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.

On Friday, April 6th, leaders from Arch Nexus and MarketOne Builders were in attendance at the Best of the Best Awards ceremony to receive the Green Project of the Year Award from Engineering News Record.

In accepting the Green Project of the Year Award, Arch Nexus President Kenner Kingston said, “these teams worked tirelessly for the last three years. This project was first conceived in 2015 and we are thankful to realize this opportunity.” He also added this challenge to the leadership in attendance by asking everyone to “consider the impact that your business has and what you can do to lift your values.”

To read ENR’s full story on Arch | Nexus SAC, please click here.

Get an inside look at the creation of a world-renowned cancer treatment center… in LEGO form. Taking more than 250 hours and 47,000 LEGO bricks to complete, Arch|Nexus Visualization Artist, Josh Allred gives you a deeper understanding of architectural modeling.

On Saturday March 17th, The Leonardo unveiled to the public a new exhibit entitled “City Blocks”. This exhibit celebrates some of Salt Lake City’s most iconic architecture built from LEGO bricks. Included in the exhibit are two models created by  Arch Nexus artist Josh Allred: The Huntsman Cancer institute and Temple Square.

The HCI model features all four phases of the treatment and research center and was painstakingly built from  48,000 individual bricks and took 250 hours to complete. On building the model, Josh said “Of course, I loved LEGO as a kid so building this model brought back some nostalgic emotions. Both my Grandmother and Aunt have received treatment at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and I have worked on the design of the facility as a visualization artist over the past decade. I feel a strong connection to the building and it is an honor to have this on display at The Leonardo.”

Of the Temple Square model, LDS Church representative Jake Olmstead said the model is an “outstanding” representation the most iconic LDS architecture.

The exhibit will be open for the next several months. For news coverage of the event please see the following links:

Salt Lake Tribune

Deseret News

KUTV

The latest edition of ENR Magazine spotlights the projects that have been honored with the Best of the Best Awards. The piece written about Arch|Nexus Sac (Best Green Project) highlights the intense level of integrated and collaborative design involved in the process. The article also describes how engagement with building occupants significantly reduced energy consumption. One Best of the Best judge is quoted saying: “we have a lot more to learn for the future from Arch Nexus than any of the other green projects. It sends a message, regardless of its scale, that this can be done in a way that is affordable, achievable and safe. The full article can be read here.

Professionals from Arch Nexus presented at the Annual Intermountain Sustainability Summit held this week in Ogden, Utah. David W Griffin II, Patty Karapinar and Holli Adams presented Living Building Challenge: Making Ideals a Reality.

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) is a performance-based rating system which sets a high bar for buildings of the future. Among other things, the LBC requires net-zero water, rigorous materials selection, and Net Positive Energy for certification. Griffin, Karapinar and Adams detailed how Arch Nexus, turned these ideals into practice when designing the Arch|Nexus SAC office. They discussed the many challenges faced throughout the design process, the transition to occupancy, and tracking efforts to ensure certification compliance.

From the time that Arch | Nexus SAC was under construction and through the present we have scheduled and hosted tours for anyone who is interested in seeing our regenerative office up close. On March 1st we will open our office to the public for anyone to tour our building without the need for scheduling. Please drop by our office at 930 R Street where tours will be conducted every hour that highlight the aspects of our Living Building such as the net-positive energy system, the net-positive water system, the occupant engagement platform, and a variety of other features that make our office unique.