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Infinity Chapel by hanrahan Meyers architects, 2010, Greenwich Village, NY click here to view more photos Infinity Chapel on www.hanrahanmeyers.com

Victoria Meyers architect, principal of hanrahan Meyers architects, will be a featured presenter at this year’s IFRAA presentation during ARCHEX, the Virginia Society – American Institute of Architects Annual Conference taking place on November 3rd and 4th, 2011.  The theme of Ms. Meyers' presentation will be “Sustainable Design Applied to Religious Architecture”. 

Two of hanrahan Meyers architects' projects, Infinity Chapel (Religious Architecture – Honor Award) and the Won Dharma Center (Unbuilt – Merit Award) received awards from the IFRAA/ Faith & Form Awards program in 2010.

Click here to read more about ARCHEX at www.virginiaarchitecture.org.

Click here to read more about the Interfaith Form on Religion, Art and Architecture (IFRAA) at www.aia.org.

Won Dharma Center by hanrahan Meyers architects, Claverack, NY click here to read more about Won Dharma Center on www.hanrahanmeyers.com

 

 hanrahan Meyers architects' Infinity Chapel in Greenwich Village NYC click here to view more photos of Infinity Chapel on www.hanrahanmeyers.com

hanrahan Meyers architects and Open House New York will be offering tours of the recently completed Infinity Chapel as part of the 9th Annual OHNY Weekend on October 15th and 16th.  The Open House will be led by hMa principal Victoria Meyers.  More details to come.  Click here to read about openhousenewyork at www.ohny.org.

hMa's first project to receive national attention was the Chattanooga Nature Interpretive Center, which featured green design way ahead of its time in 1990  click here to see more of Chattanooga Nature Interpretive Center on hanrahanmeyers.com

Greenwich Connecticut is finally giving meaning to the GREEN in its name with its first energy forum: The Energy Conscious Home  www.GREENGreenwich.com on Saturday, April 2 from 10AM – 3PM at the Greenwich High School.  Victoria Meyers of hanrahanMeyers architects has been invited as an expert to participate.  Ms Meyers will consult on accessible emerging technologies.

Steven Hall of Chandler www.chandlerllc.com in Greenwich and also a resident extended the invitation as a member of the program committee for the Energy Task Force. Mr. Hall will deliver the opening remarks for the event.  He will point out that every home matters. If all homes 10 years or older reduce energy use 30%, it would release more energy annually than from all the oil pumped from the Gulf of Mexico. The 30% reduction is considered a reasonable and very doable goal that significantly reduces homeowner costs, is a large cut in carbon emissions and perhaps most importantly is a big move towards U.S. energy independence. The recent events in Japan and the Middle East are exclamation points to the urgency of action.

Chandler managed the development of this “Green” home started in 1995, 5 years before the first LEED projects and 14 years before the launch of LEED for Homes.  The house uses orientation, fenestration, shading, thermal mass and a ground source heat pump system and an early incentive program as well as local materials.  A prefabricated wooden bridge (pictured below) was selected for site access over a pristine stream to avoid damage by mass grading and featured on the cover of the magazine, Bridge Builder. It was applauded by the local conservation commission and has become a local landmark click here to see more of this home on Chandlerllc.com

 

view from Meditation Hall porch

Guest Residences in construction

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE PHOTOS OF WON DHARMA CENTER ON HANRAHANMEYERS.COM

 

Meditation Hall interior under construction

view of Dining hall in construction

model view from south

Pepsi walked away from spending upwards of $20 million on Super Bowl ads and opted instead to put marketing dollars toward a campaign to uplift local communities.  This seems to be the new face for consumer marketing in an era when Facebook and Twitter are making web platforms as powerful as television to generate buzz about consumer products.  To read more about this initiative, see the January 30, 2011 NYTimes article by Jennifer Preston. 

This blog previously hi-fived Levi's for 'leading the way' in its decision to give their brand's uplift to Braddock, Pennsylvania, with its 'Go Forth' campaign earlier this year.  Now Pepsi is doing a similar campaign, relying on social media to record and disseminate the good effects of putting ad dollars toward actual deeds within the American landscape.

hanrahan Meyers architects embrace any gesture that helps to lift up the American landscape! 

Today we have Levi's trying to fix Braddock, and Pepsi giving small local grants for new band uniforms, and local playgrounds.  What's next?  Maybe Microsoft will adopt the US Railroad system and step in where the Federal Government is too tentative to act. A high-speed rail project funded by Microsoft might just keep us from being so partial to Apple.

There's an entre here for a lot of needed infrastructural improvement, and, personnally, I'd buy a product that helped to build a bridge here, or a new community center there.  When I look around the United States these days, I don't see great wealth spread around the countryside.  What I see are huge estates where wealthy individuals hide out with their cache of gains, while the rest of the country languishes. 

Thank goodness for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet challenging the other U.S. billionaires to give back!  If a person gets up every single day and performs back-breaking work, do they deserve less than the people who run hedge funds, or the amazing geniuses that our culture has spawned, including Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs? Granted, people like Stephen Jobs and Bill Gates have created ingenius business models that drive jobs around the globe.  But why is it – with all of the Republican chatter against Democratic goals to even the playing field a bit, and to maintain the middle class -  that no one points to Germany -  an incredibly viable country with a socialist system that definately works!  What is wrong with crafting an inclusive agenda where everyone has access to education and health care?  We don't find that concept alienating and frightening.  We find the opposite idea frightening -  waking up to a country where half the citizens live out of cardboard boxes, with no jobs, no access to health care, and no hope.  (isn't that called 'a banana republic'? Seems to be what every Republican wants.).

If we don't have the billionaires giving back to the country, we won't continue to have an education system to spawn the Bill Gates's or the Stephen Jobs's of tomorrow.  The great minds and the great leaders of tomorrow come from the middle class. 

Without the philanthropy being suggested by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation or by Pepsi, or by Levi's, we could very well spiral into a banana republic.  A country with very very rich and paranoid people hiding in gated communities, with very poor, uneducated, and disenfranchised people living outside the gates, waiting to grab the riches of the people inside, is not the country we want to live in.

We're not cheerleaders for consumer driven social engineering. In a country where the government is basically prohibited by special interests who drive ad marketing campaigns that malign any program that promotes social welfare, however, this has become one of the only avenues available to promote the renewal of our aging 20th century infrastructure.

Maybe this is where the Banks can put their future bonus cash, and we'd all start forgiving Goldman Sachs for generating so much wealth (if they'd be willing to share it).

This a shout out, a simple suggestion, to all corporate brands in the United States, as the American stock market soars:  Give Back!  Build new schools.  And include funding lines for the staff to run the schools.