Archinect - News

Bechtel commits $7 million to American Foundation for Suicide Prevention partnership to stop construction worker suicides

2024-03-08T15:13:00-05:00

Earlier this week, engineering and construction giant Bechtel and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) announced a multiyear partnership dedicated to preventing construction worker suicides.

The partnership aims to reach 500,000 U.S. construction workers over five years through industry-specific programs and resources. Bechtel has reportedly committed $7 million to the AFSP, which is the largest pledge ever received by the Foundation and the largest single donation ever made by Bechtel. The endeavor aims to combine Bechtel’s industry knowledge and AFSP’s national network, education, and prevention strategies.

As noted by Bechtel in a press release, the construction industry has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession in the U.S., with the number of suicides being almost five times higher than the number of lives lost in job site safety incidents. This is according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Bureau of Labor St...

Golden Gate Bridge finally installs anti-suicide nets after years of delay

2023-11-07T12:51:00-05:00

Construction of the lingering suicide prevention upgrades is wrapping up on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

The project's long road to culmination was covered by the New York Times recently as contractors work to finish installing the netting system, which was more than 80% in place as of September.

Work began in August of 2018 after an additional $124 million in funds needed for the project was eventually raised. It then hit further delays in the form of a contractor’s breach-of-contract lawsuit arising from significant cost overruns, which drove the installation's final price from $142 million to the $400 million final reported estimate.

Some have framed the project as emblematic of the “wrong approach” to suicide prevention, saying they are susceptible to second attempts and that money is better distributed through the city’s mental health network. Dennis Mulligan, the General Manager and...

Thomas Heatherwick wants architects to improve mental health through 'interestingness'

2023-10-23T19:02:00-04:00

Boring, soulless buildings are making people stressed and lonely, according to Thomas Heatherwick [...] Calling for “a national conversation” about halting the spread of depressing architecture, he said: “We need to fearlessly demand interestingness. We need to rebel against the blandification of our streets, towns and cities, and make buildings that nourish our senses. Human beings deserve human places.”

The Lantern House and Vessel designer has been making the media rounds lately to promote his new treatise Humanize, which offers a call-to-arms of sorts for architects and planners both looking to combat the proven detriments bad architecture has on mental health. Heatherwick says his prognosis has been informed by multiple years of domestic research, including a new study he commissioned from the New Economics Foundation, and that offenders could be broken down by seven criteria: (too) flat, straight, plain, shiny, monotonous, anonymous, and serious.

Responding to this, the Observer critic Rowan Moore writes Heatherwick “does not have much to say about the value of simplicity” and that his argument is too reductivist and could result in “an outbreak of shallow wannabe Gaudís” should architects adapt his principles en masse. His position that Heathwick was too ignorant of the market forces behind modern architecture, however, seems to misunderstand the point of making such an appea...

Archinect's 2023 (100% anonymous) Mental Health Survey

2023-09-27T08:08:00-04:00

It's been a little over three years since we last surveyed the architecture community about our collective mental health. In preparation for World Mental Health Day on October 10, the Archinect team seeks to check in with our audience and learn more about how our community is doing. For this special news article, we're reaching out and asking our readers to share their input and comment on how the last several years have impacted issues on mental health.

We've discussed mental health and workplace issues extensively in the past, and as we slowly reach the last quarter of 2023, we want to check the pulse of our community. Our survey asks questions that aim to help our team learn more about how architects, design professionals, students, and educators have handled and are handling the stressors related to the architecture industry.

Previously on Archinect: Mental Health in Architecture (October 2022)

Our overall goal is to use the information gathered to help guide and inform upcoming...

OSD’s new South Cato Springs development provides nurturing space for neurodiverse adults in Arkansas

2023-06-28T18:57:00-04:00

A new neighborhood-scale development from OSD aimed at enhancing the lives of neurodiverse adults has broken ground outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas following a special ceremony held this week with the firm and its client, a local nonprofit organization called SLS Community.

Their master plan for a mixed-use and mixed-income tract called South Cato Springs will eventually endow the region with a workforce housing micro village that also features dedicated space for a new center for the University of Arkansas Medical School, recreation, and agricultural areas all surrounding a central town square on a plot located near Kessler Mountain Regional Park.

Image courtesy OSD

The firm says it will become an example of a concept it calls “mindful urbanism,” offering itself to the community as both an empowering care space and elevating pedestrianism that is built from and deeply rooted in the rich natural landscape surrounding its idyllic 230-acre site.

Image courtesy OSD

This objective will ...

