At last, the law-school building is opening—despite the intervening recession, the recent drop in the number of students interested in law school, and an almost impossibly cramped site hemmed in by city streets, a highway, and railroad tracks. The new building is, I’m happy to report, as memorable as any in the city—and that includes Fort McHenry and Robert Mills’s Washington Monument.
This week’s Top of the List is the top five “Largest architecture firms in the Baltimore area,” ranked by architectural billings from Baltimore-area offices in 2012, based on our own survey results. Ayers Saint Gross is #1!
Each city has a few places that are appropriate for architectural landmarks that say, “look at me.” When the building opened in April, UB received precisely what it had aimed for: an architectural gem and iconic attention-getter that moves UB’s law center to the next level.
Check out this fast-motion video of the start-to-finish construction of the new John and Frances Angelos Law Center, home to the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Ayers Saint Gross, a leading international architectural, planning, and design firm in D.C. for 25 years, recently expanded its business while reducing its environmental footprint. The new workspace, located in the growing NoMa neighborhood, was designed with the measures and materials necessary to attain a LEED Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan, among other dignitaries, were on hand at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the new John and Frances Angelos Law Center at the University of Baltimore in Maryland. The 190,000-square-foot building, designed by Behnisch with Baltimore’s Ayers/Saint/Gross, is the result of a 2008 competition that called for a new law center which would be both contemporary and functional.
The University of Arizona (UA) College of Medicine-Phoenix, in partnership with and Northern Arizona University (NAU), is creating a new model for an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to health sciences education and research. Innovative in this endeavor is the collaboration and merging of these programs from two universities with distinct institutional cultures on one campus—Phoenix Biomedical Campus in downtown Phoenix.
Two years ago, local architectural firm Ayers Saint Gross completed an Inner Harbor plan anchored by a grandiose billion-dollar convention center, hotel and arena. Since then, Exelon Corp. announced it would move its Constellation operations to Harbor Point and two Inner Harbor “big box” stores closed shop, Best Buy and Filene’s.
The signs of the recession’s end can be seen in ENR’s Top 500 Design Firms list. The Top 500, taken as a group, had overall design revenue of $90.24 billion in 2012, up 6.1% from $85.06 billion in 2011. This marks the second year the Top 500 experienced revenue growth since the recession began. Ayers Saint Gross is ranked #290!
Officials at the Enoch Pratt Free Library are launching a $96 million restoration to the Central Branch this spring that will include upgrades to bring the historic building into the wireless age as books and readers go digital.
