Amy Mays, IIDA, LEED AP, EDAC, joined HDR Architecture’s New York City Design Studio as interior design principal. With a significant body of experience and expertise in health care, Mays will lead interior design with a focus on health care projects in HDR’s offices across the Northeast.
Kingspan Insulated Panels appointed Kevin Franz as business development manager, a role that focuses on promoting Kingspan’s dedication to reducing energy waste. With more than 20 years of experience in the architectural profession as a project manager, client liaison and practicing architect, Franz is responsible for growing the company’s market share major cities such as Charlotte, N.C.; Raleigh, N.C.; Columbia, S.C.; Charleston, S.C.; Atlanta; and Nashville, Tenn.
Acclaim Lighting offers the ALQ series, featuring high-powered linear graze and parabolic-aluminized-reflector (PAR) wash fixtures that deliver a spectrum of perfectly blended colors for illuminating buildings, facades and landscapes. Featuring 10-watt Cree quad-color (RGB+W) LEDs, the ALQ Bar with its high-output optics provides 30 percent more output than typical quad lenses, thus offering superior homogenized color mixing.
IPSO, a European laundry manufacturer, introduced a new on-premises softmount washer-extractor. The machine offers flexible, dependable and eco-friendly features that help laundry managers maximize productivity with new levels of efficiency. IPSO softmount washer-extractors use high G-Force extraction to reduce drying times up to 80 percent by removing a significant amount of moisture from linens. Shorter drying times contribute to a building’s sustainability with reduced energy use.
Last year, the eighth consensus-based sustainability standard — NSF/ANSI 347, Sustainability Assessment for Single Ply Roofing Membranes — developed through NSF for building products went into effect.
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — The new 22,000-square-foot Manhattan Beach Public Library is currently under construction after C.W. Driver, with offices in Irvine, Calif., broke ground on the facility in August. The $19 million project includes demolishing the existing 43-year-old facility (about half the size of the new structure) and replacing it with the new, two-story facility. Los Angeles-based Harley Ellis Devereaux Architects designed the facility, and the master plan was created by Johnson Favaro, based in Culver City, Calif. It is designed to meet LEED Gold standards.
CHICAGO — As part of a Sustainable Vegetation Management initiative, officials at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in August launched an environmental pilot program that uses goats, sheep, llamas and wild burros to eat the overgrown grass and cattails at the far northeastern corner of the 8,000-acre airport.
Mike Thomas has been named vice president and business development director at Environmental Systems Design Inc. (ESD), an international leader in the consulting-engineering design of high-performance building systems. Thomas will be responsible for sales, business development, thought leadership and client relation strategies for the firm, in particular in ESD’s commercial, institutional, health care and science practices.
CertainTeed Ceilings is boosting the sustainability of its Ecophon acoustical fiberglass ceiling panels with the addition of 3RD Technology, a fiberglass manufacturing method that combines a high-recycled content with a renewable plant-based binding agent. The new binder significantly reduces the environmental impact of the Ecophon product line, having the equivalent effect of removing more than 800 vehicles from roads, according to the company.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.