News - Facades+, Premier Conference on High-Performance Building Enclosures.

Facades+ returns to Chicago on September 12

On September 12, the Facades+ conference series will be held in Chicago at the voco Chicago Downtown. The event offers a full day of programming developed in collaboration with SmithGroup principals Matt Dumich, Coty Sandberg, and Jason Smith. Attendees are also encouraged to visit the Methods + Materials gallery, which features 22 exhibiting building product companies.

These topics, ideas, and materials define building envelope design in 2025
Ebpc delivers a monolithic apartment building clad in travertine with balconies and cross-ventilated living units
BNIM Architects used biology as inspiration for the new home of LifeServe Blood Center, with large spans of glazing to protect the building and its inhabitants
Lake Flato brings mass timber to Penn with Amy Gutmann Hall, a new academic hub for data science and AI
KWK Promes designs a Polish pipe distribution facility to look like a stack of aluminum tubes
HGA faces University of Arkansas’s Windgate Studio + Design Center with corrugated metal

West of West drapes Vancouver, Washington’s Terminal One in folded metal panels that catch light and shadow

For those who don’t know, there are actually two North American cities named Vancouver. The lesser-known Vancouver is in Washington State, along the Columbia River, a large, navigable waterway that forms the border with Oregon. The city began its life as a colonial fur trading outpost, and maintains a busy commercial port to this day because of