The Lake Tahoe Community College Mobility Hub Project has been selected to win the Tahoe Chamber Tallac Achievement Award, which celebrates exemplary infrastructure projects that revitalize and enhance the economy and community of Lake Tahoe’s south shore.

LTCC’s Mobility Hub has been in operation for more than a year. In 2021, it will become the go-to charging station for the Tahoe Transportation District’s electric buses, along with smaller 16-passenger electric shuttles. The Hub also provides shelter from the elements for public transportation riders and secure storage for bikes, boards, and other green forms of transportation, along with a handy bicycle repair station.

The Mobility Hub at LTCC is part of a broader plan to bring clean transportation to the Tahoe Basin and to encourage LTCC students, staff, the community, and visitors to the Basin to use clean and green public transportation and to cut down on the use of fossil fuels.

Al Frangione, Director of Facilities, Capital Construction and Head of Security at LTCC, graciously thanked each entity involved in the project and stated:

Architectural Nexus and their associated sub-consultants did an excellent job of taking our vision and turning it into a real project. Their patience and calming approach to this project helped us through some very complicated moments indeed.

Trim Tab, the official blog of the International Living Future Institute, currently features a piece by Juliet Grable, the author of Regenerative Retrofit: California’s first Living Building. In this article, Grable shares insight into the ILFI’s latest book, specifically the lessons of resilience offered by the Arch Nexus Sac building. Grable addresses how Arch Nexus Sacramento and Arch Nexus Salt Lake City have taken measures to be prepared for potential disruptions through a variety of resilience measures. Resilience has recently become a buzzword, but as stated by Grable “It strikes me that the whole point of resilience is to be able to weather the unexpected—whether that be a drought, an earthquake, or something as extraordinary as the Covid-19 pandemic.” Read the full article here Trim Tab: Arch Nexus Sac Offers Lessons in Resilience.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has announced its 10^th Annual FSC Leadership Awards, recognizing uncommon excellence that advances responsible forest management and conservation. These awards celebrate builders, architects, retailers, paper mills, manufacturers, environmental organizations, and many others who contribute to the movement toward responsible sourcing of forest material and forest management.

This year, fifteen organizations were recognized, including Community Rebuilds and Architectural Nexus for the Projects at Mill Creek. This recognition comes for collaboration of the first affordable housing community in the world to pursue the Living Building Challenge. The Projects at Mill Creek uses 80 percent FSC-certified wood with the remainder coming from salvaged sources.

Other recipients include Amazon, Georgia Pacific, Herman Miller, Target, and the Redwood Forest Foundation. Visit the FSC Newsroom to see the full list of accomplishments that are recognized.

Good things are happening! Construction fencing is up and work is underway at the Arch Nexus headquarters in Salt Lake City. As announced in September, this project is pursuing Living Building Challenge 4.0 certification, aiming to become the first commercial Living Certified Building in the Intermountain West.

Along with our own dynamic team of architects and designers, this project includes Jacobsen Construction as general contractor. Consultants include Meridian Engineering, BNA Consulting, Capital Engineering and ARW Engineers. Anticipated completion of the 30,000 square foot remodel is spring of 2021.

The upcoming Healthcare Design Conference features breakout session, The Many Roads to Resilient Design. This November 9^th session draws on knowledge and experience from industry leaders including Arch Nexus’ Regenerative Design Specialist, Megan Recher.

Regarding the conference Recher says “The healthcare design industry is always evolving and adapting to the ever-changing times. This conference is highlighting some key issues of healthcare design such as communications, behavioral and mental health, population health and resilience.”

Earn continuing education credit as you learn; how does today’s design anticipate the disaster-scale climate events and diseases of tomorrow?

Arch Nexus is pleased to announce plans to transform our corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City to Utah’s first commercial Living Certified Building. The official announcement took place on Wednesday, with the release of Regenerative Retrofit: California’s First Living Building. Regarding the exciting news, Arch Nexus President, Kenner Kingston stated:

When we embarked on the Arch Nexus SAC project, one of our many goals was to harvest regenerative design philosophy and knowledge and bring it to the Intermountain West. Today we are pleased to announce that we are ready to realize our goal– Arch Nexus SLC, our 30,000 square foot headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah is pursuing Living Building Challenge 4.0 certification! With bidding complete and permitting in progress, please wish us luck as we take this meaningful journey for a second time.

