Case Studies Commercial

A visit to Toronto and its surrounding communities quickly shows how the real estate market is looking up. That’s not just in terms of prices—it’s also about the high-rise projects filling the skyline in Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville and Vaughan. Anthony Fragale is making a career of building up. As the director of high-rise construction for […]

Researchers and staff have taught, studied and discovered inside the University of California San Francisco’s Clinical Sciences Building for nearly 90 years. Since opening in 1933, the eight-story, 109,000-square-foot building has stood strong throughout many shakes, tremors and all-out earthquakes that have rocked the City by the Bay, including the devastating 1989 earthquake that caused […]

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning are all about comfort. So is managing business relationships. As president and son of the founder, Andrew Grundman has followed a legacy of solid relationships his father insisted on when establishing Grundman Mechanical Systems in 1983. While the senior Grundman might claim Andrew worked in the company at age 5 […]

They call her “FIFI,” and she’s just two-of-a-kind: Manufactured in 1944, she is one of the last flightworthy Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in the world. The giant flying museum—99 feet long with a 141-foot wing-span—has appeared in air shows all over North America, representing similar aircraft that flew in World War II and the Korean War, […]

Carly Bonora is proud to say that “plumbing is in my blood.” It makes sense for Bonora, who grew up around plumbers, and is the fourth generation of her family to run 72-year-old Ackerman Plumbing Inc. Bonora worked her way up to vice president and co-owner from humble beginnings in the family enterprise, mowing lawns […]

If the late John T. Adamo Sr. could see the business he started 54 years ago, his son Richard M. Adamo is certain he would be proud. Because while Adamo Group Inc. has prospered and transformed with the times, Richard Adamo insists it has held fast to values associated with being a family-run business, such […]

As company monikers go, “the eagle that carried Zeus’ thunderbolts” is pretty tough to top—particularly so when the title in question is cast in all uppercase letters. However, the firm’s management says the name AQUILA has less to do with Greek mythology, and more to do with eagles’ keen eyes. “We’ve always prided ourselves on […]

If, just a little over three years ago, you had taken a walk to 300 Second Street SE in Minneapolis, Minnesota, you would have been struck by an eyesore not unlike many that pockmark former mill cities. A two-story building of smudged, light-colored brick, drooping on one side with widespread mold and rust, windows boarded […]

By any measure, the late Louis Kahn (1901-1974) was among America’s most prominent architects, but that doesn’t mean the eccentric Philadelphian was infallible in every project he undertook. The Richards Medical Research Laboratory he designed for the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1950s may have met every aesthetic test, even scoring National Historic Landmark […]

When Adler Windows hosts a walking tour through New York City, the window and door installation company does more than show off the city’s impressive skyline. As an official education provider for the American Institute of Architects (AIA), a nonprofit that supports the continued education of architects, Adler Windows uses these walks to teach building […]