Buro Happold receives the 2021 Engineering Firm of the Year Award
BOSTON- Buro Happold is an international, integrated consultancy of engineers, consultants and advisers. Operating in 26 locations worldwide, with over 70 partners and over 1,900 employees, for over 40 years the firm has built a world-class reputation for delivering creative, value led solutions for an ever-challenging world. The practice offers structural engineering, MEP engineering, façade/envelope design, lighting design and sustainability consulting and analysis. The firm recently completed work for Harvard University’s new Science and Engineering Complex in Boston, and provided services including structural engineering, building information modeling (BIM), and geotechnical consulting for this much-anticipated project, which is LEED Platinum certified and meets Living Building Challenge (LBC) Petal certification in Materials, Beauty, and Equity.
Buro Happold
Julie Janiski, CPHC, LEED AP BD+C, MArch, MDesSci, is a partner and leader in Buro Happold’s Boston office, where she heads integrated teams of engineers, designers, analysts and other experts to deliver the highest-performance projects. Her career has encompassed work in construction, building operations, architecture, and engineering — broad experience laying the foundation for a fully integrated approach. Known for merging design, consulting and analysis to champion regenerative design in the built environment, Janiski directs projects at all scales achieving sector-leading levels of carbon reduction and water conservation as well as social equity and human health and wellbeing.
Janiski has delivered projects across every scale — from the design of individual buildings to city planning and drafting policy — and in all major sectors. Her recent work includes consulting on the Massachusetts Commercial Energy Code, a number of U.S. Embassy projects internationally for the U.S. State Department, USDA grant-funded research on forestry and heavy timber design, a Net Zero workforce training center in Pittsburgh, and The House at Cornell Tech, a residential high-rise in New York City which is certified LEED Platinum and Passive House.
She holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan and a Master of Design Science in Sustainable Design from the University of Sydney. Her commitments in the local Boston community include being a board member for Built Environment Plus, the co-chair of the Boston Carbon Leadership Forum, and a contributing author for a proposed Net Zero stretch code.
Buro Happold’s founder, Sir Ted Happold, believed that it was out of the different skills and bodies of knowledge held across the firm, that the quality of what it does really emerges. This culture of collaboration and respect is as strong today as ever and drives them to deliver elegant solutions that leave a positive lasting legacy for the communities we work in and the environment. Buro Happold values human wellbeing, embraces mutual responsibility and understands that a sustainable future is intrinsic to the economic and social impact of its work.
Recent projects from Buro Happold include:
- Harvard University’s Science and Engineering Complex: For their new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) is designed to inspire learning and scientific discovery while showcasing sustainability. Completed this year, the eight-level, 544,000-square-foot building’s adaptable, innovative environments support the school’s profound commitment to cutting-edge academic collaboration, create vibrant public spaces at a variety of scales, and set a distinctive architectural tone for the Allston campus.
- Mass General Brigham at Assembly Row: For Massachusetts’ largest hospital and physician organization, the relocation of thousands of staff previously located across the Boston area led to this purpose-built development, Mass General Brigham at Assembly Row (formerly known as Partners Healthcare). It has brought employees together on one site, increasing productivity, reducing travel time between departments, and a significant saving in costs. Located on a former brownfield site, the office space features 4,400 workstations, conference rooms, collaboration spaces and an occupational health center.
- The House at Cornell Tech: Cornell Tech’s 270-foot-tall residential tower on Roosevelt Island in New York City is the tallest and largest residential Passive House building in the world. Buro Happold provided multidisciplinary engineering services to achieve Passive House, a rigorous international building standard that results in dramatically reduced energy consumption and operational energy savings while providing superior comfort and indoor air quality.
- 888 Boylston: This new 432,600-square-foot commercial office has been conceived as the final piece of the Prudential Center development in the Back Bay. Comprising 16 floors containing offices, retail and amenity spaces, the building program for 888 Boylston has been flexibly designed to meet the varied needs of tenants while optimizing the indoor environment. For the LEED Platinum Certified project, Buro Happold provided MEP engineering, facade engineering, architectural lighting and energy modeling analysis services for the development, which is located on a tight urban site bordered by existing infrastructure and buildings. Buro Happold was also tasked with diverting existing utility systems in the car park area to make way for the structural core of the proposed building. Buro Happold’s energy analysts completed renewable energy and co-generation feasibility studies in the initial stages of the project. Utilizing custom modeling software, they worked closely with the facade engineering team to evaluate high performance criteria and identify window-to-wall ratios and glazing percentages. Sustainable features included a 107 kW photovoltaic array and a 14 kW wind turbine arrangement on the roof. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows also reduce the need for synthetic lighting, helping the project to establish a new benchmark in efficient design.
Buro Happold received the 2021 Engineering Firm of the Year Award at the Boston Real Estate Times Excellence Awards on October 29 in a virtual ceremony via Zoom. To see a recording of the ceremony, click here to watch.
