For the past several years we have watched as industry after industry has disrupted and forced to evolve. The retail sector has been rocked by Amazon, the hotel sector by Airbnb, and the taxi service by Uber and Lyft. But there has also been disruption in the commercial real estate industry, thanks to coworking and now COVID-19. The whole world is asking a fundamental question “what is the future of work?” If we are myopic and focused too narrowly on addressing only the challenge COVID has presented us with regarding how and where people work, we will miss the bigger ...

At ThinkLab, our passion exists at the intersection of specification and design, where we use research to improve communications between designers and manufacturers. Over the past 15 weeks, we have been tracking the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the design industry—looking at metrics like bid activity, employment, and project continuation. These results have been shared freely with anyone who participates in our weekly Industry Impact Survey—which we invite you to take!While the feedback to this type of data was positive, the response was crystal clear: “This is great, but we want MORE.” As a result, our most recent deep ...

Healthy People/Healthy Planet Like most architects, planners and urbanist in general, we have been thinking about the lasting effect COVID-19 will have on the built environment...especially cities. Until March, it seemed that the 21st century was going to be an age lead not by empires or countries but by powerful cities. Rapidly growing urban areas produced over 80% of the World’s Gross Economic Product and housed over 50% of its population. People living together inspire each other. Along with density comes intellectual innovation and economic energy. And now just a few short months later, we are being forced to rethink ...

Design for me is about making space that provides beauty and utility in equal measure. It is a celebration of life, a veiled tool that supports the way we live and work. As designers we juggle many complicated tasks in order to successfully deliver to our clients a solution that appears both simple and seamless, and ideally, is flexible enough to accommodate most future scenarios. During this strange time of disruption, the landscape in which we design is transforming radically and quickly. The process by which we carry out our jobs is changing constantly to meet these shifting demands. The ...

The current crisis reveals once again that our society is facing some major challenges that come along with globalization, digitalization, urbanization, climate change and social inequality. We hope that this situation leads to a higher awareness and willingness to work globally together as a team on relevant issues. As the search for answers and solutions regarding those topics accompanied us for many years, we would like to introduce our working philosophy, called “New Holism – transdisciplinary approach to human-centered design.”Inspired to work not only on aesthetically pleasing or functional entities, our firm turned its attention to pondering global shifts in ...

How do you know how your employees, colleagues, and clients are coping with COVID? The answer to this daunting question is actually simpler than you think: you ask. However, what you ask may be different than you think. The power of asking the right questions to guide our design decision-making is one that cannot be undervalued, especially through a world-shaking event like COVID-19. At the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), we have long proclaimed the value of research and its importance to the design process, with a focus on the benefits of conducting pre- and post-occupancy research to make ...

If architects are meant to “design a better world,” they may or may not be succeeding, depending on your perspective. But, if architects can be a beacon for equity and decency, then we have no choice but to succeed--or evolve through trying. Architects must begin with their ranks to identify privilege, understand its dimensions, and use it to lead within our sphere of influence and beyond. Architects must embrace divergent voices and disruptive ideas, and in doing so, create spaces for fairness and justice to exist, unfettered.Design justice has come to mean community-led intervention. It has come to mean people-focused ...

COVID-19 forever changed the world. After a period of extreme isolation and social distancing, people are eager to reconnect. My hope is that many communities, families, friends and colleagues will come together stronger as they seek purposeful connection. In the workplace, there will be a shift away from typical office plans into spaces that are meaningful and intentional, and the greatest value will be placed on time. The workplace in the 2020’s will become a hub for connection and exchange.Many of us already worked remotely prior to the pandemic. In fact, according to a recent study, some 14.6% worked from ...

The question posed for this blog post is, “How might the current COVID crisis impact design for the better?” But, because I have infinite belief in the power of design to create positive change, I prefer to turn the question around and ask, “How might design impact the current crisis for the better?”Since the world stayed home, there has been a proliferation of thoughtful industry dialog and brainstorming about what comes next for the office environment. What will the workplace look like in the post-COVID-19 world? How will it need to function in order to be successful in the “new ...

Events of the past centuries, the past decades, and most recently the past weeks and days, have painfully and plainly illuminated the disparities in our culture and society. It’s become abundantly clear that facing these challenges can’t be done alone and a widespread collective effort is necessary for great societal change to take place. The current protests and dialogue around racial injustice have exposed how much work really needs to be done for us to all “be in this together”—truly confronting racism, injustice, and inequity is critical. We know that design is but one small part of that larger equation—so ...