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Architects will explore climate-responsive design at Facades+ Dallas

Facades+ kicks off its fall conference lineup live in Dallas on September 9th. Featuring a morning of presentations and an afternoon of workshops, Facades+ continues to celebrate its 10th anniversary in style. 

With Michel Borg and Mattia Flabiano, Page’s lead designers serving as co-chairs, the conference will feature three panels, and a full day of inspiring projects, conversation, and networking opportunities. 

The first panel of the morning will dive into two projects that have transformed historic structures in Dallas’ Deep Ellum. Scott Lowe, partner at 5G Collaborative, will detail The Stack, a large-scale project with a facade design that blends new development with the historic neighborhood. Keith Hanspard from ANDRES Construction will dig into the story of GOOD-E, showing the contractor’s perspective of a design-build project that includes the reuse of a historic facade. 

Two glass towers in a skyline
Pages Fountain Place (right) matches the color of the original Pei Cobb Freed & Partners design (left). (Courtesy of Page)

The morning will continue with a presentation on Page’s Fountain Place, the partner building to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners’ 1986 glass tower. The presentation will move from the story of realizing a truly unique project history, to the challenges of designing for future-looking environmental standards in Downtown Dallas. Attendees will hear about the design approach from Page’s Mattia Flabiano, Talmadge Smith, and Will Butler, with Jack LaMantia bringing the contractor’s perspective from Walsh Construction, giving a complete view on how a collaborative design process brought this tower to life. 

Rounding out the morning will be a roundtable discussion on the future of sustainability in Texas, with a focus on advancement and improvements-to-be-made in local building envelope design. Natalie Terrill from Beck, Rives Taylor from Gensler, and Jill Kurtz from Page will discuss how some of the state’s largest firms are adapting their design approaches based on environmental needs. Considering new definitions of high performance, meeting challenges of lowering both embodied and operational carbon, and a rapidly-changing climate, the discussion will touch on rainscreen facades, designing in a humid climate, and adaptive reuse topics among many others.

campus building
Becks climate-responsive work is on display at the library at the Tec de Monterreys Mexico City campus. (Courtesy of The Beck Group)

In the afternoon, attendees will be able to choose from three workshop options for a more detailed focus, and three additional AIA HSW CEUs led by Perkins&Will, Zahner, Callison RTKL, STI Firestop, Kawneer, and GATE Precast. Luc Deckinga and Mario Romero from Perkins&Will will present alongside James Coleman and Nathan Barnes from Zahner, showcasing their advances in digital collaboration methods between designers and manufacturers. Dustin Wekesser from CallisonRTKL will present the firm’s work on the Grand Hyatt Kuwait, showing attendees how lessons on solar shading and incorporating local design histories can be brought to Dallas.  

close up of a facade
CallisonRTKLs work on the Grand Hyatt Kuwait brought local design aesthetics to cutting-edge solar shading design. (Carlos Alba)

Learn more about Facades+ Dallas here, and get your tickets today!