The new Nils K. Nelson Bioscience Innovation Building at Purdue University Northwest has been designed not only to serve as a state-of-the-art teaching facility – housing the university’s college of nursing and department of biological sciences – but as a new “front door” to the 167-acre campus in Hammond, Ind.

For showcasing how metal panels can be leveraged in a transformative retrofit project, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 134 headquarters building in Chicago won the 2019 Metal Architecture Design Award for renovations and retrofits. Metal wall panels were used in the adaptive reuse project to give the building a new identity, express its use and the importance of some spaces. The retrofit completely transformed a 1960s elementary school building into a labor organization’s modern headquarters, which includes a lobby, large meeting hall, offices, meeting rooms, lounges and gymnasium community center.

The Leltex House in Manchester is home to Hartbrights Sign Solutions/Architectural Cladding Systems in the UK. The team specializes in a variety of signage and printing capacities but has recently branched into the architectural cladding market. To showcase their rainscreen cladding system they chose a modern redesign of their own office complex that serves a duel purpose of providing the company an updated facility and also showcases to potential clients their cladding capabilities.

The “Aluminum Forest” in Utrecht, Netherlands serves as the headquarters for the country’s aluminum industry. Reflecting the different products and qualities of their domestic aluminum, the building was constructed atop 368 anodized aluminum columns.

Kandler-Bunje Architects designed the headquarters of BFFT, a German automotive technology developer. The company was recently ranked the number one most popular medium-sized employer in the automotive industry. A main component of their headquarters’ design was to not only reflect the company’s commitment to modernity and sustainability, but to provide an optimal work environment for their valuable employees.