Groundbreaking for the new Draper Recreation Center took place on Thursday, June 21. Architects and designers from Arch Nexus are working to ensure that the 60,000 square foot facility fosters an energetic space that is appealing to all ages, all year. In addition to being designed for LEED gold certification, the center will feature a competition pool, a leisure pool, connectivity to the existing outdoor pool, fitness and multi-use facilities, a party room, and a fieldhouse.

According to Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, the rec center will be affordable for everyone. “It will be facilities like this one …as we build out a network of recreational opportunities that will help our residents to be active and get out and enjoy this community” stated McAdams. The facility is expected to be completed by 2020.

About Us:
Architectural Nexus is a people driven, employee-owned, architectural design firm focused on stewardship, inspiration and regeneration. We have offices in two locations: our double LEED Platinum headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah and an office in Sacramento, California which recently became California’s first Living Certified Building.

Position Description:
We are looking for someone who is passionate about sustainability to work collaboratively as part of our design teams to advance regenerative design goals. These efforts would include energy modeling, LEED documentation, and energy bench-marking. Candidates should also have an overall understanding of building science and how buildings play a part of the larger fabric of community, culture, and the environment.

Benefits:
Nexus is an ESOP (employee-owned company).
Our SLC office is LEED DOUBLE PLATINUM (NC & EB).
Our Sacramento Office is LEED Platinum and LIVING CERTIFIED (First in California).
We offer large-firm opportunities in a small-firm culture.
Competitive salaries based on experience and abilities.
Our benefits package includes: Excellent medical and dental benefits, matching 401(k) plan, twice yearly incentive and accountability bonus program, excellent holiday and vacation benefits.

Skills and Qualifications:
must be able to work collaboratively to supply design teams with meaningful insight to inform design direction
experience with EQuest (or other comparable energy modeling software) required
experience with LEED documentation required
experience with Energy Star Portfolio Manager required
experience with Revit a plus
experience with daylight simulation modeling a plus

Please email resumes to:

Holli Adams, AIA
Principal | Director of HR
hadams@archnexus.com

Camille Acord
HR Coordinator
cacord@archnexus.com

Thanks for sending your resume; we look forward to getting to know you.

On Thursday, June 7^th AIA Central Valley presents the Healthy Materials Symposium. The event will feature nine experts through three different sessions, exploring the impacts of materials on human and environmental health, learning of the tools available for prioritizing healthy materials, and identifying strategies for project teams to make informed decisions that promote healthy and sustainable environments.

Featured Speaker: Alex Muller is the Manager for the Living Product Challenge (LPC) at the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). The LPC is an international product sustainability framework and certification program, incentivizing the creation of healthy, regenerative products for all. Alex works daily with manufacturers pursuing the program on supply chain issues, material health and life cycle analysis; and with the program’s third party assessors to continually streamline and evolve the program, to scale its adoption.

Arch|Nexus Director of Sustainability, Patty Karapinar, will present during session 2: Identifying Tools of the Trade. Patty has thirty years of professional experience, including her recent work on the Arch|Nexus SAC location – the first Living Building in California and the first Living Building that is an adaptive reuse of an existing building.

To read more about the symposium or to register, click here.

Arch Nexus is pleased to announce that Jennifer E. Styduhar, PLA, LEED AP –  is now ISA Certified Arborist #WE-12188A. The International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) is a network of practitioners, scientists, and students that are recognized as the global source for arboricultural information and knowledge. ISA is known as the worldwide network for science-based information on the value of proper tree care and the benefits of trees to the environment. ISA Certified Arborists meet the standard of qualified, competent, and safe tree care professionals who are sought out the by the public, government organizations, and other professions.

