The past year presented a number of intriguing design opportunities for Centerbrook Architects, among them a university laboratory building, a highly sustainable environmental campus for an independent school, a new medical school, and master plans for two Ivy League institutions. Eight completed projects, including two museums and a resort hotel, were recognized with 14 design awards, and two Centerbrook designed houses were published in the book “200 Homes” by Images Publishing featuring residential architecture from around the world.

The firm’s LEED portfolio reached 21 in 2011, highlighted by two buildings – Health Care REIT’s corporate headquarters in Ohio and the John Dorr Nature Laboratory in Connecticut – which were certified Platinum and Gold respectively by the United States Green Building Council. Publications and websites, ranging from The New York Times, Metropolis Magazine, and the Huffington Post to New England Home and JetsonGreen.com, also took note of the firm’s work. Five posts from its blog, The Millrace, were picked up and published by other media.

On the technology front, Centerbrook’s computer infrastructure entered the “V-sphere,” a virtual server world that dramatically minimizes the need for bulky onsite hardware and energy consumption. The firm continued to be a leader in technical capabilities and advanced communications systems that integrate architectural design with the construction process. A large Centerbrook academic project in Colorado was chosen as an illustration of the benefits of the latest 3D design software and was published in the official training guide for Autodesk Revit 2012.

A record-setting year of rainfall (67 inches) meant that the adjacent Falls River kept Centerbrook’s hydropower turbine whirling in the bowels of the home office. Waterpower combines with two solar panel arrays, a pond-source geothermal system, and conservation measures to account for 40 percent of the office power needs from onsite green generation.

Centerbrook has completed and begun implementing a Master Plan for Quinnipiac University’s new 104-acre North Haven Campus, which will encompass the establishment of the Frank H. Netter, M.D. School of Medicine as a part of a Health Professions Center. The development of the university’s third campus, formerly the headquarters of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, began in 2009 with the completion of the new home for the School of Health Sciences, a $30 million 190,000-square-foot project. It confers degrees in nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, diagnostic imaging, and for pathologist assistants, radiology assistants, and. physician assistants.

As with the Health Sciences project, the $45 million Medical School calls for the renovation and reconfiguration of an existing office building, which totals 140,000 square feet. The two schools will be joined on all three floors, and Centerbrook is designing a formal entrance connecting them that will serve as the gateway to the graduate campus. In addition to a main lobby affording access to an auditorium and two lecture halls, the Grand Entry will house a Medical Library.

The Medical School will focus on primary care and global health, and will join Yale University and the University of Connecticut as the third such institution in Connecticut. A phased opening beginning in 2012 and completed in 2013 is planned, and eventual enrollment will be 150 students per class. Quinnipiac’s schools of Nursing and Education and the Graduate Admissions Office also are located in the Health Sciences building. A third and fourth building on the site will be renovated to house research laboratories and facilities for its existing schools of Law and Business respectively.

Adding a medical school to Quinnipiac University’s other graduate programs will further advance its national reputation. Of its 3,600 peer institutions nationwide, only 89 have both a law and medical school.

Centerbrook has designed more than 45 projects on the Quinnipiac’s three campuses since the late 1970s. Founded in 1929 as a two-year college, today Quinnipiac is a major university with 5,700 undergraduates and 2,500 graduate students. National ranking surveys that place it in the top tier of American universities frequently cite the allure of its campus and modern facilities.

Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, has been the Partner-in-Charge of all projects at the University since 1978. Agatha Pestilli, AIA, is Project Manager for the Health Professions Center.

Two Centerbrook designed residential projects were included in the recently published book “200 Homes” edited by Mark Cleary (Images Publishing, 2011).

Both houses are in the Northeast. In one, a vestibule set between two stately chimneys connects the slightly asymmetrical, cathedral-ceilinged pavilions of the House in the Connecticut Hills designed by Centerbrook Partners Mark Simon and Jim Childress, both FAIA. The house serves as a gateway to a bucolic estate.

