Archinect - News

Architects earn more from renovations than new builds for first time, fueled by workplace revolution

2022-05-10T09:00:00-04:00

Architecture firms are billing more from reconstruction and renovation projects than they are from new builds for the first time; a milestone driven by soaring demand for office renovations. In the 20 years that the AIA has been collecting data on billings for renovations versus new build projects, the share of billings received from renovations has been consistently rising for over a decade, suggesting the new milestone is not entirely attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Throughout 2021, works to existing facilities reached 52% of architecture firm billings. According to AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, one quarter of works to existing facilities comprise adaptive reuse, with another quarter owing to conversion and basic interior modernization. 18% comprises tenant fit-outs while adding usable space and upgrading building facades or systems each comprise 10%.

“This is a l...

Norman Foster says he still hasn't lost that old, familiar feeling

2022-04-05T12:03:00-04:00

If I enjoy doing what I do, why would I change it? Of course, at any point with any of us, there’s always the other side of the coin […] I get the same buzz from designing buildings, working with people, educational workshops, working with the UN heading their Forum of Mayors, engaging with civic leaders, writing, drawing, sketching. I’m privileged to have many such opportunities […] I think they’re my lifeblood, yes.”

Norman Foster, who will turn 87 this year, was at the Guggenheim Bilbao to talk to The Guardian’s Tim Lewis about his lifelong love of cars and upcoming exhibition there titled “Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture.” Foster told the writer he sees the exhibition as “almost like the requiem for the age of combustion,” adding that, at this point in his career, “I feel as young as the people that I’m working with and engaging with and sharing passions.”

Foster also discussed his reaction to some of the changes in worklife necessitated by the coronavirus, and the ability of his office to get back on its feet following a year of economic downturn.

Earlier on Archinect: Norman Foster on the impact of pandemics on our cities

“We were all surprised by the way in which the technology has worked,” he said. “And the energy and resourcefulness of the team. But I guess it’s also made us acutely aware of the importance of physically coming together. The lessons of history are that an event like that ...

The New York Times goes inside the Empire State Building's post-pandemic finances

2021-09-20T14:46:00-04:00

Most of the Empire State Building is dedicated to office space. With its mix of big and small businesses, the building is perhaps a better barometer of the state of office space in New York and the city’s economy than the towers dominated by global firms.

The building’s tourist and retail income has been essentially shut out for over 18 months because of the pandemic. As a result, tenants are being offered sharp discounts despite increasing signs that the remote work trend is here to stay.

“We’ve found ourselves being able to work in ways that we couldn’t imagine were possible before,” one tenant told the Times. “We just thought for so long we needed an office to be efficient, and that’s not true.”

An expansive $165 million renovation of the Empire State Building Observatory authored by Thinc was completed just before the pandemic. The New York Times has a visualization of the Art Deco landmark’s future here.

Thomas Heatherwick reported to be consulting on a UK Covid memorial

2021-07-27T15:31:00-04:00

The Times is reporting that Thomas Heatherwick has met with members of the British government as recently as March in what could be discussions surrounding a future memorial to COVID-19 victims in the UK.

Heatherwick has done a number of high-profile commissions in London, the city of his birth, over the past decade. Cabinet Office Minister Chloe Smith took a meeting with the 51-year-old architect although nothing further has been confirmed in terms of his involvement.

Related: Thomas Heatherwick on Archinect Sessions podcast, "Problem-solving with Thomas Heatherwick"

A commission for a memorial has been announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a May address to parliament. The memorial will be established at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. An online fundraiser has already garnered more than £2.3 in donations from across the commonwealth.

Johnson told the House of Commons it was a “solemn duty” to construct a national memorial.

There is a fraught history recently between Heath...

Architect Kenneth Gruskin envisions new business opportunity for designers as the world becomes increasingly virtual

2021-07-13T17:07:00-04:00

Kenneth Gruskin, owner and principal of architecture and marketing firm Gruskin Group, has envisioned a new avenue for firms as businesses increasingly shift to virtual spaces.

With remote work the new normal, Gruskin sees an opportunity for architects to play a role in how new virtual environments and overall representation of companies are designed and communicated. Specifically, his idea entails the personalization of video conferencing calls with customized, animated backgrounds.

“And, along with everything else, it’s a way for us to stay involved with companies that are shedding their physical footprint,” Gruskin said to ROI-NJ. “It’s just a good way to stay in touch with clients … that might not be the big Facebook and Amazon companies that are still buying up real estate.”

The demand for companies to embrace these prefabricated backgrounds is to maintain professionalism and communicate a brand identity during virtual meetings, which is difficult to coordinate and fully expre...

