Archive for category: News

Recently Panzica was pleased to be among the sponsors of the successful 2014 Rain Barrel Ball, an elegant fundraising event created by our friends at Greening The Bend.  Our program ad is above this post.

According to their web site Greening The Bend seeks to bolster a renaissance in South Bend by promoting green spaces and human-friendly urban features that protect water and our river as a precious natural resource. This will result in social, economic and environmental benefits for the South Bend area.

Through their very well-received Rain Barrel Ball and other creative activities, this citizen group is seeking to raise private funds to install a sustainable green roof garden over The South Bend Museum of Art at Century Center. They are very close to accomplishing that goal!

Greening The Bend Executive Director Kathleen Petitjean and her husband Jonathan Burke lead a group of “grass roots visionaries” one might say, who literally seek to use those grass roots to control storm runoff and help to improve long-term water quality in the St. Joseph River watershed.

Part of their innovative fundraising effort is through the $1 per download sales of an original musical piece called Song of Sagwa Zibi which is the name that indigenous Potawatomis gave the river, coming from the legend of a mysterious visitor said to arrive on the river’s shore.

World-premiered at this year’s Ball and representing the flow and spirit of the river, this beautiful melody was composed by South Bend native Paul Kwiecinski featuring performances by Jodie Sleed, and Paul Duffy. It can be heard and downloaded here.

As local architects and builders who were leading with green design long before there even was LEED, we at Panzica applaud Greening The Bend’s efforts and we’re proud to be fellow travelers on the path to a more sustainable community. BRAVO Greening The Bend!!

 

Photo Credit: Hilliard Photographics

[ See Career Academy South Bend in Our Projects Portfolio ]

We’re pleased and proud to note that Career Academy South Bend is featured in the new book Charter School Patterns of Innovation – A New Architecture For a New Education, recently published by Ball State University. Completed as a joint multi-year project of the BSU Office of Charter Schools and BSU Department of Architecture, the publication compiles best practices in school design and programming drawn from 56 different charter school facilities across the nation and in the state of Indiana.

According to Ball State, students conducted case study research on exemplary charter schools and high performance “green” school design to develop ways to incorporate issues of curriculum, funding, facility planning, and sustainable strategies into the overall design of the building. This information was used to develop concepts or “patterns” for incorporating environmentally sustainable strategies into the planning and design of charter school buildings. The data compiled serves as a reference standard for innovative educators and school architects from around the country.

What gives us much pride is not only that CASB was extensively profiled in the publication, but from among the dozens of facilities profiled an image of the school’s interior was used as the cover. “This double recognition is a well-deserved honor for Career Academy South Bend”, says project architect Phil Panzica, “as Panzica’s innovative design is really a testament to the bold vision of the school’s founder-benefactors Larry Garatoni and Steve Hartz, supported by the outstanding school administration and programs established under their leadership.”

CASB’s design was also recognized in 2012 by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Illinois Chapter with a Design Excellence Award for “Best Educational Facility”.  In 2011-12, designing and building on a successful “fast track” schedule, Panzica completed CASB’s conversion from a former credit card statement processing facility into a 110,000 sq. ft. 7-12 charter school and adult vocational center. Notable innovations in this adaptive re-use included great flexibility in arrangement and finish of educational spaces to facilitate a project-based curriculum, abundant day lighting, extensive use of sustainable and recycled materials, and the successful integration of “bonus” spaces into the building program such as a 75-seat presentation auditorium and a regulation-size gymnasium. All work was preformed with prevailing wage labor yet completed at a fraction of the cost of typical public school facilities.