Catching the sun as it plays across the building’s surface, the undulating façade system for the University of Houston’s Health and Biomedical Sciences Center is an innovative design solution that responds to challenges in topography and program.

The risk of flooding on the low-lying site disallowed a basement, shifting all mechanical space to the top of the building. Likewise, the building program’s secure research spaces – typically located below grade – are also at the top level. Since both the mechanicals and research program require windowless spaces, the upper half of the building façade has few openings.

Recognizing the potentially overwhelming proportion of a solid façade, the design team used reflection ...[more]

Shepley Bulfinch has named Ming Yan, an award-winning master’s candidate in architecture at Clemson University, as the firm’s 13th Annual Summer Design Fellow. Ming was selected for the ten-week Fellowship from a pool of more than 100 applicants drawn from the country’s top architecture schools. In making the selection from a highly competitive pool of finalists, committee members noted Ming’s breadth of expression, blurring the boundaries between landscape and built form with works that are “less about an object and a field and more about the field as a ...[more]