(Photo Credit: Jason Dziver)

Pickard Chilton, an award-winning architecture studio in New Haven, Conn. best known for its innovative and sophisticated design of high-performance corporate headquarters and campuses, received an AIA Connecticut Business Architecture Award of Merit for its design of ATCO Park in Calgary, Alberta. The Business Architecture Awards honors practicing Connecticut architects and their clients whose projects enhance the built environment and achieve business goals.

ATCO Park is a new the 434,000-square-foot headquarters for the energy and logistics firm, bringing together employees in a dynamic composition of two four-story office buildings which surround a leaf-shaped quad and are interconnected by a multi-purpose Commons. The LEED NC-Gold buildings provide panoramic views to the Rockies and the Calgary skyline. Its design and forms reflect two iconic Alberta images: the flowing lines of a prairie stream and the silhouette of the Rocky Mountains. It also responds to the native geology and biodiversity with a palette of earth tones, warm woods and stones, and locally-sourced materials.

A jury of David Arai, AIA, Maier Design Group LLC; Nancy Alexander, Lumenance Consulting; and Dan De Clercq, De Clercq Office Group describe the project as “a harmonious design that connects well to its surroundings. The fusion of company and public spaces is refreshing. The overall forms of the building were really successful, and it captured the imagery of the mountains. The materials, the wood, and the space are perfect for what the architect wanted to accomplish. Beautiful and very well-conceived.” In 2019, ATCO Park was also recognized with the Prairie Wood Design Awards’ Industry Award for Top Project; a Merit Architecture Award from AIA Connecticut; and, a Green Good Design Award and an American Architecture Award from The European Centre for Architecture and the Chicago Athenaeum.