ENR Mountain States just announced the winners of the 2019 Best Projects competition across a seven-state region that includes Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota.

A panel of 12 judges from all areas of the industry—architects, GCs, green consultants, virtual designers and engineers—selected winners and merit awards from the 156 total entries this year, by far the most in the 19-year history of the awards.

Timberline High School Expansion – K-12 Education Winner

The roughly 30,000 square foot, two-story addition included an expanded administration offices area, restrooms, and central counseling suite. The ground floor is dedicated to the arts and contains makerspaces (a collaborative workspace) and instructional classrooms for ceramics, 2D/3D art, painting, drawing, computer graphic arts, and photography. The second floor adds on eight science, biology and chemistry classrooms, six of which have full student lab experiment stations with sinks. The project was designed by Lombard Conrad Architects (LCA) to blend seamlessly with the existing architecture inside and out. Interior corridors flow directly into the existing structure. The exterior materials were matched to the 20-year-old brick and stucco.

Gibson Apartments – Residential/Hospitality Merit Award

This project is a 94,000 square foot, 81-unit mixed-use market-rate apartment building. It is type 3A construction, five stories of a wood frame on a post-tension deck over one level of below-grade parking. The apartments are a mix of studio, one bedroom, two bedrooms, and townhouse-style lofts that range in size from 500 to 1,000 square feet. There is also 2,700 of square feet in retail space at the ground level.

Located in downtown Boise, the building includes amenities such as an urban pocket park, a tenant common living room connected to outdoor space via an overhead glass door, tenant package room, bike storage and wash, dog wash and run, and indoor garage level parking.  The building also includes a first-floor common outdoor space equipped with a fire pit, outdoor kitchen and dining area that showcases excellent views of the city and foothills.

The western portion of the development is a lighter brick color that represents the Art Deco style buildings that were initially on the site. The southwestern part of the development pulls from neighboring mission-style buildings with white stucco and terracotta color trim.

The visionary project established a new trend for downtown urban living. Centralized in a central location in the historic downtown area, and two blocks from the recently completed City Hall Plaza, the community was excited and welcoming of the concept presented for this location. The strong historical influence is evident in brick facades which draw the eye upward toward the rooftop patio amenity and upward lights that crown the building in the evening.  Among the landscaping, metal Juliet-style railing accents, and cedar patio accents at loft entries that give the building its striking character, a key design component was the 1,100sf ground-level pocket park along the north side of the building.

BSU Fine Arts – Higher Education/Research

ESI is the construction manager on the new $42 million, 98,000 SF Fine Arts building on the Boise State University (BSU) campus. The Fine Arts building will serve as the new home for the art department currently scattered throughout five buildings on campus.  The facility is comprised of two interconnected buildings: the five-story curved limestone and glass-clad structure will serve as studio space and offices, while the blue stainless steel shingle clad structure will house galleries and classrooms.  The facility will include studios for each artistic medium, such as metals, graphic design, illustration, ceramics, and painting, along with multiple classrooms, and a high-tech World Museum, which enables students and visitors to “virtually” visit many world-class museums around the world. It also offers unique options for artistic expression, delivery, and interaction. Additionally, the building includes a gallery space conforming to stringent temperature and humidity standards to allow not only students to present their artistic creations, but also for regional and national traveling art exhibits.  Specialized environmental and exhaust systems are necessary to remove the indoor pollutants generated by the creative process and to contain hazardous materials used for certain types of art production.

Projects will be covered in more detail in the October issue of ENR Mountain States, and the winners will be honored at breakfast awards events during the last week of October.