High-Performance Building

As an Associate at Heintges & Associates, a building envelope consulting firm in New York,  Samina contributed to the design and execution of  several award-winning buildings. Her work included structural analysis, thermal analysis, enclosure detailing, material selection, performance testing, and site and factory inspections, which gave her in-depth experience with high performance facades.

Samina has taught classes in building enclosure design to over 100 architectural engineering students at Drexel College of Engineering, for which she received the engineering college’s Outstanding Adjunct Award in 2019. She has also taught building enclosure design at the graduate level at University of Pennsylvania School of Design. She served as a enclosure consultant to design studios at Columbia University Graduate School of Design  and Drexel Architecture Program, and has been a review critic at Pratt B.A. Architecture Program and Parsons The New School for Design. 

Samina obtained her Certified Passive House Consultant designation Passive House Institute US in 2016, and she aims to use these critical principles to help clients make their homes and businesses more energy efficient.

Barnard Diana Center

The dynamic 44,000 sq. ft. facade of this seven-story student center at Barnard College in NYC helps achieve the private public concept by incorporating the innovative first use in the U.S. of acid etch on #1 surface of glass, patterned ceramic frit, and copper anodized spandrel.  In her role at Heintges, Samina facilitated visual mock-ups and material selection,  reviewed shop drawings and fabrication,  witnessed and analyzed performance mock-up testing, and oversaw and performed inspections of the entire installation, coordinating with the contractor for troubleshooting, water testing and final project closeout.  

Winner of AIA Institute National Honor Award, AIA Best Building in New York State Award, AIA NYS Award of Excellence, The Chicago Athenaeum Green Architecture Green Good Design Award.

Pratt Myrtle Hall

This academic and studio building at Pratt was the first academic building to achieve LEED Gold Certification in Brooklyn.  Two distinct wall types differentiate the public facade from the campus facade, with a floor-through atrium space.  Within the 43,500 sq. ft. of facade, selective use of ceramic frit on glass and exterior sunshades contribute to overall building performance.  As the facade project manager with Heintges from the early design phases through construction administration and project closeout, Samina helped to design a material and structural strategy, performed thermal analysis, developed contract drawings and specifications, reviewed shop drawings and oversaw mock-up testing, fabrication and installation.

Arena Stage

At this immense performance complex in Washington, D.C., 90,000 sq. ft. of new inclined and curved glass and timber cable wall facade unifies existing theaters with new theater spaces, creating a new event space out of the circulation spaces.  The facade is hung by cables from a unifying cantilever roof and is supported against wind forces by branches of the primary timber structure.  As the lead Heintges consultant, for this challenging installation, Samina performed a detailed analysis of live loads to coordinate the installation sequence between the aluminum and glass glazed system to the timber and cable structural system.  She also conducted a finite-element analysis to understand the interactions between the wind load deflections of the facade and the structure to ensure that the structure did not introduce excessive stresses into the facade.  Samina designed solutions at tricky wall system intersections and geometries and reviewed shop drawings as well as testing and installation.

Riverhouse

For the first LEED Gold-certified building in Battery Park City, as Heintges consultant, Samina performed NYC-mandated controlled special inspections of the facade for three years. Through weekly observations, coordination and onsite water testing with general and facade contractors, Samina was critical to quality assurance, identifying issues and proposing resolutions for several wall systems, including the first use of double-glass curtain wall in a residential building in the United States.

Javits Center Renovation

From schematic design through installation, Heintges orchestrated the evaluation of the existing 450,000 sq. ft. aluminum and glass curtain wall and designed the new unitized aluminum, glass and stainless steel panel curtain wall for the complete replacement of the facade. In the evaluation phase, Samina oversaw an in-depth analysis of the existing curtain wall, overseeing a complete removal and disassembly of several curtain wall panels and steel anchor nodes to assess the viability of the components for future renovation schemes. She also coordinated the analysis of modern wind and snow load requirements against the existing vertical glazing and skylight systems. During design, she designed the metal panel cladding assembly for the new scheme and contributed to the overall curtain wall design specification.