A Holocaust memorial, an airport runway, an orangutan habitat and a tied-arch bridge are among the enterprises that a panel of industry professionals awarded top honors for ENR Midwest's Best Projects competition, an annual program recognizing outstanding design and construction in a variety of categories.
With classroom and administrative wings, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools' Earl Shapiro Hall is quite simple, though atypical forms and detailing required tight coordination among specialty trades, which met regularly with contractor and designers to review intent and feasibility.
Performed in Chicago's historic Merchandise Mart, the 525,000-sq-ft build-out of Motorola Mobility's new headquarters required 650,000 labor hours and up to 480 construction workers during peak periods.
Though the $31-million Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School STEM Building places special emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, it also serves as a real-world lesson in sustainable design, as its owner intended.
Meticulous analysis and planning resulted in a decision to erect an onsite, concrete batch plant for construction of Easton-Bell Sports Inc's $31-million, 813,000-sq-ft office and automated warehouse center.
To introduce Michigan's vast recreational offerings to a demographic far removed from the wilderness, construction team members converted Detroit's 120-year-old Globe Trading Company Building—a condemned 40,000-sq-ft structure—into a showcase for the state's natural resources.
Hyatt Place Harper Court brings to Chicago's Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago, its newest hotel in 50 years and serves as an anchor to the area's 1-million-sq-ft Harper Court, a mixed-use development built simultaneously with the $27-million facility.
Equal parts habitat, exhibit and research facility, the $26-million Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center at the Indianapolis Zoo presented a high degree of difficulty in forming and placing concrete, in one instance due to varying radii among perimeter walls, each too large for a conventional radius-form system.
Additions and renovations for the $74.5-million Camp Randall Stadium Student-Athlete Performance Center encompassed more than 250,000 sq ft of space and involved a pair of existing facilities, McClain Field House and Camp Randall Stadium.
Construction of more than four miles of wave barrier and access road on the Green Bay lake bed served larger efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore Cat Islands, a small chain that functioned much like coastal barrier islands, protecting shallow bays and wetlands, before being washed away in the 1970s.
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