The other, a large addition to a House in the Hudson Valley, was designed by Centerbrook Partner Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, and Principal Charles G. Mueller, AIA. It extends outward from a 19th century farmhouse that now appears from a country road as a string of traditional, connected barns. It contains a gymnasium and exercise room, spa, great room, bunk room, office, summer room, and a pool house serving an existing pool.

The 600-page book features well illustrated profiles of houses from around the world.

Molly Hubbs, who is pursuing a Masters of Architecture at the University of Texas, is finishing a six-month internship at Centerbrook as part of the requisite work experience for her degree. Her command of digital design software, such as Revit and SketchUp, has made valuable contributions to a number of design projects, among them a master plan for the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and the proposed expansion of the Mary Cheney Library in Manchester, Connecticut.

“Molly has been a simply wonderful addition to our staff at a time when we have seen our workload increasing,” said Centerbrook Partner Chad Floyd, FAIA. “She is talented, hard-working, plus a joy to work with. She is much in demand by design teams looking for assistance on their projects.”

An Alabama native, Hubbs earned her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Music and Aural and Spatial Design from Furman University, where she was a National Merit Scholarship Finalist and a member of two honor societies. She also played in the school orchestra. At Texas she has worked as a research and teaching assistant, earned several travel fellowships, and served as an officer in the student chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In her travels to Japan and Finland she pursued her interest in wood construction.

Her internship began in June and will run into early December, after which she will be missed. She will graduate in 2012 with her Masters.

Centerbrook is designing a new science and math building for a leading independent day school to enhance varied curricular approaches for the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The 52,000-square-foot building will support the school’s teaching goals by facilitating proven as well as innovative teaching techniques.

The Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) of Missouri has tasked Centerbrook with creating engaging and flexible spaces geared to the latest pedagogical concepts for teaching science and mathematics in the competitive environment of the 21st century. School officials point out that studies rank American students 17th in science and 25th in math out of 34 developed countries, lagging behind China, Japan, Russia and England.

Located in the heart of the campus, the new facility also will house a Center for Community that features an 800-seat amphitheater, small and sociable gathering spaces, an indoor/outdoor fireplace, faculty offices, and common areas with views of a courtyard with plant and vegetable gardens. The new building will serve as a bridge between MICDS’s two scholastic neighborhoods: liberal arts and science.

To accommodate the different ways that students learn, the math and science spaces will be large enough for individual and group study along with lectures, seminars, and hands-on experimentation. While designed specifically for math and individual sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics), the spaces are deliberately comingled to encourage the sharing of ideas and resources.

The mathematics rooms are designed with break out areas for small study groups to problem-solve or focus on a specific project, while each science room is a combination classroom/laboratory – or “clab” – that melds traditional teaching spaces with laboratories for application-based learning.

“We wanted to provide spaces large enough to allow classrooms to have fully equipped labs for biology, chemistry and physics,” said Lisa Lyle, MICDS Head of School. “Oftentimes, in a setting where classrooms are separate from labs, you lose teachable moments when students ask questions that could easily be answered in a lab setting.” She added, “Though the design process will continue for the next several months, there is one word to describe the facility: spectacular!”

The 1,200-square-foot clabs are 30 percent larger than typical high school classrooms and allow for both discussion and hands-on examination of the science topic being addressed. The biology and physics labs contain research benches that can be moved and reconfigured for different lessons.

The transformation of Eli mascot Handsome Dan I (1889-1897) from flesh and blood … to taxidermy … to iconic statuary standing guard outside the historic Yale Bowl was a story told last week from Boston to the bayous to the Rocky Mountains – and farther still on the Internet:

Led by partner Mark Simon, FAIA and a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, and Associate Sue Wyeth, AIA, Centerbrook shepherded the delicate process of turning stuffed Dan into bronzed Dan as part of its design work at the university’s Athletic Campus on Derby Avenue.

