News
TOP 100: Cannon Design Built to Learn
February 8, 2010
| Whether its 1000 employees are planning a new university in India or a healthcare complex in Saudi Arabia (or numerous local projects),Cannon Design tells us its mission is to create spaces that encourage people to talk, think, and work together to solve problems. |
 |
| We snapped Sebastian Martellotto, Stephen Johnson, and Xun Chen with plans on the wall for a commission the firm won two weeks ago, a new 10M SF campus on 1000 acres for the Indian Institute of Technology in Bhubaneswar. The $500M project will be ?A City for Learning? for 10k students and 10k faculty/staff: labs, classrooms, housing, town square, and cinema. Some spaces have halls widened to 10' (from the traditional six) to make room for white boards and benches where students can contemplate and post random thoughts. Stephen says ?We'll let the environment—where all spaces are learning spaces—be another teacher.? |
 |
| Lynne Deninger, Dan Harvey, Jennine Talbot, and Phil Smith looking over the 103k SF green residence hall they designed for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It won several awards, including the College Planning and Management Judges? Choice in Green Educational Design/Building as a Teaching Tool. Throughout its floors are spaces where students can use flat screen TVs, DVD players, white boards, and computer hookups to do research and think up the next big idea. We're assuming there's a microwave and some Ramen around there, too. You know, for science experiments. |
 |
| Catriel Tulian, Beat Schenk, and Andre Aoun discuss the $1B King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center expansion in Saudi Arabia they've been working on for a year and expect to complete this summer. The rendering above illustrates the plan to provide separate yet integrated facilities by stacking in the tower spaces for in-patient healthcare, science labs and training, a power plant, ambulatory care, and parking for 6k cars. KFSH, the premier academic medical center in the Kingdom, will spend six to eight years to develop the complex. |
 |
| Debi McDonald, Colleen McKenna, and Peter Hourihan in front of the recreation and fitness center they designed for the University of Maine, Orono. Peter tells us the school went ahead with the project after debating for 10 years if it should build it or more academic facilities. They decided that a healthy body ?is a vessel for a healthy mind,? Debi recalls. Cannon designed the building with areas where students can learn about nutrition and the payoff of staying fit. (One payoff: rock hard abs, and we assume modesty is what's keeping these three behind that wall.) The 88k SF building opened late ?08 and last year snagged awards from AIA New England, the BSA, and SARA. Debi tells us the better Cannon understands how its smaller, US projects function, the more able it is to export knowledge to clients abroad. |
 |
| Irresistible: the firm's fire engine red entry lobby. We snapped Peter, Lynne, Dan, Debi, and Colleen in their ?hot? Cambridge Street office. They often work in virtual teams with colleagues in Cannon?s 16 other offices in North America, Shanghai, and Mumbai. New to the fam: Last fall Cannon merged with OWPP in Chicago, 250 strong |
