“We’re #27.” OK, it may not trip off the tongue, but it sounds pretty good to us.

Shepley moved up the ranks of the country’s “Design Giants” in the results of a national survey just released by Building Design + Construction magazine. With an overall ranking at #27 in the annual survey, the firm came in 26th among university design firms and 48th among healthcare design firms. The magazine gives a shout-out to Marquette Law School with a photograph of the school’s Zilber Forum as the survey’s featured higher education project.

Shepley, which now uses ...[more]

It’s more than just a matter of current economic cycles. Carole Wedge talks about technology, client expectations, and the future of the architecture profession in this month’s issue of Architect magazine.

Architect magazine article

There are some topics that keep coming up when we talk about leveraging BIM for Building Performance Analysis (BPA). In presentations to peers, clients, and students alike, discussion inevitably comes back to the applicability and timing of BPA, and the interoperability of BIM models and BPA models. What does this mean for design teams?

Last year a colleague at Vanderweil Engineers approached me with a challenge: “How do we leverage our BIM models for Building Performance Analysis?” I took the bait. Armed with the support of our firms and numerous knowledgeable resources, we ...[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 ...[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]

AUGUSTA, ME – The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine received national honors from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) today when they were presented with a 2009 award for Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel (IDEAS2). The project was one of eleven honored by the AISC as part of its annual nationwide recognition of outstanding achievements in engineering and architecture on structural steel projects.

The 6300 sf structure, located at the University of Maine at Augusta, creates a visual metaphor of a hope and rebirth, taking its form from the petals of an unfolding flower. In response to the sculptural demands of the petal architecture, ...[more]