Joe Rondinelli, Senior Associate at Shepley Bulfinch, has been named to the Editorial Advisory Board of Contract magazine. Board responsibilities include participation in the annual Design Forum and a roundtable discussion at NeoCon, as well as advice and input on the magazine’s editorial content. Joe has had a long relationship with the editorial staff at Contract through his participation in judging the “Best of NeoCon ” and for his article contributions over the years to the magazine.

Joe joined Shepley Bulfinch in 1995. His current clients include Duke University Law School, Marquette University Law School, and Johns Hopkins University. He is an associate member of the IIDA and a ...[more]

Shepley Bulfinch has won the “Single Space” category in the 2012 Library Interior Design Competition for the Learning Commons for Atlanta University Center’s Robert W. Woodruff Library. The biennial design award is jointly sponsored by the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) and the American Library Association (ALA).

“This award is a real honor for a transformational work,” said interior designer Joe Rondinelli, a director at Shepley Bulfinch. “The limitations in an interior renovation project can stimulate creativity. For Woodruff, we embraced the red accent color of the ...[more]

Just as pedagogical and learning styles have evolved, the design of buildings that support learning are changing, too, from environments with static formulas for space layouts to those that support active dynamic learning.

A primary goal in designing a learning environment is not only to support the activities that take place within it but to encourage the activity and make it visible to those who enter the environment. This idea of taking down boundaries helped accomplish that.

For Eckstein Hall at Marquette Law School this was taken forward with the idea that the law ...[more]

I’ve attended many trade shows over the years and the Lighting Expo in Frankfurt in April was one of the most extraordinary examples of product design innovation I’ve seen.

If there was a theme this year it was that the future of lamping is LED. That said, it soon became obvious that all LEDs are not equal and that new lamping technologies, while progressive, are not yet the answer for all lighting. Issues like overall performance, color rendering, glare, dimming, and life expectancy still need to be carefully evaluated in the selection ...[more]

Janette Blackburn and Joe Rondinelli discuss the changing roles and forms of libraries in the March 2010 issue of Building Design & Construction. In the article, they discuss how, as readers needs change and libraries accommodate more diverse uses, space, flexibility, and acoustical control play increasingly important roles.

The Evolving Library – Building Design & Construction

The Brody Learning Commons at Johns Hopkins University, which has been packed since its doors opened last August, has something big to celebrate this week: LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council. It’s the first new construction on the school’s Homewood campus to earn this distinction.

The Learning Commons’ sustainable strategies include:

Managing solar gain: Heat gain and loss from the glass curtain wall system was combated by high-performance glass, automated interior shades, and perimeter (hydronic) heating and cooling.
Energy efficiency: While the under-floor air distribution system ...[more]

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]