Along with Jennifer’s certification, new, in-house services available from Arch Nexus include:

Urban Forest Management Plans

Tree Health Care/Maintenance Plans

Existing Tree Inventory and Cataloging

Tree Assessment and Risk Management

“Right Tree, Right Place” approach to Tree Selection

Arch Nexus’ Director of Sustainability, Patty Karapinar, presented at the April 2018 Getting to Zero National Forum, held in Pittsburg Pennsylvania. Patty, along with Nexus Energy Analyst, David Griffin, presented: How Rigorous Planning and Effective Design Help Hit Ultra-Low Energy Goals 

It takes collaboration between a number of stakeholders to design and construct zero energy projects. Join the owner, architect, engineer, and LEED consultant on two small- to mid-sized office buildings both working toward ZE and Living Building Challenge design goals. These include the first city building (and fourth building of any type) in the world to achieve ZE and Living Building Challenge in Fort Collins, and a Living Building in Sacramento. Hear perspectives on how a strong integrative process leveraged synergies between occupant, building, and district scale goals and how you can apply these strategies in your own community.

The presentation slideshow is now available online here.

Arch Nexus prides itself on being a family-friendly organization. We believe that a family-friendly culture is not only good for families, it is also good for business. The balance between family life and business life is an essential part of a sustainable, regenerative business. Our industry is notorious for tight deadlines that can lead to long hours, late nights, high stress, and worker burn-out. For many years, Arch Nexus has espoused a culture of flexible work schedules and work-from-home opportunities to help create a better work/family balance. Time away from work is essential to re-energizing so that people can bring their best and brightest selves to their professional lives.

It is with great pleasure and in the spirit of  family-friendliness and regeneration that we announce a new benefit: Paid Family Leave. In addition to the 12 weeks of employment protected leave time provided by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Arch Nexus now offers all new mothers 6 weeks of paid maternity leave. Furthermore, all eligible employees at Arch Nexus will receive 2 weeks of paid parental and spousal leave. These benefits are in addition to personal paid time off.

Every person who works at Arch Nexus is highly valued. Our hope is that the benefits and policies such as Paid Family Leave will support family, health, financial security, and a balanced life that will allow employees to thrive at work as well as at home.

Arch|Nexus President, Kenner Kingston, is presenting at the 2018 International Living Future Institute Conference in Portland, Oregon. Kenner, along with others will share overviews and lessons learned from Living Building Challenge projects in the Thursday session BEYOND THE ABC’S OF LBC: CERTIFIED PROJECT CASE STUDIES. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of how team structure, design process, climate and context have impacted projects of various types, scales and transects.

Friday, May 4^th, Kenner presents SUCCESS IS ACTION-ORIENTED: FRAMEWORKS AND MINDSETS FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE OPERATIONS. It takes preparation for owners to embrace the LBC as an operational philosophy and inspire regular authentic actions. Friday’s session will demonstrate how the Challenge enhances the experience of all people who pursue it through the crucible that is DOING. Click here for more information on the LF18 conference and sessions.

In 2015, we set out to find a new space for our growing business in Sacramento. As we sought a location that would provide equitable amenities as compared to our Salt Lake City office, we decided to take the opportunity to do something bold. Our aim was to rehabilitate an existing building by turning it into something that closely aligned with our own core values of inspiration, stewardship, and regeneration. For this cause, we embraced the Living Building Challenge. This challenge has lead us on a journey of discovery that has spanned the past three years. Today, it is with great pleasure that we are able to announce that Arch | Nexus SAC is Living Certified!

This represents the 19th Living Certified project in the world by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). Of those 19, Arch | Nexus SAC is the first Living Certified project in California and the first anywhere that is an adaptive re-use of an existing building. Regarding this accomplishment, Arch Nexus President Kenner Kingston stated, “This building is evidence of how the gap that has evolved between people and nature can be bridged through architecture, rather than divided by it.”

Along the road to certification we encountered many challenges. Some we had anticipated such as the heavy burden of documenting the makeup of the many materials found in the building. Given our experience with occupant engagement we were also aware of the potential challenges that existed in achieving net-positive energy in a high-performance office building dominated by plug loads. Perhaps the most daunting obstacle that the project team envisioned was the imperative to achieve net-positive water in a State dominated by recurring droughts.

