By Carl W. Shea, AIA

Dubai Mall

Late in March, our managing Principal Jonathan Douglas, AIA offered me an unusual work assignment – travel to Dubai, to help with the Dubai Mall project. VOA Associates already had a person on site at the mall, and we had a couple of volunteers lined up to go soon, but we needed someone to go over right away to help hold down the fort, until the rest of the team could make it.

At first, I was somewhat surprised, and apprehensive - but after some thought, and the quick, understanding counsel of my wonderful wife, Claire, I decided to go. It would be my first trip to the Middle East, and the farthest I had travelled since going to Europe in college.

For those of you who may not know, Dubai is one of the seven United Arab Emirates - located on the north-eastern portion of the Arabian peninsula. It is bordered by Saudia Arabia, and Oman. It is also directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran. For most of the 20th century, these seven sheikdoms were controlled by Britain, but in 1971 they merged to become an independent state. In recent years, Dubai has embarked on a huge process to convert portions of its immense, oil-produced wealth into a more well-rounded economic base. This has sparked one of the biggest building booms in the world today. There is construction activity everywhere – buildings, cranes, workers, roadways, and elevated rail columns have exploded out of the desert landscape. A whole new, large, modern city has bloomed almost overnight.

Into this fray I was hurled.

I took a long, 13 hour direct flight from Atlanta, and arrived in my new, exotic workplace. Inside the airport, things seemed somewhat typical – long, circuitous international arrival corridors, customs, and baggage claim. Then I picked up my bags, and located a shuttle driver from the hotel. Once I went outside of the airport, though, the frantic hustle and bustle of the city hit me like the hot desert air. It was 8 or 9 in the evening, but there were crowds of people everywhere, and the taxi driver whisked me away along the modern highway into the seemingly endless canyon of skyscrapers towards my hotel.

After a night to recover from the jet lag, I made contact with the Dubai Principal, Doug King, AIA and we met for breakfast Saturday morning. Then we took a taxi ride to the site. For those of you who remember the “older” Disney World, it was almost like something out of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” The traffic was heavy and chaotic, we passed the Burj Dubai, and then as we approached the site from the east side, Doug instructed the driver to go INTO the construction site. After some prodding, we wound our way up an earth ramp, along the perimeter of the huge construction project, dodging workers and trucks as we went, and into the parking garage. Then we wound our way up a few more ramps, and up to the first level, where we got out and marched towards our work space. The work spaces themselves are modest, temporary offices built in the parking garage of the gigantic mall complex. Like a miniature city, there are dozens of separate offices for the many companies on site that are taking on the titanic effort of building the Dubai Mall. Our usual work week was from Sunday to Thursday, with Friday off, and then either a half, or whole work-day Saturday depending on the workload. We had somewhat limited internet and e-mail access, but it was adequate to keep communication with our co-workers in Orlando and Chicago. With the 8 hour time difference, and the one day shift in the work week, it sometimes makes for odd hours of interaction with the folks back home.

We did not design the Mall, but came in at the request of one of the Project Managers, Turner International Middle East, to help with some of the work to complete the building envelope. We helped with some of the curtainwall, cladding and door detailing and shop-drawing review taking place on site. The Dubai Mall will be the largest mall in the world - with approximately 9 million square feet of retail, around 1000 stores, an indoor aquarium, and an ice rink. There are people from countries from all over the world working on the project – it is like working at the United Nations. There is an aquarium design team from Australia, an army of laborers from India, office personnel from Lebanon, Egypt, Portugal, the Philipines, the United States, and Britain. It was an amazing experience interacting with people from all over the globe. We made friends with an Indian engineer, R.K., who was even nice enough to take us on a day trip outside of the city on one of our off days.

Our work on this particular project is nearing a big deadline, and most likely getting close to an end, but we are working to establish a permanent office in Dubai. The current and future workload there is enormous, and I am told the boom will continue for another 5 to 10 years.

I would like to thank everyone we worked with on the Dubai Mall site, Turner International, and our consultant Thornton-Tomasetti. And I would especially like to thank my company, VOA, Jonathan Douglas and Doug King, and my co-workers, Sandra, Harry, and Tony, and everyone in the Orlando office of VOA for their support, and for the fantastic experience. I am glad I went, and will most likely make another trip there. Through this, and many other travel experiences I have been fortunate enough to have had, I have realized that the world truly is an amazing place. The world is big, but it seems to be getting smaller everyday - and we all have to share it with one another. If we can keep an open mind when we meet people of different nationalities, races, or religions, we can all learn a great deal from each other - and all help to make the world a better place, one trip, and one relationship at a time.

Thank you.
CWS

Lee E. Martin, AIA, LEED AP
Gobbell Hays Partners, Inc.

Once again, this week’s state and local architectural newletters discuss political issues affecting architectural practice and the business environment in the state of Florida. By now, many of us have become numb to the well-crafted messages from political candidates, and the endless pleas for contributions that will only intensify between now and elections in the Fall. While it would be nice to tune out all that background noise and condemn the system for its imperfections (which are numerous), we do so at our own peril.

