2019 Recap: Thank You for A Great Year

We just celebrated the season with holiday parties across our offices and are now wrapping up client projects before wrapping presents for loved ones. 2019 was a wonderful year for Page and we look forward to an even better 2020 with our partners, clients, vendors and suppliers in delivering design that positively impacts the communities in which we live, work and play. Take a look at some of the highlights we experienced with many of you:

Culture
While we volunteer in our communities throughout the year, sharing our spirit is particularly special during the holidays. Pagers have been volunteering time and efforts at food banks, toy drives, gingerbread building fundraisers and more.

As a firm, Page actively supports the multiple service industry associations to which its employees belong, such as AIA, ASHRAE, ASLA, IIDA and more. We're proud of the number of Pagers who served in leadership roles this year.

On average, Page annually hires and mentors nearly 40 interns each year. We received a very nice follow-up letter from a college intern and were very excited to learn that a high school intern from our work-study program was accepted to the Cornell College of Architecture, Art, and Planning!

News
Page has long had a presence in Mexico, providing a range of multidisciplinary design services from architecture to master planning. Our significant work in Mexico City dates back to the design of the U.S. Embassy in 1965. At the beginning of the year we formally opened an office in Mexico City (CDMX) to offer our engineering and consulting services to clients as well.  

The firm also expanded its advanced technology services and accessed a wider range of global clients across multiple industries with the integration of IMES Group LLC, which is headquartered in Austin, TX and has an office in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan area. The new consultancy is called Page/imes.
 
Selecting a senior leader and new board member is a significant decision and the Page Board of Directors is confident they made a strong choice in the appointment of Cathy Britt, Chief Financial Officer. Cathy was the sole woman owner when she joined Page in 2007 and is now the first woman Senior Principal / Board Member.

Page is an early signatory of the AIA 2030 Commitment to achieve carbon-neutral buildings in the next 11 years. For the past two years, the firm has been evolving our sustainable practice group and our new Building Sciences practice formally encompasses an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability, high performance, resilience and wellness in our work.

People
Early in the year, our industry and families joined us in congratulating to our newest leaders, 78 new Associates, Senior Associates, Associate Principals and Principals! Our tradition is to have a Senior Principal share a words of wisdom at that time and this year, Michael Mace, AIA, did the honors.

Check out what our Building Sciences Director Jill Kurtz, AIA, loves most about her job, how living in India shaped her views on conserving natural resources and why quantifying the environmental impact of our projects matters in this production by Autodesk.   

Page thought leader Shelby Blessing, AIA, has experience designing for members of society who face atypical challenges. She has developed sensitive and affordable residential designs for the homeless and also has evolved designs for public restrooms that address user concerns. Watch this video to learn how Shelby strives to create design that makes all lives better.

Women of Page shared their experiences with diversity from the Gulf Coast Young Women’s Leadership Symposium to Texas Society of Architects members to the AIA Dallas Empowering conference for women in architecture. They talked about supporting one another throughout careers and the importance of mentorship. 

Projects
The lifecycle of a project can be up to several years so even as we bid farewell to those that have come online like 70 Rainey Residential Highrise, more are being constructed like a new six-acre urban park that promises to transform the Texas State Capitol Complex. The sustainable design will add 1,000,000 square feet of new office space and provide a community gathering space and visitor destination.  

Magnolia Montessori For All is the first public Montessori school in a socioeconomically challenged urban area whose success is demonstrated by the more than 600 families on its admissions wait list. Additionally, it has propagated change beyond its own students and families as the local school district subsequently launched a public Montessori program in an under-enrolled elementary school that follows Magnolia Montessori For All’s example.

Page developed a novel approach to creating affordable opportunities for homeownership for Austin Habitat for Humanity with a multifamily housing design. It allowed the nonprofit to purchase land near the city center, increasing the number of nearby employment opportunities and reducing residents’ transportation time. 

Now, more residents of rural Texas counties may soon have access to medical care through the Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, which intends for its graduates to emphasize wellness through health promotion and disease prevention across rural counties with few or no doctors.

Page engineers had the chance to show their skills on a very high-profile project: the restoration of the NASA Apollo Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center. The work was completed and the center re-opened to the public for the 50^th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Sharing Our Expertise
For more than five years, our Higher Education team has conducted post-occupancy evaluations to assess student housing design strategies and determine their impacts on student wellness and social and academic success. Our primary findings show how the latest programming and design trends can support both affordability and help students thrive.

Our Kurt Neubek initially planned to talk to Texas A&M College of Architecture students about the importance of collaboration in practice. The Page healthcare architect and principal ended up sharing career advice with his audience as well. If you know an architecture student, share it with them!

Sometimes though, our designers have to learn real-world lessons that weren’t covered in school, such as how to ensure safety and security in schools in the event of an attack. Page architects Ken Black, Wendy Heger and Chad Johnson offer collaborative, multi-disciplinary ideas and approaches to this critical issue for parents, students, teachers and community leaders.

Another real-world learning was designer Shreejay Tuladhar’s own experience in a relief shelter after a powerful earthquake. While he was fortunate to only stay a month, it made him realize millions of people worldwide continue to live in such places for years on end in challenging thermal conditions. Earlier this year, he co-presented the results of a study on proposed design modifications at the International Building Simulation Associations conference in Rome, Italy.

Throughout 2019, our engineers contributed numerous articles, particpated on the editorial board and acted as peer reviewers for Consulting-Specifying Engineer (CSE) Magazine. Keely Barrett's piece on best practices for fire protection alarm notification design was among the top five most read articles on CSE's website for six weeks this summer. 

We closed the year with a podcast series by Design:ED featuring our architects Josh Coleman, Talmadge Smith, and Brandon Towensend and interior design director Kris Walsh talking about why they love what they do as well as the challenges and joys of designing towers. 

Our subject matter experts write articles, speak at and attend conferences year-round; follow us to keep up with where Page is! We can be found on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter or you can sign up for our monthly eNews here.

Best wishes for safe and happy holidays!