There were also a few surprising challenges that we didn’t expect. We didn’t anticipate that an air test to measure particulate matter inside our naturally ventilated building would take place immediately after a series of devastating fires in the region (fueled by climate change). We also didn’t expect to form such a strong partnership with the local utility district; SMUD representatives were present at our very first design charrette and they have been a tremendously valuable partner in making this building a reality.

Through these, and many other experiences, we learned an incredible amount about how to design and operate buildings that are a part of the natural ecosystem. Buildings have, and continue to be, designed, built, and operated in ways that harm our environment. The past couple of decades have seen a gradual trend in design and construction that has moved our industry towards doing less harm, but the idea of making buildings that regenerate the environment and operate as thriving, living entities is something that remains very novel.

Being the first to do anything is not easy. It is our hope that by demonstrating how a Living Certified Building is designed, built, and operated regenerative architecture can move out of the novel and into the norm.

Employees from Arch|Nexus SAC participated in an Earth Day festival at Sutter Middle School. Using the school garden designed by Arch|Nexus, the  garden club harvested vegetables, cooked up a meal and served it at the event.

Arch|Nexus and Sacramento City Unified School District worked together to create the Urban Agriculture Garden at Sutter Middle School. The project helps the Arch|Nexus SAC office in their effort to become the first certified Living Building in the state of California. Since the project area at Arch|Nexus SAC could not support all of the urban agriculture garden space required to fulfil the Urban Agriculture Imperative of the Living Building Challenge, the project has utilized an option known as Scale Jumping, which allows cooperation between projects and neighboring properties, to create solutions otherwise not possible.

The Urban Agriculture Garden at Sutter Middle School uses the same sustainable methods used to create Arch|Nexus SAC and includes solutions that support California’s water conservation goals.  The garden has been designed to use collected rain water as its source for water. Rainwater is collected on the roof of the main school building, then directed to building roof drains and gravity fed directly into two above grade cisterns. Rainwater is stored and distributed as needed for garden irrigation. Additionally, all of the materials used to create this garden have been thoroughly vetted to be Red List compliant, meaning they are free of harmful chemicals.

About Us:
Architectural Nexus is a people driven, employee-owned, architectural design firm focused on stewardship, inspiration and regeneration. We have offices in two locations: our double LEED Platinum headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah and an office in Sacramento, California. Our Sacramento office is located in the Historic R Street community and is seeking Living Building certification as one of the greenest buildings in the world.

Position Description:
The Site Design group at Arch Nexus includes landscape architects and designers in Salt Lake City, Utah and Sacramento, California. We are actively engaged in the site design and landscape architecture for a multitude of projects including community recreation centers and libraries, hospitals and medical office buildings, civic and institutional buildings, mixed-use urban residential, and large scale land planning projects. Our projects typically take us from early, collaborative conceptual design through construction documents and construction administration.

Benefits:
Nexus is an ESOP (employee-owned company).
Our SLC office is LEED DOUBLE PLATINUM (NC & EB).
Our Sacramento Office is a LBC Candidate and LEED PLATINUM NC (EB pending).
We offer large-firm opportunities in a small-firm culture.
Competitive salaries based on experience and abilities.
Our benefits package includes: Excellent medical and dental benefits, matching 401(k) plan, twice yearly incentive and accountability bonus program, excellent holiday and vacation benefits.

Skills and Qualifications:
Bachelors or Masters degree from an accredited landscape architecture program
minimum 1-3 years of professional office experience
licensure is not required, but on-track for licensure is a plus
must enjoy working in a collaborative environment on exciting projects
proficiency in generating construction document-level site plans, planting plans, irrigation plans, and construction details required
proficiency in AutoCAD and/or Civil 3D is required, with experience in LandFX and Blue-Beam a plus
proficiency with Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign) required
proficiency with Sketch-Up required
experience with Lumion a plus
ability to generate high quality hand graphics and color renderings a plus

Email resumes to:

Holli Adams, AIA
Principal | Director of HR
hadams@archnexus.com

Camille Acord
HR Coordinator
cacord@archnexus.com

Thanks for sending your resume; we look forward to getting to know you.