"THE ONLY CRANE IN TOWN"

SMMA (architecture, engineering, and planning) says what few can: ?We're still hiring.? New staff tally for 2009, 27, with the latest starting yesterday and bringing its roster to 162. The reason for the growth, we're told: repeat clients for the 55-year-old Cambridge firm.
SMMA's Mark Spaulding, Jacquelyn Behles, and Rafael Gurevich savor the just completed Blue Cross Blue Shield office tower in Providence, overlooking Water Place Park. ?With the economy sinking around it, for a while it was the only crane downtown,? recalled Mark. To cap off that achievement, he spent much of the holiday with one of his favorite foods: ?a very good beer.?
Ara Krafian, here with fellow engineer Brian Lawlor, says that by spanning corporate, educational, and technology projects, "we haven?t niched ourselves.? Now that ?opulence is out and need is in,? Ara finds the firm doing fewer new offices and more new tech facilities, like a data center for EMC in Durham, NC, and a lab for Wyeth in Andover.
Wellesley?s new public high school will open in 2013 and has a cafeteria that's ?the physical manifestation of Facebook,? says architect Alex Pitkin, here with interior designer Marie Fitzgerald and landscape architect Stella Lensing. With lots of glazing, it has views front and back to see who's talking/walking with whom. You know, essential high school stuff.

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