Featured in a nationally distributed article by the Associated Press, Dan appeared in such varied media as the Harvard Crimson (which cribbed the story from the Yale Daily News), the Desert News of Salt Lake City, The New Haven Register, and Daily Comet of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. Noble Dan was installed on his granite pedestal on November 9, just in time to have a profound psychological impact on The Game between the Bulldogs and the Pilgrims.

Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, received the Distinguished Alumnus Award recently from Greenwich Country Day School, an independent pre-K through ninth grade school in Greenwich, Connecticut. As honoree, he gave a presentation last month to the students about architects, explaining who they are, what they do, and how they do it. He took the students on an illustrated history of architectural design from ancient Rome to Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson, Julia Morgan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Zaha Hadid, and Jeanne Gang, among many others.

As images of a Palladian villa or Saarinen’s curvaceous buildings appeared, Riley engaged the students in examining the various approaches and movements that have influenced architecture through the centuries, explaining the difference between a “Pursuit of Happiness” approach to design and a “Discovery of Joy” approach. “Architects believe, above all else,” he said, “in the power of architecture to tell stories about us, to convey our values and aspirations, and to lift our spirits.” He stressed how a building’s sociability, its response to its site and circumstance, the care it takes of the earth‘s resources, its sense of the handmade and craft, its ornament and symbols are all critical to creating places that become beloved. “The act of drawing by hand is crucial,” he added, “to the art of making architecture, especially in the age of the computer.”

Riley, a founding partner of Centerbrook Architects and also recipient of the 1999 Distinguished Achievement Award from his collegiate alma mater, Lawrence University, addressed how architects touch all of our daily lives in many ways by designing not just buildings but landscapes, bridges, furniture, and even cars, boats, cutlery, and tea kettles. The future for architects, he predicted, would involve more intensive sustainable design, large scale urban plans, the ability to make almost any shape imaginable – but combined with a renewed call for simplicity, restraint, and human scale, and more participation by women.

Founded in 1926, Greenwich Country Day School has an enrollment of 800 students. Previous alumni of the year have included President George H.W. Bush, Frederick B. Dent, and author Peter Matthiessen.

Four diverse projects designed by Centerbrook – an art gallery in Massachusetts, a new campus for scientific research in New York, an oceanfront resort hotel in Rhode Island, and a LEED Platinum academic building in Connecticut – garnered recognition recently.

Centerbrook received a Merit Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New England for the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy Andover. The project entailed the expansion and extensive renovations of a 1931 building. The Addison is the only prominent art museum in America located on a high school campus.

AIA Connecticut bestowed a Design Award on Centerbrook for Hillside Campus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. The new facilities consist of six laboratory buildings that expand by 40 percent the institution’s capacity to conduct research in the areas of cancer, neuroscience, human genetics, and quantitative biology.

Eco-Structure Magazine presented an Evergreen Award to Centerbrook and Hopkins Architects of London for their design of Kroon Hall, the new home for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The LEED Platinum building also was selected recently as one of 16 international projects featured in Architype Review’s Sustainability Issue. It was the 16th design award that the two firms have earned for Kroon.

Centerbrook’s design of the Ocean House hotel in Watch Hill, Rhode Island captured a Grand Award from Builder Magazine as well as an Honor Award from the Association of General Contractors of Massachusetts. The project entailed the faithful and painstaking replication of a Victorian building as well as the addition of two wings to accommodate myriad modern amenities.

Centerbrook has received 343 design awards all told.

With the goal of helping young men become leaders and innovators in a world destined to move beyond fossil fuels, South Kent School and Centerbrook Architects have accepted the Living Building Challenge (LBC): to establish an environmental campus that is totally heated and powered by the sun, grows enough food – year round and onsite – to feed the entire academic community, consumes no externally sourced water, and causes zero pollution.