Your AIA Orlando Board of Directors voted recently to match local contributions to the AIA Florida political action committee, FAPAC, to a maximum of $3,000 because we think opposition to two specific issues is of paramount importance in this election cycle. First is the tax on professional services proposed as one means of making up the revenue shortfall created by passage of the real estate property tax rollback approved by voters last January. Many of us remember when a professional services tax was instituted in Florida more than twenty years ago. It put such a damper on business it was repealed six months after it became effective. Reaction to the enactment of the tax effectively ended the careers of some of the elected officials who were responsible for its passage. Second is the Hometown Democracy “movement”, which is in actuality anti-development sentiment fomented by a very small but vocal (and litigious) group of people who long for the Florida of old.  While Hometown Democracy did not get enough petition signatures to put its proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot this year, many leaders in the business community believe supporters will be successful in 2009.

The goal of Hometown Democracy is to take land use decisions out of the hands of elected officials, who supporters believe are corrupted by developer influence, and put every single land use proposal in a given jurisdiction to a direct vote of the people. This notion sounds innocuous until one thinks of the chaos, not to mention economic dislocation, it will create. Should such a constitutional amendment pass, land use decisions will be postponed, ballots will become thick tomes, elections will be much more expensive, and (more importantly) individual property rights will be significantly diminished when voters can determine how land will be used on a parcel-by-parcel basis. Such a concept is actually more socialistic than democratic. It has been reported that, in one Florida jurisdiction where Hometown Democracy legislation was enacted locally, Hometown Democracy supporters actually sued to invalidate election results when land use proposals they opposed were approved by voters in a free and fair election. This “movement” is truly a wolf in sheeps‘s clothing, and deserves our close scrutiny in coming months.

In addition to these two overarching issues, a number of local legislative races should be of interest to businessmen and women in general, and to architects in particular. An example of such race is the 19th State Senate District race, where challenger Belinda Ortiz is running against incumbent State Senator Gary Siplin. Stark differences exist between the two individuals vying for that legislative seat. While one candidate in that race is very pro-business, the other has a very indifferent attitude toward commerce and development. Other legislative races where the distinctions between the candidates are not so apparent also deserve our attention and involvement.

In his famous 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. discussed “the fierce urgency of now” in the context of racial relations in the United States. No one who heard that speech was the same after he focused attention on the injustice that had existed in the nation up to that time. There is a great sense of urgency now to act on issues like those described above, as well as others such as commuter rail for Central Florida, adequate funding for education, job creation, affordable housing, healthcare for those who currently cannot afford it, and others. As imperfect as our political system might be, without economic opportunity, we can be neither equal nor free. Please support FAPAC to whatever extent you are comfortable in the next thirty days, and please pick a local issue or campaign to support in this election cycle. Now more than ever, the future of Central Florida hangs in the balance.

Photo: copyright (c) 2008 AIA Orlando. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Left to right: Bill Hercules, Chuck Cole, Paul Macheske, Bob Yohe, Van Smith, members of the American College of Healthcare Architects

The Fourth Annual Healthcare Design Gala was attended by almost 100 people at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater on 29 May. This event showcases broad-reaching phenomena associated with excellent healthcare design, and creates a forum for discourse and fellowship. By all feed-back this year’s event was a major success. Architects joined engineers, construction managers, and hospital administrators in this community event celebrating what is great about Orlando architectural firms, and what challenges we are best equipped to face together.

As part of the program, Van Smith (HHCP), Chuck Cole, AIA (HuntonBrady), and Bill Hercules, AIA (Perkins+Will), all current members of the American College of Healthcare Architects, welcomed Bob Yohe, AIA (RLF), Carlos Marcet, AIA (HKS), and Paul Macheske, AIA (HuntonBrady) as new inductees into the ACHA. The ACHA is a professional credentialing body for board certifying healthcare architects. The basis for entrance is a combination of a body of successful experience, client and peer reference, and rigorous examination. AIA Orlando has the more than half of the ACHA members in the entire state of Florida.

This program and all activities of the Academy of Architecture for Health were made possible by the continued generosity of Affiliated Engineers SE, Inc.,Bovis Lend Lease, Brasfield & Gorrie, Herman Miller, Lifespan Healthcare, Robins & Morton, Skanska, TLC Engineers, Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., and X-nth.

The main program featured Ms. Robin Guenther, FAIA, LEED® AP, who along with a long-time colleague Gail Vittori have authored a significant new book, Sustainable Healthcare Architecture. In the forward by Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO, and founding chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council, he states: “At its core, green building is about making the world a better place for people to live. …nowhere is that fact more apparent than in the healthcare industry, where the sterile, imposing facilities of the past are being replaced by buildings that are filled with daylight, connected to nature, and, above all, are designed to promote health and well-being.”

