Swanke Hayden Connell wins AIA design award

Real Estate Weekly, Dec 15, 2004

Swanke Hayden Connell Architects (SHCA) has received a 2004 Design Award from the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter for its design of a one million square foot sustainable technologies research facility.

SHCA was presented with a Project Award, which "recognizes theoretical and conceptual work, including temporary installations, land art, original research, urban design and a vast array of un-built projects either commissioned or self generated."

The SHCA design was developed for Destiny USA, a Syracuse, NY-based development company.

The one million square feet master plan consisted of a varied program of labs, offices, conference spaces and testing facilities on a suburban "brown field" site all dedicated to the research and development of sustainable building technologies.

These facilities are complimented with support spaces such as a sports complex, a wellness center, a spa, and accommodations for short and long term living. By virtue of site location and program scale, the proposed solution turns in on itself and creates its own interior sub-environments in the form of a flexible framework of three-story building modules interwoven with a varied field of landscape that repeats in an expansive manner.

This repetition provides the flexibility, conceptual and spatial, for different possibilities of inhabitation and exchange between the numerous institutions and functions held within, and exchange.