part of the environment in which we operate. The role of our construction industry is to take the conditions and resources as they come and to “make it work.” Making it work is the kind of job that requires rolling up your sleeves and putting on a hard hat.

Freeing the chokehold that financial institutions have on cash for projects will make a difference. The infusion of federal dollars – at no small cost to the future – for shovel-ready stimulus projects will also make a difference.

But our industry can a BIG difference by fearlessly championing new ideas and technologies, by stretching resources to the breaking point. Dan Galvin, public information manager, Gateway Constructors and the public face of “The New I-64”, spoke before the Midwest Council, American Subcontractors Association. Galvin pointed out the daring thinking that allowed MoDot and its contractors to shave four years off the project schedule. Their faith that it could be done – and their ability to get the public to embrace that idea – has created a model that is being studied for other projects around the country.

At the Society for Marketing of Professional Services (SMPS) meeting in February, Emily Andrews, executive director, U.S. Green Building Council - St. Louis Regional Chapter, moderated a “sustainability panel”comprised of Mathew Malten, MEM, LEED AP, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability, Washington University in St. Louis; Grant Lanham, LEED AP/operations specialist, Vertegy Consultants; and Christopher Hulse, LEED AP, vice president, Green Street Properties.

Malten told how the university’s desire to “do the right thing,” coupled with the construction expertise of its own facilities management team and outside construction experts was creating a steady stream of projects at Wash U. with incredibly quick ROI.

Lanham stressed the need to “be more sophisticated. We need to be really careful in how we market what it is to be sustainable. Don’t just push the idea of ‘green’.”

Hulse said that Green Street, a developer focusing on sustainable projects, is experiencing strong interest even in these times because owners are recognizing the difference that an environmentally healthy building can make in worker productivity.

The March/April of CNR addressed some of the ways in which various segments of our industry are making a difference in current economic times. One article took a measured look at green/sustainable construction and what it means in the future. In another, we examined the ways in which the area’s equipment dealers are sharing the pain of their cash-strapped contractor customers. Electrical contractors are applying more and more of their engineering expertise to help customers save energy and expedite installations, as yet another feature explained.

The construction industry doesn’t dictate the state of the economy or the mood of public sentiment… and we certainly don’t control the whims of government. Our job, whatever the situation, is to roll up our sleeves, put on our thinking caps (hard hats) and “make it work”.

Greg Behlman and Finishing the Race

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…”

“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

In the photo of me resplendent in spandex accompanying this column I’m displaying what is probably the broadest smile I’ve shown in any photo ever taken of me, dating back to childhood.

I began the day the photo was taken in bone-chilling desert cold and finished it in beating Tucson, AZ sun. I had just ridden a bicycle 110 miles. The professional riders had completed their ride hours before me. But I had not given up. I had finished.

Right now you may be struggling to stay in the race. Even if you’re holding your own you may feel some days like you’re running out of gas. In bicycling that’s called “bonking”. Riders who have trained for distance pay careful attention to their intake of liquid and food while riding. Allow yourself to become dehydrated and your muscles will cramp; forget to eat and you’ll “bonk”— run out of energy and be completely unable to continue.

Attending to the family, spiritual, physical, business, financial, social and intellectual parts of our life and keeping them in balance are particularly hard in times like these. But they were never more important than they are right now. That balance is critical to our attitude. And attitude, backed by the right amount of fuel in all aspects of our life is what enables us to finish the race.

I recently attended a half-day seminar presented by national sales coach Tom Hopkins. Early in his career Hopkins was taught that whatever kind of day, week or month he was having, the proper response when people asked how things were going was “Unbelievable.” “Either way that pretty well covers it,” Hopkins said. Tom Woodcock from Seal the Deal, whose column runs in CNR, encourages his clients to do the same.

I was sharing stories with a group of folks during cocktails at a Midwest Council American Subcontractors Association meeting. The question went round the group about how business was going, prompting a lot of eye rolling. I was just a couple of days out of the Tom Hopkins seminar, so I told the group about Tom Hopkin’s suggestion.

That exchange led to a dinner conversation between myself and Dave Behlman, one of the fellows in the group. The Behlman family owns Behlman Builders, a large finish carpentry and framing, firm, plus drywall and crane companies. I have worked with the Behlman brothers on some projects and we have become friends.

At dinner Dave and I found out that our stories were very similar. We both grew up in families of seven children with contractor dads. We both remembered that when things were lean in construction growing up it had meant day-old bread stores and powdered milk. We talked about understanding what it takes to get through tough times in business and in life.

Dave recalled a few years back when his mom was still alive they were sitting at the kitchen table talking about the time when Dave and his siblings were growing up. Dave’s son was listening and his jaw began to drop. “Grandma, were you poor?,” the boy asked. Dave’s mom thought about the question and said, "I guess we WERE poor. But we didn't know it."

Dave asked me if I had heard the latest news about his brother Greg, who is vice president at Behlman Builders. Last July Greg was diagnosed with cancer that a spread to a large mass pressing the kidneys on his back. He went through 12 weeks of chemotherapy, which lasted through November.

I had seen Greg around the first of the year and he looked great. But on January 31st he went to the emergency room with a high fever. An infection, which perplexes his doctors to this day, had attacked his lungs. It was probably some vestige of the weakness caused by the chemo. For a while it was touch-and-go. But day-by-day Greg has come back. When Dave talked to me his brother was scheduled to go to a rehab center.

Dave’s pride for his brother was obvious in his eyes as he told me the story. “My brother is determined to be there for his family,” Dave said. “He may end up needing to walk with an oxygen tank, but he will walk down the aisle when his daughters get married.”

That’s what finishing the race is all about.

If you'd like to see how Greg's doing or drop him a note, visit his web page at CaringBridge.com.