Architects, interior designers, engineers, and healthcare professionals and administrators have found this book to be an essential guide to the design of healthy environments for healing. In addition to the authors’ text, the book includes essays by experts on such topics as design and stewardship; the built environment and human health; ecology and medicine; nature and healing; the carbon-neutral hospital; the integrative design process and integrated operations; and creating the twenty-first-century hospital. Architects and interior designers will be able to apply the knowledge from the essays to the design of multiple building types.

Robin shared, not only case-studies from the book, but also challenged the group to think well beyond LEED and point-acquisition to consider the place of a project’s effect in the ecological history with a challenge to participation in ecological restoration, extending the thought beyond carbon neutrality, and at the very least participation in the 2030 Challenge.

In the closing moments of the night’s program, Bill Hercules, Chairman AAH Orlando (Perkins+Will) and Chris O’Brien, Program Chair AAH Orlando (MRI) presented Bakari Burns, CEO of the Healthcare Center for the Homeless a check in support of their mission. The Healthcare Center for the Homeless is the subject of the 2007 and 2008 Healthcare Student Charrette, sponsored by AAH Orlando.

Dan Kirby, AIA

ORLANDO – Orlando architect and urban planner Dan Kirby, AIA has been named to OUC’s five-member board to complete the remainder of Lonnie Bell’s four-year term.

The OUC Board nominated Kirby at its April 8 meeting and the Orlando City Council confirmed the nomination April 21. His term will expire Dec. 31, 2009. Bell resigned from the Commission in February to accept a position with Orange County.

“Dan Kirby will be a great addition to the OUC Board. His experience and community involvement will serve our customers well,” said OUC CEO and General Manager Ken Ksionek.

Kirby is director of development services for Boyken International, a construction and development consulting firm. He has served on Mayor Buddy Dyer's Downtown Strategic Transition team, Orlando's Historic Preservation Board, as chairman of the Maitland Planning and Zoning Commission, and as vice chairman of the Orange County Urban Design Commission.

Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences

Orlando— HuntonBrady Architects, an Orlando-based architecture, interior design and planning firm, received two awards at the 2007 Gold Brick Awards ceremony sponsored by the Downtown Orlando Partnership.

The Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences nursing education building won an Award of Excellence. HuntonBrady’s design of the CB Richard Ellis’ corporate office was recognized with a Silver Brick Award.

CB Richard Ellis Corporate Office

The Gold Brick Awards acknowledge projects which affect the Downtown Development District and contribute significantly to its quality of life making Downtown Orlando a more exciting, interesting and desirable place to work, shop and live.

C.T. Hsu, FAIA

ORLANDO (June 2, 2008) – The Florida Economic Development Council (FEDC) selected C.T. Hsu, FAIA, president of C.T. Hsu + Associates, its District 6 Volunteer of the Year. The award recognizes individuals for outstanding service and volunteerism in economic development.  It was presented at the FEDC Annual Conference in Tampa, Fla. on May 20, 2008.

The Richard L. McLaughlin Economic Development Volunteers of the Year Award is named in honor of the second president of the FEDC, who firmly believed in the significance of volunteer contributions to the achievement of economic development goals for the state.  One outstanding volunteer is recognized annually in each of the nine FEDC districts.

Odeida Alvarez, Intl. Associate AIA – The Scott Partnership
Heather Voorhar, Assoc. AIA – Rogers, Lovelock & Fritz, Inc.
Eline Ransom, Intl. Associate AIA – Eline S. Ransom Design, LC
Frederick Rambo, III, Assoc. AIA

Brian Clark

New Member Spotlight

Brian Clark, Allied AIA
C&S Companies

Brian is the Director of Southeast Business Development for the C&S Companies, a 350-person national multi-disciplined engineering company. Brian oversees all of the Orlando office business development and marketing activities. Brian holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio and a Master’s in Public Administration from the George Washington University in Washington DC. Brian began his career in Washington, DC as a Legislative Assistant working on Capitol Hill for a member of the House of Representatives from the state of Ohio. He and his wife, Maite, have three young children and reside in Oviedo.

TAMPA, FL – The Tampa office of SchenkelShultz Architecture designed Marion County Public Schools’ new $33.7 million, 168,000-square-foot Horizon Academy at Marion Oaks, an adaptation of the acclaimed SchenkelShultz middle school prototype design, in Ocala, FL. Designed to initially accommodate 1,352 students in grades 4 through 8, the facility will ultimately serve as a middle school only.The academy features a secure central courtyard, 32 general classrooms, seven technology labs, three science labs, three development skills labs, and a media center with a closed circuit TV studio. Also included are a one-story administration office, cafeteria, music suite and gymnasium located at the front of the school to allow for easy after-hours usage. In addition, six vocational labs offer agriculture, business education, family and consumer science, health occupation, technology, and public service education. Grades 4 and 5 are now open and grades 6-8 will open in August 2008.