It’s dedication day for Harvard’s innovation lab in Boston, but the buzz has been building all fall.

Shepley worked with Harvard to fast-track the creation of Batten Hall and the i-lab, transforming the old studios of WGBH into a high-energy space for campus and community. Say goodbye to the studios where Julia Child and Zoom! were filmed and hello to workshops and wide-open (and wired) spaces.

Or should we say ‘Hi,’ in the spirit of the i-lab’s signature logo, which Shepley created as part of the innovation lab’s brand?

Even before today’s events, i-lab director Gordon ...[more]

How many units of affordable housing can you fit into Shepley Bulfinch’s Boston office? The answer is 429, in a manner of speaking – or at least that was the case on the evening of May 4.

That’s when Shepley hosted the 11th annual Greater Boston Affordable Housing Development Competition awards ceremony. Sponsors of the design competition include the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA), and the Boston Society of Architects.
Eight teams of graduate students in architecture, planning, business, and law, who ...[more]

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]