South Kent’s Center for Innovation (CFI) is designed to serve the school’s educational needs as well as accommodate as many as 300 visitors for various community events. LBC has established the most rigorous environmental criteria of any building rating system, so rigorous in fact that only three projects worldwide have received the coveted LBC certification since it was launched in 2006.

Among the elements that will give the campus no carbon footprint are:

When the CFI is generating more electricity than can be used, it will feed clean energy back to the community through a connection to the electrical grid. The only carbon combustion on campus will occur in a fireplace that occasionally burns wood, sustainably harvested on school property, to produce warmth and ambiance.

An independent high school in western Connecticut, South Kent engaged Centerbrook this summer to design the CFI to exemplify its ambitious commitment to environmental education and to serve as a working model of responsible use of natural resources. Augmenting the solar power arrays and serving as teaching tools will be onsite renewable energy generating systems, such as wind, hydro and geothermal technologies.

“The Center for Innovation is designed to provide a co-curriculum, or counterpoint, to our current course of studies, acting as a “venture campus” for the real-world applications of ideas and concepts,” said Head of School Andrew J. Vadnais. “The goal is to have students emerge as creative problem solvers – with a toolkit stocked full of 21st century survival skills.”

Bordering scenic Hatch Pond on a 128-acre addition to the existing South Kent campus, the Center for Innovation will consist of a cluster of academic buildings, organic gardens, organic orchards, a greenhouse, permaculture landscaping, husbandry facilities, and constructed wetlands for storm water treatment. The complex will support the main South Kent program, the local community, and other schools with an inter-disciplinary curriculum for science, the arts, sustainable practices, and ecology.

The first of three project phases calls for the cleanup and improvement of the former dairy farm site and the construction of two buildings. The Community Building will house a 300-seat, multi-purpose event space, visitor services, and food storage facilities; the Environmental Building will contain a science laboratory and a bio-shelter, which is a solar greenhouse that supports an indoor ecosystem. A new Technology Building, new farm buildings, and renovations to existing facilities are slated for development in future phases.

The new campus will surpass LEED Platinum certification in meeting LBC standards, whose requirements include building materials that are locally sourced, sustainably harvested or recycled, and responsibly manufactured. Appealing and innovative design, natural lighting, natural ventilation, super insulation, and respect for open space and existing natural ecosystems are also key elements of both regimens.

Centerbrook Partner Jim Childress, FAIA, is heading the design team, and Melissa Arminio, AIA and LEED AP, is the Project Manager. Centerbrook has designed 21 LEED certified or registered buildings, including two rated Platinum: Yale University’s Kroon Hall (with Hopkins Architects) and Health Care REIT’s national headquarters in Ohio (with Duket Architects). South Kent School offers college preparatory instruction to 177 boys in grades 9 through 12. Founded in 1923, its main campus is adjacent to the new Center for Innovation site.

A Centerbrook academic project that illustrates the benefits of the latest 3D design software is featured in the official training guide for Autodesk Revit 2012. The Center for Community at the University of Colorado, Boulder is among a handful of buildings featured in the book’s Architecture Project Gallery.

A description of the 320,000-square-foot Center and how it employed the virtual modeling technology is accompanied by a photograph as well as an image of the Revit-generated model depicting a cut-away section of the structure. In the Forward, Revit is described as “a way to understand a building before it [is] built, earlier and more fundamentally than ever before.”

With the capability to make major changes with relative ease, Revit was combined with related design and remote communications systems to allow Centerbrook’s architectural team, the university, consultants, and contractors to be literally on the same page – despite their far flung locations – as the virtual model of the building progressed from conceptual design to detailed construction documents.

“At times, more than a dozen people were simultaneously working remotely on the exact same 3D model, something that was unheard only a few years ago,” said Jim Childress, FAIA and Centerbrook Partner-in-Charge of the project. “We can adapt how we use Revit and other Building Information Modeling tools depending on the size and complexity of the project and how the design team is structured.”

