DALLAS – February 21, 2019 – CallisonRTKL Associate Michael Friebele will co-chair Facades+, a series of regional conferences that looks at the design and performance of the next generation of facades hosted by The Architects Newspaper. Friebele will chair the event together with Lauren Cadieux of 5G Studio. The Dallas conference will take place the morning of March 1 at the Omni Dallas Hotel.
Facades+ will offer a day of programs and cover issues unique to Dallas including: “Past & Present: Facade Reinvention in Dallas,” “Pattern, Texture, Craft—Facades as Tactile Expressions” and “Residential Facades |Increasing the design Standard of Living.”
Friebele was recently interviewed by The Architect’s Newspaper for an article about Facades+ and the trends shaping the built environment in the city as well as some of the recent work in progress by the Dallas office. When asked about the firm’s recent work Friebele explains:
“We are an interesting office in that we have a long-standing local reach here in Dallas-Fort Worth but also a broad depth of work around the globe. We often find it most interesting for us to take the international experience and find ways to apply those lessons throughout our work back home and likewise in the other direction. The collaboration between offices across CallisonRTKL really makes this possible.
From a conceptual standpoint, our work on a vertical campus in Downtown Dallas took cues from many lessons we have learned abroad, from site response to contextual integration, and paired these attributes with an evolving corporate business model. Ultimately, the concept was shaped around an affordable housing project just to the east of the site, maintaining a view corridor through the gesture of a loop that ultimately became a symbol for the company’s programmatic model. It is one in a line of projects coming up in Texas that we are excited about.
From a facade standpoint, our hospitality group is working on a Grand Hyatt Hotel in Kuwait that is currently under construction. The facade concept of self-shading finds a balance between the harsh climate of the region and the demand for expansive views. The pitch results in the natural placement of photovoltaics with the underside of the bay providing a highly transparent opening with minimal direct solar heat gain. The same team recently completed the core and shell of the Maike Business Center and Grand Hyatt in Xi’an. Here, two towers were linked by a belt truss to limit lateral loads while serving as a critical program link between the hotel and office towers. The facade was a simple extruded, serrated form linked in the middle by a vertical screen that emphasizes the composition.
I am working currently on the design of two China-based projects with quite a range of scale between them. OCT Chengdu is on the larger side with a dominant facade facing a key convergence of traffic in the city. The facade plays into that movement with a series of fins that peel upward to reveal the activity of the mall behind, thus activating what is traditionally a hard face. We have been working further to optimize this system. This project is currently under construction and should be complete in a few years. On the other side of scale, we recently began work on an Audubon Center in Zhengzhou. The concept is about tying program and landscape together underneath an observation ring. We have been working with Thornton Tomasetti on realizing the ring as a completely unsupported element over the waterfront with full height curved glazing that reveals the public behind, as if the visitor were a part of the facade experience. The Zhengzhou project will start in construction in a few months and be complete by the middle of next year.”
About CallisonRTKL
CallisonRTKL is a global architecture, planning and design practice. Over the last 70 years, we have created some of the world’s most memorable and successful environments for developers, retailers, investors, institutions and public entities. Our work has set us apart as the number one retail design firm in the world and a top-five architecture practice across multiple disciplines and sectors. Under the Arcadis umbrella, we continue to expand our sphere of influence and the depth and breadth of our resources. Our team of nearly 1,500 professionals around the world is committed to advancing our clients’ businesses and enhancing quality of life.Media Contact:
Tracy Schneider
206.623.1693 direct
206.605.9607 mobile
tracy.schneider@crtkl.com