West Point's new Jefferson Hall, designed by Holzman Moss Architecture with STV, has been completed. Image: The Drawing Studio Extra Large Image

Shanghai · 2008.0827
The 1,555-foot- (474-meter-) high sky walk on the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center is complete, making the building the world's tallest by highest occupied floor. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the 1,614-foot (492-meter) tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, PC (KPF), is also the world's tallest building by height to top of roof (1,599 feet, or 487 meters). KPF principal William Pedersen designed the complex, which totals 4.1 million square feet (380,000 square meters).

Located on the tower's 100th floor, the sky walk is the culmination of the tower's seven-level public observatory. Stretching 180 feet (55 meters) across the monumentally scaled portal at the top of the tower, the walkway has canted glass walls and a glass floor to offer views of the Shanghai skyline, downtown streets, and the Huangpu River. Below the observatory spaces, the tower houses a vertical city of offices, conference facilities, high-end retail, dining establishments, and the Park Hyatt Shanghai hotel.

Shaped by the intersection of two sweeping arcs and a square prism — shapes representing ancient Chinese symbols of heaven and earth, respectively — the tower's tapering form optimizes programmatic efficiencies, from large floor plates at its base for offices to rectilinear floors near the top for hotel rooms.

Chicago · 2008.0822
Mark Banholzer, AIA, LEED AP, has joined the Chicago, Illinois, office of RTKL Associates Inc. as a vice president and national practice leader for healthcare interior architecture. Banholzer has over 20 years of architecture and interiors experience, including corporate, commercial, and academic facilities, with a focus on healthcare interiors.

Banholzer previously served as a design principal and vice president in the Chicago office of HOK, where he worked on the planning and design of several major hospitals throughout the Midwest, such as a cancer and critical care hospital at The Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, and a replacement hospital for Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in South Bend, Indiana.

West Point · 2008.0820
The $62 million Jefferson Hall is complete at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Holzman Moss Architecture served as design architect on the project, with STV as architect-of-record and engineer. The new facility will serve as a library and interactive learning center.

The six-story, 141,000-square-foot (13,100-square-meter) granite-and-glass building is divided into three masses with step-backs that echo the forms of surrounding 19th-century Military Gothic structures. The two end towers are composed of granite blocks. Centered between the towers is a full-height curtain wall of blast-resistant glass and precast concrete mullions. Amber-colored glass bricks filter light into an archival area situated partially below grade. Exposed structural clay tile walls bring warmth to the entry lobby and collection areas.

The building received a bronze rating in the U.S. Army's SPiRiT sustainable design assessment program.

Burbank · 2008.0819
The new $38 million Community Services Building has opened in Burbank, California. The Los Angeles office of Leo A Daly provided full architectural, engineering, and interior design services for the project, which has been submitted to the USGBC for LEED certification. The three-story, 72,000-square-foot (6,700-square-meter) building was designed to consolidate many city services into one location, and features a light-filled central atrium.

Chicago · 2008.0818
Construction continues on the 300 N. LaSalle project in downtown Chicago, Illinois. The structural framework of the 60-story, 800-foot- (244-meter-) tall tower is complete. Pickard Chilton of New Haven, Connecticut, is the design architect and Kendall/ Heaton Associates, Inc., of Houston, Texas, is the architect of record.

The 1.6 million-square-foot (150,000-square-meter) building will include 52 floors of office space, retail and conference center floors, and three levels of below-grade parking, along with restaurants and a half-acre (0.2-hectare) public plaza. The project is being built to achieve LEED Gold certification.

The structure consists of 24-foot- (7.3-meter-) diameter belled concrete caissons, concrete core, and shear walls surrounded by structural steel framing with concrete slabs on metal deck. The building facade is primarily a unitized curtain-wall system with stainless-steel accent covers incorporating metal panel buttresses at the top of the building as well as precast concrete panels.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Clark Construction Group, LLC is building the tower, which is expected to be complete in December 2008.

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