A legal dispute between a Toronto architectural firm and Nova Scotia Power Inc. has led to accusations of negligence, missed payments and cost overruns for the utilitys new headquarters.

WZMH Architects filed a civil claim in Ontario Superior Court in September, accusing the utility of withholding slightly more than $1 million in payments for services rendered.

The failure to pay the indebtedness relates to the fact that NSPI has come under public scrutiny with respect to the project, the company says in a statement of claim filed with the court.

Criticism has been levelled at NSPI, that as a public authority, NSPI ought not to have constructed lavish office space for public servants.

The Toronto company was the lead architect to design the utilitys $53.4-million corporate headquarters at 1223 Lower Water St., completed in late 2011.

The building was designated with platinum certification from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design in March 2013.

Calls and emails to Harrison Chan, a principal in the company and lead architect on the project, as well as WZMH legal counsel Craig Colraine, were not returned.

According to the statement of claim, the two parties entered into an architectural services agreement on July 30, 2008, in which the utility agreed to pay WZMH a fixed fee of slightly more than $4.3 million.

That agreement, which was effective retroactive to May 1, 2008, also included a provision for fees in excess of that amount for any additional services requested by the utility.

The utility did require additional services, which were agreed to in writing between the parties, work which WZMH states was completed on or about April 26, 2012.

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Architects, NSP battling over $1m

Minecraft: Architects Resource Pack Review
Architects Link: http://resourcepack.net/architects-dream-resource-pack/ Follow Me: Twitter: sB_Toucan Don #39;t forget to subscribe it #39;s quick and free plus you...

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Minecraft: Architects Resource Pack Review - Video

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) October 31, 2013

Today Architectural firm Heliotrope Architects and homebuilder Hammer & Hand unveiled the Green Lake Passive House, available now for presale. Designed to the rigorous Passive House green building standard, the house will use 80-90% less heating energy than a conventional home, dramatically reducing its carbon footprint. Its award-winning architectural design makes it an exemplar of high design in high performance building.

"Our aim was to combine design excellence with cutting-edge building science to prove that sustainable homes can be beautiful, and that high design homes can be sustainable," said Joe Herrin, principal at Heliotrope Architects. "It's a combination not often seen in our region."

While not yet built, the residence has received a Northwest and Pacific Region Design Award from the American Institute of Architects. Filtered ventilation and leak-free construction will safeguard indoor air quality. A high performance building envelope will ensure thermal comfort. Triple-glazed windows and super-insulated walls will eliminate noise transmission from outside. Carefully designed day-lighting will create an open and bright interior, maximizing solar heat gain and daylight penetration throughout. Outside, the form of the home creates a bold expression clad in warm, natural cedar.

The home's flexible floor plan is well suited to families and couples. The ground level includes a garage, a guest suite or family room, a laundry room and a storage room. The main level includes living, dining, entry and powder room. The upstairs has three bedrooms and two baths. All are connected by a stair floating under a large skylight, with glass floors allowing ample light infiltration below. The total floor area is just shy of 3,000sf.

"Heliotrope has designed the Tesla of houses here," said Sam Hagerman, co-owner of high performance builder Hammer & Hand. "Quiet and beautiful, it's the kind of place you don't want to leave."

Project cost as designed, depending upon final finish selections, will total approximately $1,450,000, excluding transaction cost. The buyer will finance the project and the architect/contractor team will see the project through construction on the buyer's behalf. The seller intends an entirely open book approach, with the buyer involved in remaining design decisions (such as finishes, fixtures and appliances) leading to the final cost/selling price.

For more about the project, visit http://hammerandhand.com/green-lake-passive-house

About Hammer & Hand Hammer & Hand is a construction company dedicated to inciting evolution in building through service, science and craft. The firm collaborates with clients and architects to build the best of the Northwest, from new custom homes, to residential remodels, to commercial renovations.

Hammer & Hand Portland 1020 Southeast Harrison Street Portland, OR 97214 http://hammerandhand.com (503) 232-2447

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Heliotrope Architects and Hammer & Hand Announce Pre-sale of High Performance Seattle Home, the Green Lake Passive House

Summary: A Mac architect takes a detailed look at the forthcoming Mac Pro's graphic processors, which reveal plenty of potential value in the top-of-the-line machine.

At Architosh, the resource for Mac-based architects, Anthony Frausto-Robledo took a close look at the graphic processors in the forthcoming Mac Pro workstation and then compared them to similar AMD FirePro GPU cards on the market.

Frausto-Robledo starts out with the question: What are the D300, D500 and D700 anyway? After all, the cards are specifically designed for the Mac Pro. Each Mac Pro will come with a pair of the GPUs, which can add up.

