Tom Marquardt, IIDA, SBID, an established designer with more than 30 years of experience, brings a design philosophy rooted in interdisciplinary collaboration and mentorship.
Tom Marquardt Joins HOK’s Chicago Practice as Director of Interiors
Eppstein Uhen Architects Acquires Burkettdesign
Milwaukee-based Eppstein Uhen Architects (EUA) is acquiring Denver-based architecture and interior design firm Burkettdesign. With more than 180 employees across three offices in Wisconsin and Iowa, EUA will be joined by the 27 employees of Burkettdesign’s Denver office, which will change its name to BurkettEUA.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
LISTEN: Design Observer Interviews David Rockwell
David Rockwell is the founder and president of the Rockwell Group and a theatrical set designer.On this episode, he talks about his multifaceted exploration of “how the immediate environment can connect people,“ from restaurants and children’s playgrounds to the Broadway stage.
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.
LISTEN: Episode 41 - Legal Design
IA Principal, Project Director, and Head of the Vertical Markets Group on Law Firm Design Erik Hodgetts highlights the current trends and challenges of legal design.
The Benefit Of Letting Employees Lead “From Any Chair”
Architect Joan Saba explains the “flat and lumpy” approach her firm NBBJ takes to leadership–and why architecture isn’t just about aesthetics any more.
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.
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.
WATCH: One Hundred and HDR
HDR turned 100 years-old today. A century of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. A legacy of bringing innovative solutions to every project – no matter the challenge. A future of collaborating and creating the only way we know how. Together.
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.
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 Chipperfield, MAD Architects, and more to give us an inside look at where the firms work.
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.
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?
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.
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.