The Microsoft Thermal Energy Center, a groundbreaking geothermal heating and cooling system that serves the buildings of the tech giant’s 72-acre East Campus Modernization outside Seattle, was truly two exotic jobs wrapped into one.
Rouzbeh Savary became hooked on concrete as a youth in Tehran, when he would frequently tag along to jobsites with his developer-father Davood. Even as a 9-year-old, he was mesmerized by crews casting concrete for his father’s multistory buildings.
Carla Sciara began working in construction as a design drafter for an electrical contractor on its Four Seasons Hotel project in Manhattan—the first hotel designed by the renowned architect I.M. Pei.
Pei has had an affinity for wood for 20 of his 44 years. “It’s a natural material that is close to art and architecture,” says the associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
Veteran structural engineer Don Davies often confesses that by his own calculations, his annual personal carbon footprint is a whopping 10 times the world average and 3½ times the U.S. average.
If not for the Great Recession and Sean Beatty, construction of the curvaceous reinforced concrete sea-creature tanks in the 50,000-sq-ft Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion would have been even more arduous.