2015 Recap: A Happy Year, Indeed!

We just completed our second full year as Page, which is our new name for an organization over 100 years old that also received a new look, a new organizational structure and new way of working. We continue to be thrilled by the successes we’ve achieved and experienced some notable highlights that we wouldn’t have predicted on January 1 a year ago. Take a look.

Firm Growth
Our year started off with a bang when we announced our acquisition of SST Planners, a laboratory planning and design architecture firm. The cumulative talent and depth of experience our new architects brought to Page has strengthened our existing laboratory services in planning, programming, research and design. 

Our Denver office welcomed new leaders, Principal Mary Morissette, FAIA, and Associate Principal Peter Stavenger, AIA, NCARB. Both are long-time Colorado residents and bring a strong track record of award-winning project management experience to Page across many of the market sectors in which we specialize.  

Early in the year, we were pleased to announce new leadership in the form of promotions and just now, we congratulated 15 architects and engineers who became newly licensed in 2015. 

Another measure of success is a firm’s standing in industry and business rankings, from local Business Journal Top Ten lists to Interior Design Giants to ENR’s top national and international design firms – and more. While we summarized awards that our people and projects have received in 2015 in a separate recap, we are pleased to share just a few of our key rankings:

• Architect 50: Top 50 Business for our business and employee practices
• Architectural Record: Top 25 architecture firms
• Building Design + Construction: Top ten firms in data center, office and university market sectors
• Consulting-Specifying Engineer: Top 30 engineering practices
• ENR: Top quarter of the 500 Design Firms, top 10 in the government and data center sectors, and top 25 healthcare and green firms
• Interior Design: Top 25 Interior Design Giants and top 15 Interior Design Healthcare Giants
• Modern Healthcare: Top 20 design firms
• World Architecture 100 (WA100): Top 100 international architecture firm; #1 firm practicing in Africa; #1 and #7, respectively, in the government and science market sectors and #4 for each of two disciplines, Consulting and Engineering

Professional Activities
Many Pagers are active in promoting their respective professions and 2015 was no exception. We shared our expertise from the podium at several significant industry conferences ranging from SCUP50 in Chicago, where our project team members also received an Excellence Award for the UT Medical District Master Plan, to Data Center World and the annual Healthcare Design Conference held in Washington DC to TxA2015 where there were ten different Page presentations. 

Senior Principal James Wright served as First Vice President of the AIA International Region and is 2015 Past Chair of the International Practice Committee Advisory Group. Page had a very strong presence in the AIA Gulf Coast Green 2015 conference on sustainability which was chaired by a member of the Page Green Team and supported by several other Pagers in committee roles. 

Senior Principal Larry Speck, former dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture and current professor who has won numerous teaching awards, summarized his years of experience explaining architecture into a simple presentation. Ten Cardinal Rules for Talking to Non-Architects About Architecture gained nationwide attention and stimulated extensive discussions about how to better promote the profession. 

Expertise
We also shared our areas of expertise in some unexpected places such as in front of a committee of the Maine State Legislature when Principal Scott Tucker testified on how to protect buildings and contents from damage by electromagnetic pulses. Predictive analytic insights from Associate Principal David Morgareidge were published on two separate occasions: in the book Data-Driven Design and Construction: 25 Strategies for Capturing, Analyzing and Applying Building Data and in Design Intelligence Magazine. 

A Page workplace design team received national attention for a presentation about financially effective renovations of Sleeping Giants, which is a term for aging corporate real estate assets. This turned into journalistic coverage by the Colorado Real Estate Journal which gave Page great exposure in the state. 

Then, this past summer Page was very honored to be asked by Metropolis Magazine, a national publication that examines contemporary life through design, architecture, interior design and more, to participate in a workplace design panel discussion. We ended up also hosting one of their several national Think Tanks at our Houston office with numerous vendors, clients and other stakeholders present. 

Media
This year, Page projects were featured in diverse media outlets that reached a very wide range of people from the rammed-earth walls of the Torcasso Residence in the Wall Street Journal to the passenger terminal expansion at Austin Bergstrom International Airport in Modern Steel Magazine.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe talk show traveled to Kansas and chose our Shocker Hall project as the site on Wichita State University campus from which to broadcast, which was fun to see. Page Principal Andy Baxter was interviewed for in a special issue of Building Design + Construction about sustainable strategies for the mission critical / data center market.

A Page civic proposal to repurpose 37-plus acres of soon-to-be-abandoned freeway through central Houston was a talking point during the recent mayoral election. The Pierce Skypark concept has been favorably compared with other successful urban projects such as the High Line in New York and the Promenade in Paris. 

Brand
The Page Brand Team traveled to all the offices in mid-year to present Sharing the Brand: Digital Engagement 101 which taught employees how to quickly and easily share interesting and inspiring stories such as the ones above.  The Brand Team also launched a fourth Page digital media account, Instagram, which offers stakeholders a way to see images that inspire us.  

And last but not certainly not least for sports fans, the NCAA Division I Houston Cougars had an 11-1 record in the second season of their new stadium and are Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl-bound. We can only hope our work in 2016 has equally positive results for users!