Denizen takes remote working to the next level with 3D-printed office pods

2021-07-08T17:59:00-04:00

Individuals can now take their offices anywhere they want with the Denizen Architype, a 3D-printed, personal office pod, designed to provide an ideal remote work space. The prefabricated office can be set up in any location and is available by subscription.

Designed “for the perfect day of work”, the Denizen Archetype comes as remote work has become the new norm due to the pandemic. The 90-square-foot office pod is made to cultivate inspiration, focus, and productivity, including features, such as professional lighting, controllable privacy glass on every window, and perfectly framed camera views at the desk and whiteboard. As stated on Denizen’s site, “With 10’ ceilings and immersive windows, it’s big enough to love spending your whole day in but small enough to install anywhere with minimal permits.

The office is built with integrated heating, cooling, air filtration, a mini-fridge, and a rear lounge with overhead reading light. Each pod features an adjustable standing desk made ...

Employees want healthier, more sustainable offices after COVID, says survey

2021-07-06T12:14:00-04:00

Following almost two years of work-from-home orders, businesses and governments are seeking to bring employees back to traditional workplaces. While working from home will continue to form part of many businesses’ employment structures in the long term, a separate question lingers over what the office of the future may look like.

A new report by NEXT Energy Technologies titled “The Case for Office Space: How Buildings Need to Change to Suit a Climate-Conscious, COVID-Weary Workforce” suggests that many employees will only accept office environments that respond to the needs of human health and the climate crisis. NEXT’s findings, available to download here, were the result of a survey carried out among over 450 remote employees and more than 150 senior managers across business verticals, which expose areas of significant alignment and divergence over how future offices should be designed and operated.

“Employees will not settle for the offices they once had; they want healthier...

The new post-COVID ghost towns

2021-04-01T18:16:00-04:00

For decades, ordinary residents have been pushed out of cities like London and New York to make room for offices and luxury apartments. But the pandemic has massively reduced demand for these same locations — turning city centers into ghost towns, full of shiny new buildings that no one needs.

Writing for Jacobin, Glyn Robbins dissects the pandemic's lasting effect on cities around the world where new luxury developments — too often favored over affordable housing solutions for the broader local community — are now faced with a sudden drop in demand.

"For years, housing justice advocates have been told there’s not enough money or land to build the homes and facilities we need," Robbins writes. "Now, we don’t have to! The buildings are already there. They need to be requisitioned, repurposed, and retrofitted to the highest safety and environmental standards."

Thoughts on better post-pandemic cities

2021-01-25T17:58:00-05:00

The pandemic has underlined how broken the UK’s model for urban development is. [...] It is hard to see now amid the depression and anger, but the pandemic did briefly show cities acting on the basis of general human need: rough sleepers being housed, mutual aid groups being set up, evictions being suspended. Yet the possibility of any long-term change is rapidly being lost.

Tribune culture editor Owen Hatherly's new housing opinion piece for The Guardian.

New restaurant designs are betting big on drive-thrus to cope with pandemic

2020-12-04T13:54:00-05:00

The pandemic accelerated a need for digital menu boards, artificial intelligence, expanding drive-thrus into dual lanes and adding drive-thru only units where available. Many other fast food restaurants like Wendy's, Taco Bell, Del Taco, Burger King, KFC and McDonald's have also shown interest in developing many of these concepts.

With indoor dining areas closed in many, if not most, restaurants since the beginning of the pandemic, the nation's fast food and fast casual franchises are rethinking fundamental design concepts of their operations that will likely become part of the American vernacular for decades to come, such as AI-powered pickup-only stations with double or triple drive-thru lanes.

'Countryside, the Future' through the post-pandemic lens

2020-11-06T13:35:00-05:00

Certainly New Yorkers’ revaluation of the countryside had begun long before the “Decameron”-style outflows of remote-working urbanites and their families, fleeing the coronavirus last spring. [...] The phrase “farm to table” has been a cliché for years, and Park Slope idealists long ago exported their Marie Antoinette rural fantasies to the Hudson Valley.

With the coronavirus eating its way through America's hinterlands and the election unmasking a deeply entrenched urban-rural ideological divide, NYT art critic Jason Farago takes a second look at the Rem Koolhaas-starring exhibition Countryside, the Future which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum back in February — only to close again three weeks later due to the unraveling pandemic.

"What 'Countryside' does is take seriously the contention that all avant-gardism gets commodified, that dissent is always co-opted, and that under such conditions you might want to get out of town," Farago writes.

Related on Archinect: Koolhaas in the countryside

Could Europe's ambitious climate-action plan spark a new common design aesthetic?

2020-10-05T13:30:00-04:00

[...] the European Union sees a chance to create a new common aesthetic born out of a need to renovate and construct more energy-efficient buildings. The proposal for energy retrofits is part of the climate actions at the core of the EU’s 1.8 trillion euro ($2.1 trillion) coronavirus recovery plan and could result in a sweeping architectural makeover, one that leaders have compared to a new Bauhaus movement for the continent.

