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Brochstein Pavilion Recommended Place to Visit by NY Times

Amy Moen — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:19:19 +0000

The New York Times posted a story about Houston in today’s online edition titled “36 Hours in Houston.” Included among the “must-see” stops was Rice University’s Brochstein Pavilion, designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners and structurally engineered by Haynes Whaley’s Wally Ford. Author Denny Lee had this to say about the Brochstein Pavilion:

The skyline goes up, up, up every year. But notable architecture also takes place near the ground. The campus at Rice University — a neo-Byzantine maze of rose-hued brick and cloisters — got a new glass heart in 2008, when the Brochstein Pavilion (rice.edu/brochstein) opened near the central quad. A Kubrick-esque box with floor-to-ceiling windows, the pavilion houses a cafe and media lounge, and has a fine-mesh trellis that extends like a mathematical plane in space. The structure is only one story, but it feels much taller — proof that not everything in Houston has to be big.

For the full article, click here: 36 Hours in Houston.

Texas Construction’s Top 40 Project Starts for 2008

Tan Tran — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:56:02 +0000

Texas Construction’s annual “Top 40 Projects” was recently published in their June 2009 edition. Haynes Whaley Associates had six projects in this year’s listing:

#8 Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus

#15 Texas A&M University Health Science Center

Campus Phase 1

#26 The Legacy at Memorial

#31 IAH Terminal C Ticketing, Baggage Claim and

ITT Level Remodel

#33 Texas A&M University Health Science Center

at Round Rock

#39 Three Eldridge Place

This follows last year’s 2007 “Top 40 Projects” which also included 6 projects by our firm.

Menil Collection Named One of the Best Buildings in Texas

Mark Thompson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:06:57 +0000

The Menil Collection was recently designated as one of the ten best buildings in Texas by Texas Monthly in their March 2009 issue. It shared this honor with other notable structures including The Alamo in San Antonio, “Old Red” at UTMB in Galveston, and the Penzoil Building in Houston. Haynes Whaley Associates was the structural engineer of record for The Menil Collection. It opened in 1987 and was a pivotal project for our firm. Larry Whaley and I had the opportunity to work directly with Renzo Piano and others for several years on this unique building. Its signature feature is the gallery roof — a system of ferrocement leaves working together with ductile cast iron truss units to form a structural system supporting the glass skylight roof and providing control of the daylight entering the museum. Full-scale load tests were conducted in the United Kingdom to confirm the load carrying capacity of the system. Today this roof structural system remains unique in the world.

The Menil Collection proved to be an important architectural and structural achievement, and showed the way that a new generation of modernist buildings could be more compatible with their surroundings.