Apples mid-level Mac Pro starts at $3,999. Out of that price, the dual-D500s net-yield 85 percent of the streaming processors, 69 percent of the teraflops and 75 percent of the video memory of a FirePro W8000. Averaging these the D500 yields 76 percent of much of the value of the W8000, or $1,308. Apple appears to be equipping users with about $1,800 of graphics value in the dual-D500 configuration. $2,199 for the rest of the unit.

According to Frausto-Robledo, the top-model's D700 has specs similar to the FirePro W9000, costing about $3,000. He believes:

Apple may scale value on the D700 quite a bit, essentially giving away the extra heaps of video ram. That would make the D700-equipped Mac Pros a must have for the top-end performing pro users and it would steal away dedicated Windows workstation users as well.

In an accompanying opinion piece, Frausto-Robledo says the new Mac Pros with as many as 12 cores will present customers with new decisions on how those cores will be utilized by applications with different architectures. We see the same decisions with standard 2D apps: some programs want fewer, faster cores and others can take advantage of more, although slower, cores.

For example, he points to support in Graphisoft ArchiCAD 17 for multi-core, oriented background-processing performance algorithms.

Apple has really done it this time. Its giving users a more closed system, but it is also giving pro users for the very first time more CPU and GPU configuration options than ever before. You can pair the mighty D700 with the quad-core Xeon or you can go more efficient with D300 or D500.

You can scale your CPU choice from a typical quad-core (which is baseline these days for a performance processorand by the way the baseline, according to BOXX for a Revit workstation), or you can add 2, 4 or 8 more cores to the mix. It depends on your precise workflow and budget for a new workstation.

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Mac architects can't wait for the Mac Pro

Zaha Hadid's This Must Be the Place dollhouse is a puzzle structure made of wood and resin pieces. Image: Thomas Butler Its current bid is 10,500. Image: Thomas Butler David Adjaye's Electra House is a flexible home that contains a live/work space. Designed to be accessible to all, the ground floor is a continuous space, undulating between outdoor courtyard and creative indoor space. Image: Thomas Butler Chris Ofili, a long-time Adjaye collaborator, created custom miniature artwork for the home. Image: Thomas Butler MAKE Architects' Jigsaw House is made up of 26 fully-designed houses and another 20 empty houses that can be combined. Image: Thomas Butler Each partner in the practice was encouraged to invent their own house filling each room with their own sensory expressions of play and color. Image: Thomas Butler Individual, hollowed-out oak rooms in bright colors can be inserted into the house. Image: Thomas Butler Coffey Architecture's Inside Out dollhouse is built out of concrete and includes a bonsai tree and herb garden. Image: Thomas Butler Studio Egret West's Puzzle House unfolds from a colorful rectangular box into seven separate pieces. The hollow spaces each contain a jewelry-like object designed by artist Andrew Logan: a stair of mirrors, a ladder, a diving board, a few thimbles, a chain, a propeller. Image: Thomas Butler Dexter Moren's Haptic House is based on the concept of 'sensory play'. A series of components, identical in character, are meant to stimulate the primary senses. The 360-degree access means there are no defined rules of how it can be used. Image: Thomas Butler Glenn Howells Architects built the The Extra-Ordinary House out of robust timber. Image: Thomas Butler They want to explain how the home works through touch and feel so a child with impaired sight can understand how its volumes relate to living. Image: Thomas Butler SHEDKM's Outside/In is a collection of exterior-like spaces that rotates like a Rubik puzzle around a spiral stair. Image: Thomas Butler Guy Hollaway designed the Jack in a Box, which at first appears to be a simple house. Image: Thomas Butler Until it inflates to be a life-size playhouse. Image: Thomas Butler Morag Myerscough & Luke Morgan's dollhouse is a vibrantly colored, multi-level structure. Image: Thomas Butler James Ramsey RAAD Studios The Grimm House is an interpretation of an illustrated fairy tale book for blind children. The story of Hansel and Gretel is written in braille on the exterior.The interior cavity is a tactile exploration of the fairytale, sculpted from hard candy, braided hair, and bones. Image: Thomas Butler Duggan Morris Architects' Multi-story house has been designed to aid early intervention strategies for children with developmental disability Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The house swaps the visually noisy cross section of the typical dollhouse with a set of rooms arranged in either a stack or plan form. Each room can be used in isolation or as part of a sequence. Image: Thomas Butler dRMM's House for a Deaf Child has an exterior with adjustable pieces to give color expression on the outside and control of light and views from the inside. Image: Thomas Butler DRDH Architects' Play House is a toy theatre, based on the 18th-19th century paper Theatres Popular. The theatre features working scenery lifts and curtains in the fly tower, making all floors accessible to its actors and audience.Image: Thomas Butler Lifeshutz Davidson Sandilands dollhouse is made of three-sided rooms that can be stacked. Image: Thomas Butler Amodels' Elviss Tree House is based on a real playground in Southampton, England. The concept was to be as physically challenging as possible so kids learn for themselves as fast as possible. Image: Thomas Butler The tree house includes a swimming pool in the branches and, of course, Elvis. Image: Thomas Butler

