As the year comes to a close, we reflect on the power of giving.

A ceremony on Hartford Street in Boston on November 12 welcomed 16 former US service members to the Pine Street Inn’s new Home for Homeless Veterans. Between them, the Home’s residents and staff have served in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Others saw service at home or abroad during peacetime or in support of combat areas.

Shepley Bulfinch employees contributed to the renovation of the house as a transitional housing facility on a pro bono basis,  producing conceptual design schemes and preparing detailed construction drawings for the project.

We were one of a number of in-kind donors,  including ...[more]

Why do buildings last? How do we design flexible spaces that can change and adapt? 

A team from Shepley took on this question as part of the Open Building conference at Build Boston last month. The conference tasked three firms – Shepley, Payette, and Cannon – to propose a building that would evolve over time to house multiple uses on a large scale site in Somerville. We took the long historical view and, after a week of exhaustive debate, found that architectural systems which are designed to change rarely work or ...[more]

What is the value of design? Businesses and institutions struggle with this question on a regular basis as they weigh concerns about budget, timing, and a variety of other factors against the priority of design. Several organizations, like Apple Computer, have seen the benefit of prioritizing design, and have made it a part of their core message.

As the this Oct. 10 New York Times article points out, good design can have a powerful impact on the urban landscape. One city, New York, has lately taken the initiative to prioritize good design in new public buildings. As architects, we take the advantages of strong design for granted. How can ...[more]

An interesting read from Metropolis on how IDEO is working with different federal agencies (“IDEO takes on the government“) to design better and more humanized processes – further proof that design thinking has the power to change even non-material things.

I was especially taken with the descriptions of the interactive charrette-type exercises that everyone wanted to be involved in. People are excited to share what they know in a creative way.

It seems to be a change for a governmental system that is structured to give power to the representative few. ...[more]

Catching the sun as it plays across the building’s surface, the undulating façade system for the University of Houston’s Health and Biomedical Sciences Center is an innovative design solution that responds to challenges in topography and program.

The risk of flooding on the low-lying site disallowed a basement, shifting all mechanical space to the top of the building. Likewise, the building program’s secure research spaces – typically located below grade – are also at the top level. Since both the mechanicals and research program require windowless spaces, the upper half of the building façade has few openings.

Recognizing the potentially overwhelming proportion of a solid façade, the design team used reflection ...[more]

An interesting article from yesterday’s NY Times discusses a new exhibit/critique of preservation by Koolhaas in NY. Nicolai Ouroussoff writes that in the exhibition Mr. Koolhaas “paints a picture of an army of well-meaning but clueless preservationists who, in their zeal to protect the world’s architectural legacies, end up debasing them by creating tasteful scenery for docile consumers while airbrushing out the most difficult chapters of history. The result is a new form of historical amnesia, one that, perversely, only further alienates us from the past.” I would argue this is a fair criticism of styled big-box architecture and other developer driven “luxury” destinations including hotels and shopping malls…

But what ...[more]

Has 3D modeling superseded the physical sketch model as a design tool? No, and here’s why.

At an internal “Design Open Studio” a few weeks ago, the conversation focused on the continued relevance of physical sketch models as an exploratory tool in the design process. While the proliferation of 3D modeling programs may suggest that the days of building sketch models are over, the fact is that hands-on model making is still a vital tool for us to iteratively explore design ideas in three dimensions. Unlike even the most flexible modeling software, which is ...[more]

Last July we held a large-scale affinity mapping charrette as a way of gathering data about people’s day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. The affinity map proved to be a very effective tool for aggregating the collective wisdom of the crowd.

Collective intelligence in the digital realm is an idea that’s gained more traction in the past couple of years. Think of the crowdsourcing used to build the Linux operating system or Google’s search algorithms. What makes affinity mapping unique is its use as an analog tool to document collective intelligence. Even better, it creates a physical representation of the group’s collective thinking: the Post-It diagram.

The process of creating that physical artifact ...[more]