Living in the Brownfield - Urban Unfill

WORKS - go check out the recently completed Lafayette College Arts Plaza, a brilliant piece of "urban unfill" that activates the streetscape with the activity inside and brings awareness to the Bushkill Creek below.

http://www.spillmanfarmer.com/#/lafayette college arts plaza

no image post - first for me! 
Congrats to the team for completing such a beautiful project.

Sustainability -LV awards

Last Thursday, November 18, the Lehigh Valley branch of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council celebrated their Annual Membership event at one of Spillman Farmer's award winning facilities: Steelstacks on the Bethlehem Steel grounds. The venue was the perfect setting for the event with the old blast furnaces in the background.

Two of Spillman Farmer's newest employees, Kate Carter and Erin McGuiness, showed our latest LEED certified and registered buildings to the attendees.

The event showcased the submissions of this year's nominees in five categories: best private project, best public project, green school district, green campus and individual. It was especially good to see how many Lehigh Valley schools are striving for LEED certification, benefiting our children and future generation.

We like to congratulate all of the winners of this year's LV DVGBC awards:

Private project: Lehigh University, STEPS building

Public project: Allentown School District, Clifford Bartholomew Building

Green School District: East Penn School District

Green Campus: DeSales University

Individual: Andrea Wittchen with the Lehigh Valley Sustainability Network

Living in the Brownfield - Black Friday

KEVA Build It Up! - Our friends at the DaVinci Science Center invited Spillman to be part of their KEVA Design Team challenge as part of their new exhibit titled "KEVA Build it UP!".  The Spillman team has been hard at work on the entry, go check it out on "black friday" when the exhibit opens.  You can find out more on the DaVinci Center website...

 http://www.davincisciencecenter.org/experiences/keva-build-it-up/

This was one of the early tests...come out on friday to see where it all ended up and if you can figure out how to replicate the Spillman design.  Some images below of the team at work.

Happy thanksgiving and hope to see you at the Da Vinci Science Center.

Living in the Brownfield - Industrial Architecture

Our friends over at archdaily have a feature on compelling industrial architecture and one of our projects is featured !!!  We're thrilled and since they converted the units to burn  fryer oils we here it smells a bit like french fries around there!  Enjoy the weekend and check out all the projects, some fantastic work from Marlene Imirzian & Associates, Dekleva Gregoric arhitekti, VEC / GCP Arquitetos, el dorado, and last but not least Spillman Farmer Architects.


http://www.archdaily.com/183651/ad-round-up-industrial-architecture-part-viii/

Material Process Product - Boat Building 101

Making architecture watertight may have its challenges but making a boat can be even more challenging. Spillman Farmer's Fred Allerton is an avid boater and boat builder. Fred's reproduction runabout is based on the outboard racer SKUA, an 8 foot plywood skimmer designed by Charles MacGregor in 1939.

Discussing the process with Fred and seeing this little gem in production was fascinating.

Not only does the boat look good - it performs! Fred placed second in the Mystic CT Wooden Boat Show Regatta and first overall in Union Lake, NJ. More recently, the boat was entered in the Oktoberfest speedboat race in Mollosk, VA. hosted by the Cocktail Class Wooden Boat Racing Association. With daughter Julie at the controls, the boat finished first in a field of 14 experienced drivers.

Living in the Brownfield - InVision Photo Festival

PHOTOGRAPHY - Great works of art are coming to the brownfield this week thanks to the hard work of ArtsQuest and the leadership of Janice Lipzin.   http://www.artsquest.org/invision/

Over at Spillman we're excited to see the work of all the photographers but two of them have really caught our eyes for obvious architectural reasons.

Check out the work of Vicki DaSilva on her website, she'll be showing her work at the festival, we're hoping for an installation at the artsquest center in the future!  Pictured below is "Non-Function Follows Form #7" - incredible work.

see more at http://www.vickidasilva.com/

We're also excited to get a look at Bruce Ward's photography, the reasons are pretty obvious!  His capture of our recently completed ArtsQuest Center fully exploits the richness of our "smart" box thinking for this project.

see more at http://www.brucewardphotos.com

Support the arts by visiting the brownfield, hope to see you at the Invision Photo Festival.