From the Community Blog

What does a rustic, century-old cottage on the Cape that has been in my family for four generations have in common with my professional life, which revolves around the design of urban office space? Though they may seem like antithetical places, the cottage is where I find inspiration and a deep connection with nature that in turn informs my urban work.The cottage—without air conditioning or heating save for a fireplace—is a primitive setting, but it’s also the most healing place I know. The question is how can we create healing environments in the urban context, and particularly in the modern ...

A few weeks ago on an early March morning, I logged on to my laptop and saw something I never thought I’d see: There, front and center on the New York Times homepage, was an animation of building ventilation. The focus? “Why Opening Windows Is a Key to Reopening Schools.” I did a double take. Most often, discussions about building science are buried in a design magazine’s technology or products column or discussed under the context of LEED certification, perhaps. Yet here it was, on a major paper’s homepage, showcasing a larger opportunity for interiors professionals.The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has ...

I am old enough, and geeky enough, to know that the third episode of the Star Wars trilogy, the “Return of the Jedi'' was originally named the “Revenge of the Jedi.” It was changed right before the release because the fan culture pointed out that Jedi’s do not get revenge. This arrangement of words popped into my head while my studio was discussing / debating the “Return to the Workplace.” Undoubtedly, the tremendous emotional and physical strain that the world has experienced will exact its revenge on the workplace of the future.No one has a clear picture of ...

It wasn’t too long ago that we believed that design teams had to actually sit next to each other in the same room to be able to do their work. Our firm even had a few offices that would rearrange the studio to make sure that all teammates were within arm’s length of each other—all based on the ebb and flow of project work. Boy, have times changed. I am hesitant to imply that anything good has come out of our journey through the pandemic, but I do wonder if, in the end, the forced remote work that happened in ...

We’ve spent the better part of the past six months in conversation—conversations to hear and learn, not to tell, conversations with our clients, conversations with academics, conversations with creatives, conversations with conversationalists. You name it, we’ve conversed with it! Over that time we’ve seen an evolution of concern from “HOW can we work this way?” to “WILL we ever need to work all together again?” All this set against a growing media narrative around the success of work-from-home. Sure, there are the typical criticisms about Zoom glitches, but with the big tech companies leading the way—Shopify boldly stating the era of ...

As a nation we are fighting for air. We have spent that last several months being engulfed by a contagious virus that starves our bodies of air, a virus that quite literally prevents the air, we work so hard to pump into our buildings, from fueling our bodies. A virus which travels silently through this same air. At the same time, we spend an average of 87% of our time inside buildings. Designing for air is fundamental to Architecture and Interior Design. We too often ignore this key aspect of our spaces, especially when relying on mechanical ventilation. While this ...

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 ...