Building Nevada - January 2004

Nevada’s Best-Designed Buildings

AIA Awards Excellence

by Carol Patton

Each year, the Nevada chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) sponsors its Excellence in Design awards program, which honors architects throughout the state for their creative projects. This year, the three jurors had a hard time selecting winners among the 65 entries. Instead of recognizing the usual eight to 12 projects, they handed out 15 honor, merit and citation awards.

"The jurors felt there’s an abundance of exciting and good work going on here in Nevada," explained Randy Lavigne, executive director of the AIA Nevada in Las Vegas, which promotes better-built environments. "They gave out more awards this year than jurors normally do, because they felt more work had to be recognized."

Submissions were received in five different categories: student, urban design, interior environment, built projects and unbuilt projects. All projects are less than five years old and were evaluated in four areas: comprehensive design; regional response, or how well they relate to their surroundings; environmental response, or how they promote environmental awareness; and program response, or how they respond to the user’s needs.

The annual awards program was introduced in 1948 and 1956 when the Reno and Las Vegas chapters of the AIA were formed, respectively. Lavigne says the program promotes innovative project design throughout the state and generates camaraderie among the association’s 600 members.

"People take for granted their built environment," she said. "It can really inspire and elevate people’s thinking and has an enormous impact on how our communities function." Here’s a snapshot of various projects that were recognized for their design excellence by receiving Citation Awards.

The Art of Play

Jon Sparer spent a weekend developing the design concept for the M.J. Dean Office Complex. He actually built a model of it on his pool table at home one Sunday afternoon in May 2002. Completed in August, the two-building complex is located at 5005 W. Patrick Lane in southwest Las Vegas. Youngblood, Wucherer, Sparer Architects occupies one 9,000-square-foot building. The other 27,000-square-foot building houses several tenants, including M.J. Dean Construction, Inc., a professional construction services firm that owns the property.

Since the construction firm was responsive to new ideas, Sparer, a principal at the architectural firm, said he became "playful" and designed creative ways to use common building materials. The entrances of both buildings showcase generous plazas, creating a courtyard effect. The exterior concrete panels range in size, intersect each other at different angles, come through exterior walls and are painted five different desert colors, creating a consistent look. Skylights are also featured throughout each building.

"This is different from other buildings we’ve designed, because there were no preconceived images and our client was very open to creating a new identity," Sparer said. "We really had a blank slate and went very contemporary."

Ahead of its Class

The hardest part about creating a prototype of a middle school is that it must adapt to a variety of environments. That was the challenge faced by Welles Pugsley Architects, which is designing a prototype of a multi-story middle school for the Clark County School District, said Sean Coulter, director of design at the firm, which received a citation award for the project in the unbuilt category.

Unlike most middle schools that are single story and sit on 20 acres, this one’s footprint is half the size, making it attractive to school districts in tight urban spaces with growing populations. The district plans to replace its older schools with this new design.

The model consists of five buildings totaling more than 150,000 square feet. Key design elements include a partially sunken parking garage, classrooms and administrative offices on the ground level, a center courtyard on a half-level that sits five feet above the ground, and a second level housing the library and additional classrooms. Energy-saving light shafts also direct sunlight to the first level.

The anticipated completion date for the prototype, which is still being modified, is 2006. "It addresses environmental and sustainability issues, which were difficult to deal with," said Coulter. "Since we don’t know what kind of site it will be built on, we need to make the design as adaptable as possible."

Changing Scenery

Lucchesi Galati Architects spent 18 months converting a 60,000-square-foot warehouse into an innovative workspace that offered everything from Main Street to Town Square. Since June 2002, the former warehouse, located at 900 S. Pavilion Center Dr. on the western edge of Las Vegas, has been the home of R&R Partners, Inc. The advertising and public relations firm wanted the building to reflect its culture of collaboration, creativity and fun, said Craig Galati, principal at the architectural firm.

The key to this project was learning about the client’s culture. "We spent a lot of time understanding who they were, what their building should communicate and how to bring people from different departments to work more effectively," Galati explained.

The building features a multi-use space with a light bridge and adjacent kitchen that can be used for large group presentations, meetings and parties. Office cubicles surround the space and street signs identify each department. Glass roll-up doors also lead from Town Square into an exterior courtyard. The upper mezzanine houses executive offices, featuring a waterfall behind the stairs.

"When you walk through that space, you very clearly know what the company’s all about," said Galati. "There’s always something exciting around the corner."

Rapid Efficiency

The biggest challenge in designing the South Strip Transfer Terminal was to create a space where supervisors could clearly see all the 16 bus bays, said Craig Forrest, senior designer at KGA Architecture. The firm’s client – RTC of Southern Nevada – also requested other features, such as shaded areas for buses and terminal exits that enabled buses to leave the facility without backing up. Likewise, the lobby’s design had to bridge the gap between functionality and creativity.

The 15,000-square-foot project, located at 6675 Gilespie St. just south of McCarran Airport, took roughly 10 months to design and was completed several months ago. Design solutions included placing canopies over each bus bay spanning 70 feet between two columns, as well as curving the west end of the building – where supervisors were housed – slightly east so they could see the bus bays. The open lobby also divides into smaller spaces. Instead of segregating a large seating area from other functions, seating is mixed with ticketing and a small food court.

According to jurors for the awards program, the design was "a very direct solution to a tough site problem." Now, added Forrest, people can conveniently make rapid transfers in a comfortable environment.

Connecting Spaces

When KGA Architecture held its kick-off meeting for the Las Vegas City Hall expansion project in 1999, more than 70 people attended. By the time the project was completed in 2002, more than 100 city employees, contractors and funding agencies had provided input about the project. "We had all the staff together and were brainstorming the best way to make everybody happy," said James Lord, principal and director of design at KGA.

The project’s main goal was to improve public access to City Hall, located at 400 Stewart Ave. in downtown Las Vegas. So the most critical piece of the expansion – which included designing a parking garage, TV studio, southern entrance to City Hall and an office building – was an elevated and enclosed air-conditioned walkway.

The walkway leads from the third floor of the parking garage to City Hall’s administrative offices. As a result, people no longer hunt for parking spaces across the street and can avoid the hot desert sun. "City Hall was designed to be a stand-alone piece," Lord said. "We tried to respect the original design while adding to a project that’s clearly changed scope in 30 years."