The Center for Community opened in 2010 and houses a 900-seat Micro Restaurant complex, all 12 student services departments, and a 375-car parking garage below grade. Centerbrook was the design architect, collaborating with Davis Partnership Architects of Denver on the project. The foodservice design was done by Baker Group of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The building took just 15 months to construct.

The recently published “Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012” provides step-by-step instruction on how to apply the latest version of the design technology. It contains more than 1,100 pages.

Six Centerbrook designed projects – two residences, two academic buildings, a corporate headquarters, and a 9/11 memorial – were profiled in print and electronic media recently.

Lakewood House, nestled in a Northeast forest, was the subject of an eight-page spread in New England Home magazine and was also featured in Builder magazine as well as on GreenSource.com in a section titles “Best Green Houses”

Inhabitat.com published the LEED Platinum headquarters of Health Care REIT, Inc.. Landscape Architecture Magazine’s September issue included the Liberty 9/11 Memorial in Virginia that Centerbrook designed in an article about such memorials nationwide.

ArchDaily.com published the Esther Eastman Music Center at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut and the Center for Community at the University of Colorado, Boulder campus.

The Hartford Courant profiled a Centerbrook designed home in the greater New Haven area.

Centerbrook is pleased to announce that Beatriz Machado and Keith Wales have joined its architectural staff. “Keith and Beatriz will make wonderful additions to our team,” said Partner Jim Childress, FAIA. “Keith showed his mettle this summer working for us as an intern fresh out of architecture school, and Beatriz brings a wealth of design experience and expertise in many areas. Their availability came at a perfect time for us with our current workload.”

Machado established her own practice in 2000 in her native Brazil, and her portfolio encompasses residential, commercial and landscape design projects, as well as furniture, product, and graphic design. She graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture and Urbanism from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in 2000 and earned her Masters of Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2011. Most recently, she worked for VOA Associates of Chicago on hospitality projects. She is fluent in Portuguese and conversant in Spanish.

Wales has Bachelors of Fine Arts Sculpture and Applied Design from the University of Wisconsin, where he was awarded the William J. Leffin Prize and was a National Merit Scholar Finalist. He earned his Masters of Architecture from North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 2010, as well as the Shawcroft Prize for Drawing. He was awarded a fellowship to intern at Duda Paine Architects in 2008 and also has worked as teaching assistant in architecture at NCSU and as an environmental instructor at the Conserve School of Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin.

Paolo Campos, AIA, Peter Cornell, AIA and LEED AP, and J. Harding Dowell, AIA and LEED AP, are now registered architects in Connecticut, having passed a series of rigorous tests and serving the required internship at Centerbrook.

Paolo Campos graduated from Yale University in 2001 with a BA in Architecture and earned his Masters from the Yale School of Architecture in 2006, where he received the Anne C.K. Garland Prize for academic achievement. In 2005, he was awarded the James Gamble Rogers Memorial Fellowship. He joined Centerbrook in 2006 and has worked on projects at Quinnipiac University, including the York Hill campus master plan and residence halls and the new medical school on the university’s North Haven graduate campus. He previously had been a member of design teams for commercial buildings and several projects for Yale. He and his wife Kristen and their daughter, Carys, live in Orange

Peter Cornell earned a Bachelor in Architecture from the University of Virginia in 1991 and a Masters in Architecture from Columbia University in 1996, where he earned an Honor Award for Design Excellence and the William Kinne Fellows Travel Fellowship. Joining Centerbrook in 2006, he has been on design teams for commercial, cultural, and residential buildings, and at other firms he worked on academic and multi-family projects as well. Several projects he worked on have been published in Architectural Record and Interior Design. He and his wife Amy and son, Will, live in Killingworth.

