Tomorrow, in cities around the globe, artists, activists and citizens will temporarily transform metered parking spaces into public parks and other social spaces, as part of an annual event called “PARK(ing) Day.”

PARK(ing) Day began in 2005, when San Francisco-based art and design studio, Rebar,  challenged people to rethink the way streets are used and to recognize the need for broad-based changes to urban infrastructure. “In urban centers around the world, inexpensive curbside parking results in increased traffic, wasted fuel and more pollution,” says Rebar’s Matthew Passmore. “The planning strategies that generated these conditions are not sustainable, nor do they promote a healthy, vibrant human habitat. PARK(ing) Day is about re-imagining the possibilities of the urban landscape.”

PARK(ing) Day takes place annually on the second Friday every September. Locally, Arch Nexus will host an interactive installation for PARK(ing) Day on Broadway Street in Salt Lake City. Stroll the city street from 8:00 AM to 4:00 pm to see all the creative designs. Find Arch Nexus at 30 Broadway (in front of Doc u Mart).

Arch Nexus is proud to host the Experience Architecture: COTE Top Ten Exhibit, the industries premier program celebrating great design and great performance. Now in its 21st year, the Top Ten Awards highlight sustainable projects that protect and enhance the environment. Exhibit opens during Sacramento’s Second Saturday in September. Click here for more details.

Students at Bella Vista High School in Fair Oaks, CA are enjoying a new state of the art STEM campus. The school, known for being a leading science program, now has 22,000 square feet of space centered on STEM education, including a 5,000-square-foot flexible learning center.

The Arch Nexus design is an expansion and retrofit of Bella Vista High’s existing science building, which joins two concrete shop buildings together to create 11 new state-of-the-art “Smart Classrooms.”

The installation of a steel framed Makerspace unifies the once divided area, provides protection from future seismic damage, and compliments the efforts of STEM based education. Students and teachers alike are inspired by the new space. You can see the impression it has had on teachers and students in this short video. For more information on the Bella Vista STEM Building, click here.

Impressing judges with its approach to net-positive environmental effects, Arch|Nexus SAC was noted to have been “the most experimental and the most well-documented project.” It has already received LEED V4 Platinum Certification and aims to be the first fully certified Living Building in California, earning Arch|Nexus SAC the Sustainable Recognition award from the American Institute of Architects Central Valley Chapter.

From AIACV: “The People who work in the Arch|Nexus SAC building are the key organism to the building’s ecosystem, from monitoring their own personal energy usage to operating the natural ventilation system and learning how to interact with the systems. Engagement is necessary to the building functioning well — such as having employees commute by bicycle, or take showers at work, which in turn, activates the grey water system that feeds the living wall. The building itself encourages and requires healthy lifestyles from its workers.”

The 75^th Anniversary Gala and Design Awards Presentation will take place Saturday, September 23, at the Lincoln Plaza West Atrium from 6 P.M to 10 P.M. For more information on the awards and calendar of events, click here.

Arch Nexus associate, Travis Maughan, recently helped coordinate a food design event hosted at the Salt Lake City Public Library. Healthcare organizations from around the valley built six different sculptures out of bagged, canned and boxed food – that will be donated to the Utah Food Bank.

Travis offered architectural expertise in the designs by meeting with individual teams beforehand and helping their ideas become a reality. “I didn’t want to come up with the designs for them, my role was to help them improve their designs and keep them standing.” says Maughan. For example, one group needed help calculating how many cans they would need. Another group found that they were working with an uneven floor “cans were rolling apart and I taught them about shimming it” added Maughan. Of all the finished sculptures, Maughan says the Avocado was his favorite. “That had the highest level of difficulty.”

The food design project is something Arch Nexus is proud to participate in. According Leslie Chan, a dietitian at the Salt Lake County Health Department, a total of 13,900 pounds, or approximately 11,643 meals, were donated to the Utah Food Bank through this event. Click here to read more on this from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Arch Nexus is proud to support and host the USGBC leadership briefing and green homes tour kickoff event to be held this Friday August 18th at the Arch | Nexus SLC office. The event will be an opportunity to network with area industry leaders, tour the LEED Double Platinum design studio, and get a preview of the Green Homes Tours to be held on August 19th. These events are part of the “Good to be Green” events in August presented by USGBC Utah.

For more details and to register for this event please click here.

The spotlight is on Arch|Nexus SAC in the latest newsletter from nonprofit electric company SMUD. Describing the Arch|Nexus SAC location as “one of the most aggressively sustainable buildings in the world,” SMUD encourages other designs to follow suit in undertaking the Living Building Challenge.

To read the full article please click here.

The latest issue of the Salt Lake City Weekly has featured an article on the future of homeless services in the Salt Lake City area. Arch Nexus Principal Holli Adams, who led the programming efforts to transition to three new homeless service facilities is quoted. In the article, Holli outlines strategies to reduce violence and crime surrounding the shelters.

To read the full article at the Salt Lake City Weekly website, click here.

One of the more visible features of our Sacramento office building, Arch | Nexus SAC is the public art installation which doubles as a bike rack and triples as a public seating area. CODA WORX magazine (Collaboration of Design + Art) has recently published an article featuring this installation known as Luna Cycles. CODA’s mission is to raise awareness about environmental and social issues as well as develop community engagement and pride through the inclusion of public art.

The article highlights the unique challenges and opportunities of creating a public art piece for a Living Building. In the article, artist Jay Stargaard says “Living buildings are regenerative spaces that are designed to be self-sufficient, giving more than they take in water and energy resources. The bike rack sculpture communicates the unique values of the renovated building while encouraging community connection.”
To see the full article at CODA WORX click here.

We are pleased to announce that Arch Nexus’ Charles Bagley and Robb Harrop have been honored with awards for their illustrations as part of the Architecture in Perspective (AIP) competition. AIP is a juried competition hosted by ASAI (American Society of Architectural Illustrators) that compiles the finest in contemporary architectural illustration, produced by accomplished artists from around the world. While individuals from Arch Nexus’ Visualization department have been honored with this award in the past, these achievements mark the first time that traditional works from our designers have been selected.

See their award-winning work below:

Charles Bagley

Robb Harrop

Robb Harrop