Why do buildings last? How do we design flexible spaces that can change and adapt? 

A team from Shepley took on this question as part of the Open Building conference at Build Boston last month. The conference tasked three firms – Shepley, Payette, and Cannon – to propose a building that would evolve over time to house multiple uses on a large scale site in Somerville. We took the long historical view and, after a week of exhaustive debate, found that architectural systems which are designed to change rarely work or ...[more]

What is the value of design? Businesses and institutions struggle with this question on a regular basis as they weigh concerns about budget, timing, and a variety of other factors against the priority of design. Several organizations, like Apple Computer, have seen the benefit of prioritizing design, and have made it a part of their core message.

As the this Oct. 10 New York Times article points out, good design can have a powerful impact on the urban landscape. One city, New York, has lately taken the initiative to prioritize good design in new public buildings. As architects, we take the advantages of strong design for granted. How can ...[more]

As architects, we often take the seemingly banal decisions that we make for granted. However, many of the devices that we employ carry social and historical implications that have had a profound effect on the way humans function. Corridors were not an inevitability. Often overlooked in the grand sweep of architectural history, they have had an enormous impact on the way we live, work, and communicate.

Despite their ubiquity today, corridors did not exist until the late 17th century, and were only first widely used in the 19th century. Before their ...[more]

Submergia, a conceptual design for a city of the future developed by Shepley Bulfinch’s Tad Jusczyk , has been recognized in the 3rd Advanced Architecture Contest: The Self-Sufficient City, held in Barcelona earlier this year. The international competition, which attracted more than 700 entries from around the world, was sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Hewlett-Packard.

Submergia creates a new typology for suburban housing with a series of floating cities, each designed to accommodate 8,000 people. Tad, working with partner Andrew Wit, envisioned the new cities for sites south of San ...[more]