Shortly after the buzz around the first anniversary of the opening of the Harvard Innovation Lab, Interior Design magazine announced more good news: a 2012 Best of Year (BOY) Merit Award for the Innovation Lab’s design in the Education category.

Since it opened in late 2011, the i-lab has quickly become a hub for entrepreneurs from across the campus. Ambitions for it are unbounded, as noted in an editorial in the Boston Globe in November 2012, “Success of Harvard’s i-lab could buoy the entire region.”

The Innovation Lab is the second ...[more]

While ADA standards for accessible design strive to provide persons with disabilities the same ease of use and access in a building as a person without disability, they do not take into account the needs of the visually impaired. Unlike patients who are blind, those with low vision have limited sight, and must deal with difficulties that include lack of depth perception, clarity, and the ability to distinguish foreground and background.

To accommodate this patient population, in addition to meeting ADA accessibility requirements related to mobility, the toilet rooms at the Vision Rehabilitation Center (VRC) at Mass Eye and Ear had to address these challenges.

It was clear from the ...[more]

Construction is now underway for LEVEL, the student apartment complex close to the University of Arizona in Tucson and the first high rise in the city’s new Main Gate overlay district.

Shepley Bulfinch is completing the 14-story building at 1020 Tyndall Avenue for Campus Acquisitions, one of the country’s leading developers of student housing.  When it opens next year, LEVEL will provide 176 units of luxury student accommodation with amenities that include a rooftop pool and fitness center with views of Tucson, the University of Arizona campus, and the mountains.

“Shepley Bulfinch has a ...[more]

Print magazine has selected the graphic design of the Harvard Innovation Lab as a winner in the 2012 Regional Design Annual, which has just been published. The design was the work of Shepley graphic designers Dan Vlahos and Erin Deeley.

The ‘Hi’ design establishes a distinctive identity and conveys a sense of welcome for the i-lab on Harvard’s Allston, Massachusetts, campus. In telling the story of the impact of the design, Shepley Bulfinch senior creative Dan Vlahos said, “Months after the building opened I got an email ...[more]

We live in a time of constraint and experimentation, when both the state and the nation are seeking ways to enhance our economic well-being. No single institution is more on the front lines of these changes than the community college and nowhere is that more apparent than when examining the physical fabric of the school.

Over the past year I’ve worked with a Massachusetts community college, developing a campus master plan to guide the future physical development of the campus. When we raised the idea of arranging future buildings to create a traditional ...[more]

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Scientific Discovery, Inspired by a Walk to the Restroom”) made the argument that locating key support facilities has a role in fostering collaborative research environments.

As a design researcher, whenever I read a piece like this that cites research without providing citations or references, I become concerned about the quality of the evidence.

I decided to do a little digging. Although I was unable to find a research study documenting a 50-foot rule (“collaboration drops to 10% when workers are more than 50 feet ...[more]