As Managing Director of Busby Perkins+Will, Peter is involved in the design and sustainable direction of each project the firm engages. Overseeing design offices in Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington, and now San Francisco, Peter directs more than 100 employees working on projects across Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. As a director of Perkins+Will since 2004, Peter has expanded his role to include sustainable design leadership to the firm’s 23 offices worldwide; and Perkins+Will has been recognized internationally as the leader in sustainable building design, having the largest portfolio of built green projects in North America. Read more...
Jeanne Gang, founder of Studio Gang, a leading Chicago-based architecture firm, received her B. Arch degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana in 1986. After obtaining a M.Arch degree from Harvard's GSD and a fellowship to the ETH in Zürich, she spent two years with the Office of Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, then with Booth/Hansen Associates in Chicago. After the founding of Studio Gang Architects in 1997, the firm received several commissions, including the Starlight Theater in Rockford, Illinois. The firm later won two national competitions, The Ford Calumet Environmental Center and the Hoboken (NJ) 9/11 Memorial Competition. Later she was the runnerup finalist in the Taipei Pop Music Center Competition, Taiwan. A MacArthur genius grant is among the various awards she has received.
Craig Hartman joined Skidmore Owings and Merrill immediately after receiving his B.Arch from the new Ball State architecture program in Muncie, Indiana. At SOM he was mentored by Principal, Walter Netsch, who became a life-long friend. By 1985 he became a design partner at SOM's Houston office, then Partner-in-Charge at SOM's Washington office two years later. There he collaborated with Charles Correa and Nikken Sekkei on the Second Place entry to the World Bank competition. Shortly thereafter he moved to SOM's West Coast region in San Francisco as Partner-in-Charge. In 1993 he won the San Francisco International Terminal Competition, which was completed in 2000. SOM's San Francisco office became very active in China, winning competitions for two large projects in 1993 and 1994. That same year, SOM won the extension competition for the California State Office Building in San Francisco. Led by Craig, SOM prevailed over four other high-profile firms in an invited 2001 competition for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing—which opened in 2008. In neighboring Oakland, SOM was invited as the only U.S.-based firm to participate in the Christ the Light Cathedral competition, where they were again up against stiff competition, Santiago Calatrava among others. After winning the competition, the site was changed to a new location, but the result drew wide-spread acclaim upon the building's dedication in 2009.
The updating and modernization of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport has been well overdue. Aside from occasional problems caused by Chicago’s winter storms, congestion at the airport has led air travelers to avoid the airport when catching a connecting flight is on the agenda. So Chicago, noted for its modern architecture and the home of several high-profile architecture firms, decided to turn to an invited competition for a solution to these issues.
Competitions in Chicago in the recent past have been anything but encouraging, especially when transparency is an issue. During the competition for the Obama Center on the South Side, the Obama Foundation, which was responsible for the administration of that “competition,” was anything but a model of transparency; and to this day, none of the finalist designs, other than that of the winner, have seen the light of day. In the case of the O’Hare project, videos submitted by the five finalists teams were on public display, and the public was even asked to vote for their favorite.
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell
OFFICE 52 Architecture
Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA
Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA
Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA
Hard cover; 96 pages in color
ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
In these times when political emotions run high and gun violence is the norm, not the exception; and when emotions no longer are held in check, but encouraged by our leaders, minorities become easy targets for those who adhere to ideologies based primarily on exclusivity and hate.
The LGBT community has long been the target of various segments of our society; but the massacre that took place at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a favorite hangout for gays, elevated this phenomenon to a new level. After an event that claimed the lives of 49 victims, injured 68 others, and left hundreds permanently traumatized, it should come as no surprise that a memorial to this tragedy has been front and center in the minds of the community ever since. Because the very nature of this event has drawn nationwide attention, the community wanted to get it right. So it was only logical that they would turn to a competition as the most viable vehicle for arriving at a solution for the design of a memorial, as well as a museum. For this, the onePULSE Foundation was formed, to memorialize this tragedy and “ensure that Pulse”s legacy of love, acceptance and hope will never be lost.”
As part of a policy to relocate archives of local interest outside of major Bavarian cities, a competition was staged for the design of a new archive in Kitzingen, 12 miles from the provincial capital city of Würzburg, Germany. The competition was open to qualified teams in the EU, with 25 firms identified to take part in a competition. Since five firms were preinvited, 20 openings were available for the 79 applicants that vied for participation in the competition. In the end, 23 firms submitted designs for the final adjudication process.
In July 2019 the Vilnius Concert Hall competition jury began its deliberations to identify a suitable design for this major performing arts project. As one might have anticipated, two of thejurors on the seven member panel, Ole Gustavsen (Snohetta) and Andreas Cukrowicz (Nachbaur Architekten) had won high profile competitions for similar music center projects—in Oslo and Munich.The jury was confronted with a formidable task, as the competition, organized according to UIA regulations and anonymous in its format, had attracted 248 entries from around the world. For this one-stage competition, the organizers listed the following evaluation criteria, whereby the order of the criteria was not to reflect any priority:
Memorials to commemorate atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II have taken many forms. Holocaust museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by Pei Cobb Freed or the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind, all endeavor to paint a broad picture, including narratives covering most of the major events and sites. Former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Theresienstadt and Buchenwald have been frequent tour destinations. In the case of Buchenwald, the local city of Weimar has placed pictures of “Witnesses” throughout the downtown area as a reminder of the Nazi legacy.
IMPORTANT NOTICE : Unless otherwise indicated, photographs of buildings and
projects are from professional or institutional archives. All reproduction is prohibited
unless authorized by the architects, designers, office managers, consortia or archives
centers concerned. The Competition Project, Inc. is not held responsible for any
omissions or inaccuracies, but appreciate all comments and pertinent information that
will permit necessary modifications during future updates.
Craig Hartman joined Skidmore Owings and Merrill immediately after receiving his B.Arch from the new Ball State architecture program in Muncie, Indiana. At SOM he was mentored by Principal, Walter Netsch, who became a life-long friend. By 1985 he became a design partner at SOM's Houston office, then Partner-in-Charge at SOM's Washington office two years later. There he collaborated with Charles Correa and Nikken Sekkei on the Second Place entry to the World Bank competition. 
