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CannonDesign completes new Western Michigan University student center inspired by Indigenous design elements

2024-03-04T12:13:00-05:00

CannonDesign has completed a new student center at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Replacing the university’s Bernhard Center, the new three-level building contains gathering and lounge spaces, dining, a bookstore, a future on-campus brewpub, and retail, designed as a “beacon of inclusion,” according to the team.

Photo credit: Christopher Barrett

“Located on lands historically occupied by Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi nations, the building is designed to be a student-centered gathering place that champions belonging and honors the roots of Native American heritage embedded throughout the site,” the team notes.

Photo credit: Laura Peters

The building’s 163,000-square-foot plan was designed to create “interstitial opportunities” for students to informally engage with each other. Student feedback influenced the design of various social elements, such as a sitting circle derived from Native American culture. Across the sc...

SRG Partnership announces merger with CannonDesign

2024-02-02T17:14:00-05:00

The Seattle/Portland-based SRG Partnership has announced its merger with CannonDesign in a move that will be felt widely in the health and wellness, education, science and technology, and sports and recreation sectors in the Pacific Northwest market and beyond.

SRG will be reorganized as SRG + CannonDesign. The new entity brings CannonDesign into the region for the first time. CannonDesign now has 18 offices and nearly 1,300 staff working globally, counting the additional employees moving over from SRG.

Edward J. Ray Hall at Oregon State University. Photo credit: SRG Partnership

“There's a clear synergy in our firms’ shared commitment to design excellence,” David Polzin, CannonDesign’s Executive Director of Design, said at the announcement. “SRG’s portfolio is outstanding, both regionally sensitive and transcendent of place. Their teams’ dedication to being environmentally responsible, resilient and equitable is evident in their work.”

A project at Washington State University's Evere...

Foster + Partners and CannonDesign lead reimagination of Mayo Clinic campus in Minnesota

2023-11-30T11:53:00-05:00

A team comprising Foster + Partners, CannonDesign, and Gilbane Building Company has designed a major healthcare addition to Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota. The project, titled 'Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester' features two new high-rise clinical buildings at the center of the campus.

The new buildings measure nine stories to reach a height of 221 feet, with the potential to expand to 420 feet over time. A new central point of arrival is created by the buildings, with north and south drop-offs converging at a unified main entrance.

Above the central arrival point, a sky bridge horizontally links the two new buildings with the existing Gonda Building to improve wayfinding and circulation. The sky bridge is also part of a double-height ‘social ame...

CannonDesign is pitching in to help acclimate migrants to NYC

2023-05-15T14:52:00-04:00

A new project from CannonDesign aimed at helping migrants who were relocated to Brooklyn’s Red Hook Cruise Terminal in the past year is providing hope to advocates for inclusive design as the city grapples with a vexing crisis that’s only expected to grow with the end of Title 42.

The project was initiated by Blue Cottage of CannonDesign team member Kimberly Silver, a resident of Red Hook, who, in reaction to Councilwoman Gale Brewer’s charge to do more, worked with fellow CannonDesign staffers Steffany Brady, Dylan Coonrad, and Abbey Furlow to strategize a set of wayfinding design solutions that can help better orient them to the neighborhood and city. Together, they say three core “functions” can be achieved as a result of the project.

Using Silver’s observations of the area, TRANSIT activates street surfaces and other barriers surrounding the terminal with clear trail marker-like visual wayfinding directions to the subway and nearby bus stations.

Image courtesy CannonDesign

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Yazdani Studio's Caltech sustainability center is making progress

2023-04-13T15:28:00-04:00

Nearly one year after breaking ground in Pasadena, construction is in full swing for the Resnick Sustainability Center on the Caltech campus. [...] When completed, the new complex will serve as the physical hub of the Resnick Sustainability Institute, which has existing at Caltech since 2009.

Following a $750 million donation from The Wonderful Company owners Lynda and Stewart Resnick in 2019 to Caltech, plans to construct a new 80,000-square-foot research facility were put in motion. Designed by Yazdani Studio, the Resnick Sustainability Resource Center broke ground in May 2022 and is now rising along the west side of the school’s campus.

The building, distinct with its undulating glass façade and mass timber grid shell, will be home to critical research in solar and climate science, energy, biofuels, decomposable plastics, and more.

Previously on Archinect: Yazdani Studio designs sustainability research center built with mass timber for Caltech

The Center will house a biosphere engineering facility, a solar science and catalysis center, a remote sensing center, and lecture and interactive learning spaces. The structure is also designed to be the greenest building on the campus, with systems that limit water consumption, interior finishes that prioritize renewable and ...

CannonDesign and Foster + Partners picked to design Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center expansion in NYC

2022-11-17T14:04:00-05:00

A joint team of CannonDesign and Foster + Partners has been selected to design a new high-rise pavilion for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood.

Design details are still being finalized, but the structure will stand a minimum of 30 stories in height and leverage Cannon’s expertise in modular construction techniques in order to deliver a “pioneering medical facility that will be at the forefront of innovation and patient care.” The project is said to help meet MSK’s “evolving cancer care needs over the next century” and add a more modern, 200-bed facility connected to the institution’s main building at the corner of E. 66th Street and York Avenue.

Foster + Partners explains: “The Pavilion will create incredible human experiences within and beyond the Pavilion walls for patients, their families, and staff. The building will help MSK attract and retain the very best cancer clinicians, researchers, and staff in the world.”

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