Design Firms

3 EXAMPLES OF INSPIRING SCHOOL INTERIORS

3 EXAMPLES OF INSPIRING SCHOOL INTERIORS

Research has repeatedly shown that school design has a significant impact on student outcomes. With learning no longer confined to the classroom, it's important to consider the entirety of a school, not just the classrooms, when planning a school redesign.

To help inspire your school redesign project, today I'm sharing three school design ideas that will help you create learning spaces to motivate and excite students and teachers alike.

Via millikencarpet.com 

This Firm Is Redesigning The Most Stressful Places On Earth

This Firm Is Redesigning The Most Stressful Places On Earth

For the New York-based design firm Icrave, interior design isn’t just choosing paint colors, lighting, and furniture. While the firm got its start in 2002 designing the interiors of bars and restaurants, it has since branched into designing airport terminals, including the jetsetting JetBlue terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, and most recently, healthcare spaces, like the Josie Robertson Surgery Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Via fastcodesign.com 

Perkins+Will's Biggest Challenge For Designing Conagra's New HQ: The Size

Perkins+Will's Biggest Challenge For Designing Conagra's New HQ: The Size

The new year brings a new home, new name and new focus for Conagra. The food conglomerate changed its name to Conagra Brands and moved its global HQ from Omaha, Nebraska, to downtown Chicago.

Conagra's offices inside Merchandise Mart total over 168K SF on one floor. That footprint is equivalent to three football fields and enough space to bring together 790 employees in marketing, legal and finance from Conagra’s grocery, frozen foods and snack operations. Perkins+Will associate principal Eric Mersmann said designing an office with such a large floor plate presented some unique challenges.

Via bisnow.com

ABI Growth Continues in March

ABI Growth Continues in March

The first quarter of the year ended on a positive note for the Architecture Billings Index (ABI).   The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the March ABI score was 54.3, up from a score of 50.7 in the previous month. This score reflects a sizable increase in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 59.8, down from a reading of 61.5 the previous month, while the new design contracts index dipped from 54.7 to 52.3.

Via aia.org 

Stantec Designs Headquarters for Valley Forge Fabrics

Stantec Designs Headquarters for Valley Forge Fabrics

Stantec has completed the interiors for Fort Lauderdale-based Valley Forge Fabrics, the global leader in hospitality upholstery fabrics. The 73,000 sf space boasts the largest performance textile archive in the world with more than one million items, a state of the art fabric-testing laboratory and in-house seamstress and printed fabric production areas. "Valley Forge is a household name within the hospitality industry and they pride themselves in creating beautiful, welcoming spaces in the world's top hotels," said interior designer Barbara Savage, senior associate at Stantec's Miami office. "In this new space, we're giving their staff the same experience."

Via dexigner.com

GENSLER NEW YORK GIVES ITSELF A RED HOT REDESIGN

GENSLER NEW YORK GIVES ITSELF A RED HOT REDESIGN

When your offices are also a display of your abilities in design and architecture, you’ve got to bring your A game to the project. And that’s what the global architecture and design firm Gensler did when it moved and redesigned its New York offices. Spanning five floors of a Broadway address, Gensler New York glows red from the exterior and thrums with the same hot intensity inside. A striking central staircase anchors the offices, while surfaces — covered in slate bricks, warm woods, gleaming floors, and vivid pops of Gensler’s signature reds — wrap the workspace with a dramatic-yet-modern flair.

Via workdesign.com 

Virtual reality leads to better building designs, happier clients, says architecture firm

Virtual reality leads to better building designs, happier clients, says architecture firm

A picture is worth 1,000 words, but what does that mean really? In the end, can one truly be certain about an end product with a single picture? Through virtual reality (VR), architecture and design firms are now able to make sure that clients are aware of all the nooks and crannies of a single building through immersive experiences rather than flat renderings.

Perkins+Will, an American architecture and design firm established in 1935, is one of these firms determined to help their clients explore the spaces they create through virtual reality.

Via curbed.com 

Minneapolis-based Interior Design Firm Studio Hive Joins DLR Group.

Minneapolis-based Interior Design Firm Studio Hive Joins DLR Group.

DLR Group Tuesday announced the acquisition of Minneapolis-based interior design firm Studio Hive. Founded in 2003 by Janice Carleen Linster, FASID; Shari Bjork, LEED AP; and Shawn Gaither, AIA, Studio Hive is consistently ranked as one of the leading interior design firms in the Twin Cities. Studio Hive is a recognized leader in the design of workplace, sports, and higher education environments, for clients including Gray Plant Mooty, Fox Rothschild, the University of Minnesota, UCare, as well as interior design at many of the collegiate and professional sports stadiums in the Twin Cities.