J. Harding Dowell graduated from the University of Florida, where he edited the school’s architecture magazine, with a BA in Architecture in 2005 and from the University of Virginia with a Masters in Architecture in 2008. He joined Centerbrook in 2008, and the projects he has worked on include a math and science building for the Berkshire School, the Center for Community at the University of Colorado Boulder campus, and an Episcopal church on Long Island. A founding member of the New Haven Chapter of Architecture for Humanity, he also is a registered architect in Florida. He lives in Essex.

Cornell is the only person at Centerbrook who can speak Danish; Campos is fluent in Spanish; and Dowell is conversant in French.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has certified as LEED Platinum an office renovation and remodeling project in Toledo, Ohio, designed by Centerbrook in collaboration with Duket Architects Planners of Toledo. LEED Platinum is the Council’s highest designation for sustainable building. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and the USGBC is the foremost program for rating the design, construction and operation of green buildings nationwide.

Partner Chad Floyd, FAIA, and Project Manager Andrew Santaniello, AIA, led Centerbrook’s team in the extensive makeover of the existing headquarters of Health Care REIT, Inc., a national real estate investment trust listed on the New York Stock Exchange and included in the S&P 500. Of the 212 LEED certified commercial projects in Ohio, Health Care REIT is only the ninth to garner the Platinum rating. Only six percent of all LEED certified buildings attain the Platinum rating.

“The client’s commitment to this effort was quite remarkable from start to finish,” Floyd said. “Health Care REIT went the extra mile, for example, incorporating extensive telecommunications technologies into the building that will enable its employees nationwide to meet regularly and remotely, obviating the need for travel that consumes both time and energy.” He added that achieving LEED Platinum for the renovation of an existing building is considerably more demanding than it is for new construction.

Design features of the project include a green roof system, extensive natural lighting through the strategic placement of windows and skylights, solar photovoltaic array, retention pond, thermal storage, use of FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) wood throughout, automated building controls, real-time energy metering, solar thermal panels, and a comprehensive recycling program.

The building’s key energy efficiencies are:

The renovations provide abundant meeting areas, open individual offices, a kitchen and café, numerous conference rooms, teleconference room, fitness center, auditorium, a reconfigured landscape, and a water retention pond. Some existing exterior walls were replaced with two-story glass walls to provide views of the 163-acre campus as well as natural lighting. Two monumental stairways were created to lead from the first to the second floor.

The remodeled headquarters is home to 100 of the firm’s nearly 240 employees nationwide. Health Care REIT, Inc. has been at the forefront of senior living and health care real estate since it was founded in 1970. Its nearly $8 billion portfolio spans the spectrum of health care real estate, including senior living communities, medical office buildings, inpatient and outpatient medical centers and life science facilities.

LEED Platinum Certification from Health Care REIT Partners on Vimeo.

Horace Mann School of New York City has announced that the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, its environmental campus in Connecticut, has been awarded LEED® Gold certification for sustainable design that substantially reduces energy and water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The new facilities were designed by Centerbrook, whose portfolio includes more than 20 projects that are either LEED certified or registered with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the nation’s preeminent program for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. Gold is the second highest rating attainable, and the project garnered 46 LEED points, seven more than the requisite 39. It also received a 2011 Merit Award from the Connecticut Chapter of the USGBC.

Partner Jim Childress, FAIA, led the Centerbrook team that designed the 19,000-square-foot complex, which includes a new Lodge and an adjoining barn housing a classroom, wet lab, and two faculty apartments.

“Horace Mann is proud of this acknowledgement of its efforts to teach students and faculty alike about the importance of minimizing the School's carbon footprint and of conserving the world’s natural resources,” said Dr. Thomas M. Kelly, Head of School for Horace Mann, which is a highly regarded independent day school for grades K-12.

“Horace Mann’s LEED certification demonstrates tremendous green building leadership,” said Rick Fedrizzi, USGBC President. “The urgency of our mission has challenged the industry to move faster and reach further than ever before, and the John Dorr project serves as a prime example of just how much we can accomplish.”

