Architectural Record and Engineering News-Record magazines once again ranked Shepley Bulfinch among the top architecture and green design firms in the US in their latest annual surveys published in the two magazines this week. The rankings are based on revenues in 2009, a challenging year for the industry.

Architectural Record put Shepley at #79 among A/E/C firms based on total architectural revenue in its survey of the country’s 250 leading design firms.

ENR ranked Shepley Bulfinch at #89 in its annual survey of Top 100 Green Design Firms, based on 2009 ...[more]

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about changes to LEED. Are new credentialing requirements too complicated and cumbersome? Are the efforts of the USGBC to focus on energy efficiency in the new version of LEED enough to ensure green buildings are truly green? Everyone seems to be waiting to see what changes recently introduced by the USGBC mean for the future of LEED. Let’s step aside from all of that for a moment and look an outside influence that may be more important.

A draft of the International Green Construction Code (IGCC) ...[more]

In this week’s architecture issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Shepley president Carole Wedge joins Ted Landsmark, president of Boston Architectural College; Karen Van Lengen, former dean of the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture; and Kate Schwennsen, associate dean of Iowa State’s College of Design for a discussion of women in architecture.

The article discusses design aesthetics, leadership styles, and challenges in the profession. Carole’s comments reflect remarks from an in-house conversation with five other female designers in the firm. As she notes in the article, “the subject of women in ...[more]

We’ve all heard that producing in a BIM (Building Information Modeling) environment is drastically different than producing in CAD, but it was the contrast between “novice” and “experienced” BIM that really surprised me. At times I almost laugh out loud, thinking about how I did things when I started and how I do them now. I can remember sitting at my desk, arm hurting (seriously) from squeezing my mouse trying to get Revit to behave. The one thought constantly running through my head: “There has to be an easier way.”

I can picture the conversation between ...[more]

As architects, making a positive environmental impact means being more than responsive to project needs: it means being active and deliberate in developing and applying research to make better, more energy-efficient buildings.

An important component of sustainability is the reduction of energy consumption. After all, less energy used translates to less fuel burned, which results in fewer emissions of global warming gases. In addition, less demand for energy results in a need for fewer power plants (whether coal burning or nuclear plants, or even photovoltaic arrays or windmills), using fewer natural resources for construction.

At ...[more]

Shepley Bulfinch has moved up ten places to rank 39th among the nation’s leading interior design firms, according to Interior Design magazine in its “100 Giants” annual survey, published this month. The survey is based on 2009 interior design fees for major interior design firms from around the US.

In a break-out by key sectors, Shepley also ranks 6th among education design firms. The firm’s 2009 university clients include Duke, Johns Hopkins, George Mason, Atlanta University Center, Illinois Wesleyan, and  the University of New Mexico. In 2009 the firm also completed projects ...[more]

Building on the award-winning tradition set by our 2009 poster, which received an AIGA Best of New England Design award, the poster for this year’s Summer Design Fellowship was designed by world-renowned graphic design firm Experimental Jetset out of Amsterdam. The poster, which is mailed out to accredited architecture schools across North America, is often posted in common areas within the architecture or design department. I’d like to share some insights about the design process, strategy, and design thinking behind the poster itself.

- Dan Vlahos

An excerpt from my design brief:
Three ...[more]

One in an occasional series

Shepley Bulfinch’s technology department manages tools and culture, with a goal of trying to create the intimate connection between ideas and how we communicate them as much as possible and have these very complex systems run in the background without the designer needing to worry or know about them. We want to be like electricity. Or rather, we want to be like paper and pencil.

The space in design between ideas and communicating them, filled with the casual and formal interplay of tools and culture, is the most interesting to me. ...[more]