HOK (as 360 Architecture), Boulevard Brewing Expansion, Kansas City, MO, 2008
HOK, National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction for NOAA, Riverdale Park, MD, 2012
The language that architects use to define space is daylight. Each project offers new potential for discovery, for understanding the site and program, and an opportunity to do a thoughtfully designed building that will bring meaning and enjoyment to the people who will occupy it.
Gyo Obata of HOK, Architect Clients Reflections, 2010
HOK, Plan of the Green Line Redevelopment Corridor for Downtown, Atlanta, GA, 2011-2
HOK's Plan for the Green Line Redevelopment Corridor preceeded and informed FXFOWLE + Cooper Carry's Proposal for the MultiModal Passenger Terminal (MMPT) of this year (see previous). HOK's design considers the urban form of the entire corridor and northern part of the Gulch, while the latter proposal considers mainly the incorporation of the various transportation systems into the hub. This development is one of the most complex in the history of Atlanta, and needs to be analyzed and critiqued heavily.
HOK Architects, Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL, c. 2011 (via e-architect; mouseionmine)
"It is situated on a Florida waterfront, which can experience powerful hurricanes. The design is a rigorous and practical solution to the need to protect the collection and exhibit a great collection. The building is constructed of exposed cast-in-place reinforced concrete walls, 18” thick, hurricane resistant up to 165 MPH winds. The art, located above flood plane on the third floor, is protected from up to a Category 5 hurricane storm surge.
The design concept is drawn directly from the building’s purpose. The museum will house some of the most important works of Salvador Dalí –the most prolific and influential surrealist the art world has ever known. It is important that the building speak to the surreal, without being trite. A strong, poured-concrete Euclidean “treasure box” protects the art, but is then broken, disrupted, by the flowing, organic, triangulated glass “Enigma”, opens the museum to the bay and sky. It is as though a glittering jewel is bursting from the “treasure box”. This contrast between the rational world of the conscious and the more intuitive, surprising natural world is a constant theme of Dalí’s work and the design is an abstract reference to this aspect of his work.
The glass “Enigma” which bursts from the building and forms the atrium roof and cascades to the ground is the first use of this type of free-form geodesic geometry in the US. Dali was a friend and admirer of Buckminster Fuller, and a geodesic dome crowns Dali’s own museum in Figueres, Spain. But Fuller’s great work was restricted by the technology of his time to platonic solid and great circle geometries, in order to limit the number of different components. The flowing, free-form use of geodesic triangulation is a very recent innovation permitted by modern computer analysis and digitally controlled fabrication, which permits each component to be unique. No glass panel, structural node or strut is precisely the same, and all identified by bar code to facilitate fabrication, shipping and assembly. This has permitted us to create a family of shapes which while structurally robust more closely resembles the flow of liquids in nature. The soaring poured-in-place spiral stair energizes the glass atrium and connects the ground level entrance to the galleries of the third level. It is also an allusion to Dali’s fascination with DNA, the golden rectangle and the Fibonacci series. It is a structural tour-de-force, with the reinforced concrete spiral functioning as a tensioned spring held at ground level and at the third floor, with the stair treads cantilevered from the central spiral. All wooden form marks and artefacts of its construction are preserved to contrast with the more finished materials of the railings and interior.
HOK's Nikki Duffner Shares Career Advice in Architectural Record (1 June 2009). Other career advice from Modative and Arch Record.