For Bloomberg CityLab, Kriston Capps and Laura Millan Lombrana contemplate how the European Union's bold $2.1 trillion coronavirus recovery plan, and its embedded measures to make buildings more energy-efficient, could shape architecture and urban design on much of the continent. A new Bauhaus movement maybe?

"The sheer scope of climate actions under consideration could give lawmakers, engineers and architects an opportunity to build toward a shared continental vision," they write.

Norman Foster on the impact of pandemics on our cities

2020-09-24T13:23:00-04:00

Predicting the future of cities is risky, especially if one heeds the words of the American baseball legend, Yogi Berra, that “the future ain’t what it used to be”. In the period since the start of the pandemic it might seem as if everything is different, but in the long term, I would suggest that rather than changing anything, it has merely hastened and magnified trends that were already apparent before the virus struck.

In his opinion piece for The Guardian, architect Norman Foster ponders how current and past pandemics have influenced and will continue to shape the infrastructure, and subsequently culture, of our cities. Foster briefly touches on a number of trendy topics, including electric vehicles, ride sharing, drone delivery, remote work, and urban farming.

Covid as catalyst for better design

2020-09-17T13:34:00-04:00

What are architects and urban planners foreseeing as people cautiously gather? Streets “curated” for various uses and dynamic cityscapes that both advance wellness and knit communities together. [...] Architects and other designers who have devoted efforts to creating public places that encourage gathering and sociability now say their task is to make congregating in these spaces possible again — and perhaps to achieve some community-enhancing goals in the process.

Burger King unveils new restaurant designs to address implications of COVID-19

2020-09-14T14:29:00-04:00

Burger King has unveiled new restaurant designs that are due to better serve customers in a COVID-19 world. With a focus on mobile ordering and curbside pick-up, the new designs embrace a new way of serving visitors by offering drive-in and walk-up order areas, curbside pick-up areas, an enhanced drive-thru experience, exterior dining spaces, and sustainable design elements.

The new design was created by Restaurant Brands International's in-house design team. "The designs we’ve created completely integrate restaurant functionality and technology. The restaurant of the tomorrow merges the best functional technology with unique modern design to elevate our Burger King guest experience,” said Rapha Abreu, Global Head of Design at Restaurant Brands International in a statement. “We designed the interior and exterior spaces like we had a blank sheet of paper, designing without preconceived notions of how a Burger King restaurant should look."

Housing construction is increasing once again

2020-06-23T14:17:00-04:00

A recent monthly report from the United States Census Bureau indicates that residential construction is beginning to claw back toward typical levels following steep drops in construction and permitting activities during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report states that although building activity is still falling below levels observed in January and February of this year, new building permits, and new housing starts are both up relative to the months of March and April. Housing completions, however, fell between April and May, coinciding with the lowest levels of construction activity across the country.

Previously on Archinect: "Is construction activity starting to rebound?" Image courtesy of PSMJ Resources.

According to the report, 1,220,000 single-family housing permits were issued in May, roughly 14.4% more than the revised rates reported for the month of April. This total, however, is still 8.8% lower than the number of new permits issued in May 2019. For the mon...

The NYT Magazine on "How Architecture Could Help Us Adapt to the Pandemic"

2020-06-13T16:59:00-04:00

It’s no coincidence that Covid-19 has disproportionately sickened and killed members of demographic groups — people who are black, Indigenous and Latino; who are homeless; who are immigrants — that have been targets of systemic segregation that increased their vulnerability. It’s also not hard to imagine the pandemic, and a person’s relative risk of infection, being used to justify new versions of these discriminatory practices.

Kim Tingley, spoke with Joel Sanders, Hansel Bauman, Mabel O. Wilson and other academics and designers about how architecture could adapt to address issues of public health and universal design in a post-COVID-19 world.

More about MIXdesign's COVID Case Study here

h/t @Justin Garrett Moore, AICP

Studio Other creates privacy panels to modify post-COVID-19 workstations

2020-05-18T12:18:00-04:00

Santa Fe Springs-based Studio Other has introduced a new collection of attachable privacy panels designed to offer dynamic flexibility for existing workstations as employers prepare to return to the physical office environment. The panels come in 18 different colors and six configurations and can help facilitate social distancing while maintaining a quality level aesthetic.

Fixed Wing Configuration

Fixed L Configuration

"Many organizations are already anticipating how we will return to work and the adjustments that will need to be made along that road to ensure employee safety," said Charlotte Wiederholt, President and Creative Director of Studio Other in a statement. "Because making drastic changes to a current work environment can be costly and time consuming, we have developed these easily attachable privacy screens as an innovative way to facilitate changes in configurations."