Inside San Francisco's Fuseproject

 Inside San Francisco's Fuseproject

If you want to understand Silicon Valley's obsessions over the years, look no further than Fuseproject. Since 1999, the San Francisco design firm has helped companies turn new technologies into slick, consumer-friendly products, from fitness trackers and laptops to juicers and smart locks. We visited the studio recently to see how Fuseproject is approaching the Valley's latest craze: Robotics and AI.

Via fastcodesign.com 

An inside look at the offices of Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, and more

An inside look at the offices of Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, and more

Lots of ink—digital and real alike—is spilled on the work of the world’s busiest architecture firms, from Zaha Hadid Architects, in London, to Renzo Piano Building Workshop, in Paris, and a whole host of places in between. But rarely do we get an inside look at the firms’ offices themselves.

Photographer Marc Goodwin, founder of photo company Archmospheres, is helping pull back that curtain, and has traveled to the offices of David ChipperfieldMAD Architects, and more to give us an inside look at where the firms work.

Via designboom.com

David Rockwell is Taking on NYC’s Restaurants, Theater and Airports

David Rockwell is Taking on NYC’s Restaurants, Theater and Airports

When David Rockwell was 12 he crossed the Hudson River with his family, ate at Schrafft’s, saw Fiddler on the Roof at the Majestic and fell in love with New York City—all in one day.

Today, so many of us who share the sentiment have Rockwell himself to thank.

The designer’s handprint is everywhere from The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx to JetBlue’s JFK Terminal 5 marketplace in Queens to Imagination Playground at Betsy Head Park in Brooklyn to FAO Schwarz to Broadway theater (did you know he won a Tony?) to, most recently, the new Union Square Cafe.

Via commercialobserver.com 

Bill Bouchey Named Design Director of HOK

Bill Bouchey Named Design Director of HOK

Bill Bouchey has joined global architecture firm HOK’s New York office as a principal and director of design for interiors. In his new role, Bouchey will oversee brand-focused commissions that adhere to the firm’s longstanding experiential design approach. Bouchey most recently served as design director for VOA Associates and has worked for M Moser Associates and Mancini Duffy, where he contributed to projects for high-profile clients such as Canon USA, Christie’s, and Viacom.

HOK’s firm-wide director of interiors Tom Polucci, AIA, IIDA, heralds Bouchey’s creativity and concept-based design approach. “[Bouchey] will play a pivotal role in our ability to deliver … forward-thinking designs that guide our practice to transformative and empowering solutions,” says Polucci. Currently, HOK’s New York office is contributing to LaGuardia Airport’s $4 billion reconstruction and recently completed the InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel and the Teach for America headquarters.

The firm also named Mara Baum its sustainable design leader of health and wellness in the San Francisco office, where she will leverage 18 years of experience in the intersection of healthcare design and ecology. Additionally, the firm named James Stawniczy the senior consultant of wellness in the New York office. Stawniczy joins HOK after heading the sustainability division at Lendlease.

What changes are coming when Dallas design firm HKS updates J.C. Penney's Plano headquarters?

What changes are coming when Dallas design firm HKS updates J.C. Penney's Plano headquarters?

The last thing architects revamping J.C. Penney's headquarters have to worry about is space. With 1.8 million square feet, the sprawling Plano business campus is the size of one of downtown Dallas' biggest skyscrapers. But the Penney building is only 3-stories tall and stretches almost a quarter mile long on the north side of Legacy Drive near the Dallas North Tollway.

Architects HKS designed the building for Penney in the early 1990s.

A quarter century later, the new owners have hired the Dallas design firm to come up with plans to bring the buildings up to date. "The idea is this is going to be a 21st century campus," said HKS' David Lubin. "We are reactivating the building more than repositioning.

Via dallasnews.com

PROFILE: DON CHADWICK

PROFILE: DON CHADWICK

California-based industrial designer Don Chadwick, of Chadwick Studio, has worked with some of the biggest furniture design manufacturers in the world. Designing products for the likes of Knoll and Humanscale, he is nevertheless probably best known for an 1994 ergonomic chair design with Bill Stumpf (1936-2006), which became one of the most iconic designs of the late 20th century: Aeron.

Produced by Herman Miller, Aeron has maintained unrivalled popularity for 23 years, much to the annoyance and frustrations no doubt of many furniture manufacturers that view the chair as a specifiers’ favourite. But despite Aeron’s immovable popularity Herman Miller took the bold and brave step to update the design and this year, amid much industry talk and anticipation, launches Aeron Remastered.

Via designcurial.com

WHAT’S YOUR REALITY? A VR PRIMER

WHAT’S YOUR REALITY? A VR PRIMER

Virtual reality (or VR) has been all over the news lately.  Parents with teenagers might think VR is only affecting the gaming world, but they would be surprised to learn that VR is about to disrupt the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) spheres, transforming the process by which we design and build buildings. Getting familiar with VR is the first step. In a world with many plays on ‘-reality’ (in addition to VR, there’s AR and MR just for starters) what do they all mean and how best can they be deployed?

Via perkinswill.com >