Ecotone Publishing has announced the release of the seventh book in the Living Building Challenge Series titled Regenerative Retrofit: California’s First Living Building, researched and written by Juliet Grable.

Regenerative Retrofit details the journey of the renowned architecture firm, Architectural Nexus, and its experiences designing, constructing, owning, and operating California’s very first Certified Living Building. The Arch Nexus Sacramento (SAC) building, a 1950s-era warehouse located in Sacramento’s bustling R Street Corridor, produces more energy than it consumes, is capable of running solely on captured rainwater, and exemplifies resilient design that connects people to nature and the human community.

Regenerative Retrofit chronicles a design process rooted in biophilic relationships to place and the collaboration among a stellar team of architects, engineers, builders, and artists who together created a remarkably resilient, low-carbon solution to today’s critical climate challenges. It also highlights the key role of “high-performance occupants” who, as stewards of one of the greenest buildings in the world, can make a significant impact to optimize building performance.

Beautifully illustrated and enlivened with the many voices of those who contributed to the project, Regenerative Retrofit provides inspiration for teams embarking on their Living Building projects, as well as a roadmap for how we can preserve and regenerate our legacy buildings for future generations.

Regenerative Retrofit: California’s First Living Building is available online and can be ordered through architecture and building bookstores throughout North America and at the Living Future store.

The 2020 AIA Utah Conference will be held in digital format, hosted with Zoom, and provided for free to all AIA Utah members and Utah members of affiliated student and professional groups. Two architects from Arch Nexus will be presenting on September 15^th during the 12:00-1:30 PM Connections Lunch and Link.

Meagan Recher, Regenerative Design Specialist at Arch Nexus will present on Resilient Design, the first steps to understanding what resilience is and how to apply our knowledge to projects.

Michelle Howard, Arch Nexus Associate and Associate instructor at the University of Utah will share insights about the psychology of color in architectural design and visual communication.

Community engagement is often a requirement in the process of a new design, but frequently it becomes a box to check while engaging in little meaningful dialogue. Effective and equitable examples that architects and planners can look to, are outlined in the latest publication of Architectural Record, Continuing Education: Community Engagement.

Community meetings that resulted in successful engagement are exemplified in Bayview-Hunters Point, a waterfront park on San Francisco’s south eastern shoreline and in Rockaway, a peninsula in the New York borough of Queens, as well as the Stockton Library in Stockton, California.

From the article: There are, of course, other means to elicit useful information. Jeff Davis, senior principal with Architectural Nexus, recommends seeking out community members at events such as children’s soccer matches or town fairs. “Go to them, find their networks, and you’ll get better feedback,” he says.

By relying on this method for a combined library and recreation center about to start construction in Stockton, California, Arch Nexus learned that community members wanted a building that allowed access to the outdoors, fostered collaboration, and included a technology center. They discovered that the surrounding neighborhood was a food desert, and the idea of including a demonstration kitchen for cooking classes came about. An edible garden and an area for a farmers market are also planned.

Arch Nexus draws on the Social Eco­nomic Environmental Design (SEED) Evaluator, a nonprofit that aims to use architecture to make positive change in underserved communities. The Evaluator is a framework for documentation and measurement based on five principles, including advocating for those who have a limited voice in public life, promoting an inclusive design process, and conserving resources and reducing waste.

One AIA learning unit (LU), can be earned by reading the original article from Architectural Record.

Architectural Nexus is pleased to be listed among global design leaders in ENR’s Top 100 Green Design Firms. The interest in sustainable and regenerative design and construction can be seen in the results of the 2020 ENR Top Green survey. As a group, the Top 100 Green Design Firms generated $7.28 billion in 2019 design revenue from projects registered with and actively seeking certification from third-party rating groups under sustainable-design standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge (LBC). This represents a 7.5% increase from $6.77 billion in 2018.

In some ways, the pandemic is changing the conversation around green. For many, the relationship between buildings and environmental health has been seen as indirect, benefitting future generations. Now, green design is evolving from an approach to aid in preserving the environment to a more fundamental concern over environmental and human health.

Regarding the recognition, company president Kenner Kingston says: We are gratified and encouraged to be making our first appearance on this list. Architectural Nexus looks forward to moving up over time thanks to our clients who are understanding more and more how important it is that we provide comprehensive regenerative design solutions in our work. By creating real connections to place, treating stormwater as a resource rather than a nuisance, delivering on the promise of electrification, and ensuring that only healthy building materials get into our projects, we are leveraging state-of-the-shelf technology to make better places for people.