The rustic styled building enhances Dorr's educational programs and its sustainable features are designed to be visible and accessible to help students learn how they function. On-site solar and geothermal systems are designed to cut energy usage by 32 percent, and the Lodge, which was constructed of environmentally responsible and sustainable materials, is sited and configured for optimal energy and water efficiency and for maximizing natural lighting and ventilation.

Architecture for Humanity’s New Haven chapter has named Patrick McCauley, Centerbrook’s Master Model Maker and Product Designer, as one of five jurors of a design competition for urban park furniture, which will be installed along the city waterfront. Architecture for Humanity is a global network of design professionals who offer nonprofit design services for a variety of groups in need.

The goal of the competition is to design prototypes for a picnic table, trashcan, and bicycle rack – either as separate pieces or a single hybrid design element – for Long Wharf Park, where food trucks gather to serve park-goers, motorists, and I-95 construction crews. If successful there, the furniture could be used throughout the city park system. The winner will have the choice of either an Emu Cross armchair and ottoman donated by Coalesse, or a THINK task chair courtesy of BKM/Steelcase; the runner-up receives the alternate prize.

A Connecticut native with a BS in Industrial Design from the University of Bridgeport, Patrick McCauley is responsible for creating detailed presentation models as well as engineering and fabricating custom furniture, lighting, and architectural specialties. Prior to joining Centerbrook, McCauley owned and operated his own design and prototype consultancy. His design work has encompassed exhibition design, theatrical props, toy and juvenile products, artisanal stonework and masonry, and, recently, nautical model-making. His six-foot two-inch replica of the historic powerboat “Aphrodite” is now on permanent display at the Ocean House in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Patrick also has been an instructor at the University of Bridgeport’s Industrial Design Department, and he currently leads the Centerbrook Workshop on Handcraft and Making for the architectural staff.

In addition to McCauley, the jury includes Karyn Gilvarg, AIA, Executive Director of City Plan for the City of New Haven; David Moser, landscape architect for the City of New Haven; Kent Bloomer, principle and founder of Kent Bloomer Studio; and Jose Corona, owner and operator of the Nexicalli food truck. Judges will select a winning design on the basis of sustainability, affordability, durability, aesthetics, and ease of construction for a $300 construction budget. Submissions are due by October 8. To register and for more information, including photographs of the Long Wharf Park and its food trucks, visit openarchitecturenetwork.org/projects/parkfest

The Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center at Yale University recently hosted the National Mixed Doubled Championships to determine a wild card qualifier to compete in the US Open Tennis Championship, which is being held this month at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.

The fifteen teams competing for the one prestigious slot in one of tennis “Big Four” tournaments included competitors from nine countries, elite collegiate and professional players, and a two-time Grand Slam champion.

Centerbrook designed the new center, which opened in 2008 and has since dramatically elevated the university’s tennis profile by attracting a number of prestigious regional and national tournaments, such as the Intercollegiate National Indoor Tennis Championship. The expanded new facility doubled the number of indoor courts from four to eight and established a new central viewing lobby and welcoming entrance with a dynamic canopy. Partner Mark Simon, FAIA, led the design team and Sue Wyeth, AIA, was the Project Manager.

Media and fan reviews of the center have been positive. It received the 2009 Indoor Tennis Facility of the Year Award from the American Sports Builders Association and an Outstanding Facilities Award from the U.S. Tennis Association.

Cornell University’s Women’s Tennis Coach David Geatz raved about it: “The first time I walked into the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center I was unbelievably impressed with it, the overall design, the graphics, the team rooms, with everything. My teams have played all around the country, and this is the nicest facility of them all.”

Nick Ficaro, AIA and LEED AP, and Graphic Designer Derek Hayn are the 2011 recipients of Centerbrook Travel Grants, which are awarded to staff members who “best exemplify selfless devotion to the successful execution of a building's design.”

