HOK earned the No. 3 spot on Fast Company’s 2019 most innovative architecture firms list “for embracing parametric modeling to build the unbuildable.”
Fast Company magazine selected global design firm HOK as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. The list honors businesses making a significant impact on both industry and culture. Fast Company’s editors and writers sought out businesses across 35 industries and every region, as well as judged nominations received through an application process.
The accolade recognizes HOK’s engineering team, which developed a parametric modeling and optimization tool called HOK STREAM™ that dramatically speeds up the design process. This tool combines several modeling and structural analysis programs and processes to generate a single, streamlined solution for optimizing a structure across multiple disciplines and based on expertise specific to that project type.
“We’re committed to continually pursuing innovative ways to advance our design processes and the solutions we create for cities, communities and people,” said Margaret McDonald, LEED AP, senior principal for HOK’s St. Louis practice. “Fast Company’s recognition of HOK’s commitment to innovation through the development of our proprietary design tool STREAM is a nod to the culture we’ve worked hard to build. It’s a culture where exploration and discovery are encouraged and where creativity is leveraged to benefit our clients.”
Excerpted from Fast Company:
A few years ago, HOK’s in-house structural engineers developed a proprietary design tool called HOK STREAM, which uses parametric model and structural analysis to vet architectural ideas and quickly gauge whether they can feasibly be built. The process has allowed HOK to design “buildings thought unbuildable,” as the firm describes it. Case in point: For the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, HOK designed two 900-foot-long, translucent canopies over a terminal to shield passengers from inclement weather. STREAM allowed the six-person design team to generate more than 500 design options, then whittle down the list, in just three weeks. A conventional design process would’ve required 100 people working for three months. The first canopy was completed in 2018.
Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies issue (March-April 2019) is now available online at https://www.fastcompany.com/MIC and will be on newsstands beginning February 27th.
HOK designs buildings and spaces that respond to the needs of people and the environment. HOK designers are rooted in technical excellence, driven by imagination and focused on a solitary goal: to deliver solutions that inspire clients and communities.
