What can you come up with to transform a parking lot into a community gathering place, in the face of financial and logistical constraints? That was the challenge facing design teams in the Flat Lot competition in Flint, Michigan. “Knot Lot,” a Shepley Bulfinch team submission, was chosen as one of five finalists from among 221 entries in the competition, which was sponsored by the Flint (Michigan) Public Art Project and the Flint chapter of the AIA.  Knot Lot and other top entries will be part of an exhibition opening in Flint on April 14.

Organizers asked designers ...[more]

A significant part of our practice as architects is to convey abstract, mostly visual design concepts in ways that make them accessible to a wide range of people, most of whom are not fluent in architectural drawing conventions. We are so focused on visual representation that we are often shocked when the audience does not understand the basic experiential qualities of the spaces we are trying to convey.

How can we help clients and future users understand what it will be like to interact within a building that only ...[more]

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]

Tad Jusczyk gave everyone at Shepley a remarkable new perspective as he journeyed from Xi’an to Venice this past summer as Shepley Bulfinch’s inaugural Howe Traveling Fellow. As Tad traveled we shared his discoveries and observations on his blog, The Long Road to Venice. Since his return, they have enriched our design dialogue.

His journeys were also documented in Tour de Force, a Boston Society of Architects’ online feature and slideshow.

The Howe Traveling Fellowship is a grant for travel and exploration for Shepley Bulfinch staff, supported by the firm to honor ...[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]

Shepley Bulfinch will be designing a new library for Ringling College of Art + Design in Sarasota, Florida, as a “locus for learning” for the design school’s creative community.

The new library is a milestone project for Ringling, which has expanded significantly in recent years, and will be the first building executed as part of the College’s campus master plan. The 50,000 square foot library, which will be located on a new site on campus, will quadruple the space of the present 12,000 square foot Kimbrough Library, which opened in 1980.

The design team is ...[more]