Each will receive a paid leave of absence and a stipend to enable them to visit, research, and photograph a place of architectural interest anywhere in the world – and report back on their sojourn to the office. Since the inception of the program in 1987, Centerbrook has awarded 78 travel grants.

Ficaro earned his Bachelor of Architecture from Wentworth Institute of Technology in 2003 and worked at Fletcher-Thompson in Shelton, Connecticut before joining Centerbrook in 2006. He is part of the design team for a number of projects at Quinnipiac University, including the York Hill Student Center and the Health Professions Center, as well as for Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in Missouri. He also has served as a mentor for high school students interested in the fields of architecture, construction, and engineering.

A 2004 graduate of Central Connecticut State University with a Bachelor of Graphic and Information Design, Hayn captured the top award from the university’s Graphics Department in his senior year. He also has managed a student-run design studio and taught courses in Photoshop. Hayn joined Centerbrook in 2006 and designed the firm’s current website, which won an Interactive Design Award from the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange in 2009. His photography and videography are often featured on the firm’s blog.

Hayn has narrowed his area of interest down to the Northern Hemisphere, while Ficaro is a bit more specific: “I am leaning towards a trip to Europe. Some of the possible locales I have in mind are Germany, Sweden, or England. If I end up staying in the states, I would like to travel to either the Pacific Northwest or the Southwest.”

Centerbrook Architects is pleased to announce the elevation of Agatha Pestilli, AIA, to Associate in the firm. A member of American Institute of Architects and LEED accredited (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) by the U.S. Green Building Council, Agatha has worked on a number of academic projects since joining Centerbrook in 2003, among them the Graduate Health Professions Center and the Mount Carmel Dining Hall at Quinnipiac University, as well as the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.

Pestilli is currently Project Manager for the new Quinnipiac School of Medicine, a $75 million project that calls for the renovation of and addition to two existing buildings on University’s North Haven Graduate Campus.

“Agatha’s experience, professionalism, and attention to design have contributed to the success of our recent work at Quinnipiac University,” said Centerbrook Partner Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA. “Her consistent hard work combined with an outgoing, optimistic personality, make her a valuable member of the design team and a joy to work with.”

A graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a bachelor of science in Building Sciences, Pestilli also has worked on residences and commercial buildings. Her academic work before joining Centerbrook includes projects at the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland.

Pestilli lives in Meriden with her husband Michael and their daughter Alexa, who was born in July.

Centerbrook is currently doing design work on three Ivy League campuses – Yale University, Harvard University, and Dartmouth College – as well as on a faculty residence in Princeton, New Jersey.

Yale and Dartmouth are longtime clients. The firm currently is doing a Master Plan for the Yale Peabody Museum that addresses exhibits, events spaces, collections, and interior organization. Among its recently completed projects at Yale are Kroon Hall (with Hopkins Architects), the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center, the Lewis-Walpole Library, the Kenney Center and Jenson Plaza at Yale Bowl, and Reese Stadium.

Centerbrook recently completed a new Master Plan for renovating and expanding Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art. The project encompasses a nearby building and provides for art study classrooms, galleries, museum staff offices, and systems upgrades. It also establishes a prominent new entrance on the famous Dartmouth Green. Centerbrook designed the original Hood Museum, which opened in 1985. Other recent Centerbrook projects on campus include the new Floren Varsity House, renovations of Wilson Hall, as well as renovations and additions to the Tuck School of Business, Wilder Physics Building, and the Steele Chemistry Building.

At Harvard, the firm is doing an interior fit out of new offices for the Financial Operations and Analysis Group inside a 1929 Art Deco building at Boston’s Landmark Center. At Princeton, Centerbrook is designing a single family residence just off campus for new faculty in an historic neighborhood enclave.

The firm is currently designing a number of projects at Quinnipiac University, including a new medical school, as well as an academic and science building at Southern Connecticut State University. Centerbrook has worked on 40 college and university campuses nationwide.

Photo by Kevin Baird