hospitalitystyle.com

(January 2011) posted on Fri Jan 07, 2011 EST

Sustainable mixed-use development to include two hotels

HOK is teaming with Arlington, Texas-based Realty Appreciation Ltd. and Texas A&M University to create the Urban Living Laboratory (ULL), a 73-acre, 1.2 million-sq.-ft. mixed-use development. The proposed five-phase project is slated to offices, retail space, multifamily apartments, and two hotels.

HOK is providing architecture, interior design, master planning, landscape architecture and environmental graphics services for the development, which sits on a 240-acre parcel of university-owned land in north Dallas. Its backers say the ULL complex is designed to serve as a "live, work, play" development that will showcase green building techniques and systems. (All buildings within the complex will be built to achieve at least LEED silver status from the U.S. Green Building Council.)

“First and foremost, we have to create an environment where people want to live and work, a place that offers a better, more sustainable, lifestyle choice,” said Steven Janeway, senior vice president and director of design in HOK's Dallas office. “Beyond that, our approach to building design is to create durable frames composed with flexible systems and timeless materials that accommodate systematic improvements and change over time. Creating modular basic building elements and construction typologies will help us achieve this adaptability and flexibility while avoiding the creation of unnecessary waste.”

The ULL's developers say the complex will serve as a real-world laboratory for sustainable building practices, with scientists from Texas A&M and other universities monitoring its buildings' technologies, systems and environmental impact while studying the factors that influence occupants to act sustainably in their daily lives.