Shepley Bulfinch welcomed Partners In Health co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer (“Mountains Beyond Mountains”) to our Boston office today, where he spoke at the unveiling of plans for a new rehabilitation and training center in Haiti.

We partnered with colleagues from Boston’s healthcare and design communities to deliver this pro bono project, joining with Partners in Health, Partners Healthcare, Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, and the Mass Design Group to address the immediate and long-term demand for rehabilitation services in Haiti.

Carole Wedge welcomed 80 guests to this morning’s event. “We got as much as we gave in this process,” she said, pointing to the design response forged by a tight timetable, limited ...[more]

BOSTON, MA – Harvard Business School celebrated the newly renovated Gallatin Hall the old-fashioned way – with an all-night party. As the HBS Bulletin notes, what better way to “road test” a dorm than to invite 73 friends over to sleep in its rooms and test its light switches, windows, and shower heads?

The gut renovation that stripped Gallatin down to its brick walls and concrete slabs transformed the McKim Mead and White building’s warren-like accommodations into the envy of the campus. Gallatin Hall is now ADA compliant, with universal access through a newly restored courtyard, teak rocking chairs and benches lining its elegant brick terrace. A glass-paneled second-floor footbridge ...[more]

Good design means that universal design doesn’t have to be obvious, says Shepley Bulfinch project architect Tricia DeLauri in “Balancing Tradition” in the March 2008 issue of College Planning and Management magazine.

She and Sara Elsa-Beech, project manager for the recently completed renovation of Charles Pratt Hall at Amherst College, discuss the challenges and opportunities when ensuring ADA compliance for historic renovation projects.