Zaha Hadid's This Must Be the Place dollhouse is a puzzle structure made of wood and resin pieces. Image: Thomas Butler

Its current bid is 10,500. Image: Thomas Butler

David Adjaye's Electra House is a flexible home that contains a live/work space. Designed to be accessible to all, the ground floor is a continuous space, undulating between outdoor courtyard and creative indoor space. Image: Thomas Butler

Chris Ofili, a long-time Adjaye collaborator, created custom miniature artwork for the home. Image: Thomas Butler

MAKE Architects' Jigsaw House is made up of 26 fully-designed houses and another 20 empty houses that can be combined. Image: Thomas Butler

Each partner in the practice was encouraged to invent their own house filling each room with their own sensory expressions of play and color. Image: Thomas Butler

Individual, hollowed-out oak rooms in bright colors can be inserted into the house. Image: Thomas Butler

Coffey Architecture's Inside Out dollhouse is built out of concrete and includes a bonsai tree and herb garden. Image: Thomas Butler

Studio Egret West's Puzzle House unfolds from a colorful rectangular box into seven separate pieces. The hollow spaces each contain a jewelry-like object designed by artist Andrew Logan: a stair of mirrors, a ladder, a diving board, a few thimbles, a chain, a propeller. Image: Thomas Butler

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20 Fantastic Dollhouses Designed by Famous Architects

WEST HARTFORD An architectural firm on Wednesday presented and sought reaction on three conceptual designs for the future Charter Oak International Academy at a public meeting held at the school.

The three options were developed after the Perkins Eastman firm held meetings to gather input from parents, teachers and faculty members, students and the community regarding the $44.6 million project.

The town plans to build the new 86,000-square-foot school, a much larger building, in an effort to draw more students and correct racial imbalances at the town's two magnet schools: Charter Oak, an International Baccalaureate school, and Smith STEM School; STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.

The new school, to be built on the Charter Oak property, is expected to cost the town between $9 million and $16.65 million, after reimbursement from the state under diversity school legislation.

The first concept, nicknamed the "pathway scheme" by the architects, is an L-shaped, linear building situated along Flatbush Avenue. The design includes groups of classrooms along a corridor with the administrative offices and a "learning commons" near the main entrance. The gymnasium, cafeteria and auditorium were grouped together along one hallway.

The second possibility the "village scheme" features clusters for different groups within the school, which architect Mark McCarthy called "neighborhoods" or "communities." For instance, the pre-kindergarten classrooms and the Family Resource Center might be grouped together, and upper-grade classrooms might be separated from the lower grades.

The third design, called the "campfire scheme," is a circular school with a courtyard in the center.

"Something we heard over and over again about the school was the sense of community," McCarthy said. "The nice thing about a circle is you can always reference the center. It seemed like a nice metaphor for the school."

Each concept features a different configuration for parking and for bus and car drop-off areas, which the architects said were interchangeable among each building design. All three designs included a separate parking lot and drop-off area for pre-K students.

All three would be "largely two-story" buildings with portions that are one level. None would have a basement.

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Charter Oak School Architects Share Conceptual Designs

Architects who redeveloped English castle win Stirling Prize: Astley Castle dates from 12th century
A ruined castle in Warwickshire, England has won the 2013 Stirling Prize, the most prestigious award in British architecture. Astley Castle, which was built ...

By: JewishNewsOne

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Architects who redeveloped English castle win Stirling Prize: Astley Castle dates from 12th century - Video

Gregg Pasquarelli, co-founder and partner at SHoP Architects in New York, built this futuristic cityscape. Photo: Gregory Reid

Snohetta found a delicate equilibrium with this boomerang-shaped tower. Photo: Gregory Reid

SOM froze its unique LEGO infrastructure in a solid block of ice. Photo: Zack Burris

The buildings were inspired by the postwar Japanese movement Metabolism, which fuses architecture with concepts of organic growth. Photo: Gregory Reid

One of the building's elegant spires. Photo: Gregory Reid

A view from above. Photo: Gregory Reid

Some of the custom, 3-D-printed bricks made for the job. Photo: Gregory Reid

The set includes translucent blocks as well as white ones. Photo: Gregory Reid

Curves. Photo: Gregory Reid

Drone's eye view of SHoP's cluster. Photo: Gregory Reid

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We Asked Three World-Class Architects to Go Crazy With Legos

Mathews board plays host to architects.
Four firms present their ideas to Mathews board about construction of K-12 school complex.

By: Tribune Chronicle

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Mathews board plays host to architects. - Video

Grant Erskine Architects Client Testimonials
Roger, Joanne and Michael talk about our architectural services and explain how we helped them. Thank you so much, guys! Have a look at our website for more ...

By: Grant Erskine Architects - Manchester UK

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Grant Erskine Architects Client Testimonials - Video