Mental Health in Architecture

2022-10-10T16:28:00-04:00

Burnout. Fatigue. Anxiety. Mental health. These words have become integrated into the everyday lives of architects, especially since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, looming economic crises, and socio-political injustices taking place globally the state of mental health among individuals has suffered greatly.

Mental health impacts people in many different ways. While discussions of well-being have become more common among family and friends, workplaces and schools have made it a point to address the issues and struggles employees, teams, students, and faculty face.

It's clear that everyone isn't always "okay" and that the increased awareness of mental health support and resources has grown, for the better. While October 10 is recognized as World Mental Health Day, its observance shouldn't be restricted to a single moment.

In 2020, it was important for the Archinect te...

Where the RIBA presidential candidates stand on key issues

2022-07-19T12:13:00-04:00

On July 26th, voting closes for the election of the next RIBA president. When the winner commences their two-year term as president on September 1st, 2023, they will be confronted with a list of burning issues across the UK’s architectural profession; and will be expected to publicly lead a response.

Some issues are specific to the UK context: a turbulent national political landscape, the soaring cost of indemnity insurance, and the implementation of new or upcoming UK laws on planning, construction, and emissions, to name a few. Other issues are specific to RIBA itself: an institution which has seemingly lurched from crisis to crisis in recent times, be it on accusations of inadequate diversity, election rule changes, or just this week, questions over a “buried” internal report on bullying.

These UK-specific issues aside, many of the challenges facing the UK professi...

A children's mental health facility in Melbourne designed for a new health care typology

2022-03-29T14:58:00-04:00

Kerstin Thompson Architects and Bloxas have “invented” a new health care typology in their design for a children’s mental health facility in Melbourne’s north. The $7.3 million Statewide Child and Family Centre in Macleod will provide mental health services for children aged up to 11 who have experienced negative or traumatic events.

According to Kerstin Thompson and Bloxas principal Anthony Clarke, their design is based on the innovative care model developed by clinicians at Melbourne’s Austin Health. The main challenge for the architects was creating both a residential atmosphere and environment where children felt they have instrumentality and choice. They also wanted to break down the dichotomous patient-clinical dynamic of the setting. The team, thus, explored a number of different types of children’s spaces, such as childcare centers, children's libraries, and Maggie's Centers, which provide support for cancer patients.

Specific features in this new type of facility include the separation of therapy-focused areas from other spaces reserved for other activities, such as play areas, for the purpose of ridding confusion between positive and negative spatial association. Transition zones were also added, allowing individual decision-making to occur. In addition, garden spaces are present in all of the key spa...

A group of UK architects is pushing for youth movement at the top of RIBA’s leadership

2022-03-24T15:11:00-04:00

Petitioners in the UK are bidding to have an early-career architectural worker elected as the next RIBA president as a change of direction for the 188-year-old organization which they charge as “losing touch with architects, students, and the next generation of talent.”

In an open letter obtained by AJ, the group of signatories, led by Future Architects Network founder Simeon Shtebunaev, the architecture union UVW-SAW, and the Future Architects’ Front, which has been a vocal critic of RIBA’s inability to tackle the industry’s “culture of exploitation” since its inception last year.

“As student loans increase and the length of architecture courses stay the same, people are asking if the unethical working conditions merit the payoff,” RIBA’s VP for students and associates Maryam Al-Irhayim, who is also a co-signer of the letter, told the publication. “There is a lack of job security, too, as seen in the pandemic where most young people were first to be let go.”

Related on Archinect: A...

As burnout soars during the pandemic, one expert offers advice

2022-02-02T13:41:00-05:00

Architects are no strangers to burnout. In recent years, our editorial has explored the genesis of burnout in architectural circles by examining the impact of college studio culture as well as burnout and fatigue in the professional architectural workplace.

While burnout existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic, there is evidence that the upheaval of the past two years has further exacerbated an already fragile mental health landscape in the profession. In 2020, an Archinect survey of our community found that 43% of respondents were suffering from new mental health issues that they had not experienced before the pandemic, particularly anxiety, depression, and ADD.

Findings from Archinect’s COVID-19 Mental Health Survey

Heightened anxiety in the workplace is a common symptom of burnout, according to neuroscientist and author Dean Burnett. In his new piece for the BBC’s Science Focus magazine, Burnett explores the onset of burnout during the pandemic, with similar findings to thos...

New study reveals that pandemic-related absences cost employers nearly $1 billion per week

2022-01-13T14:52:00-05:00

In the last 22 months, workers' pandemic-related absences have cost employers more than $78.4 billion — nearly $1 billion each week — according to a Dec. 20 analysis from the Integrated Benefits Institute.

The Integrated Benefits Institute used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics along with its own dataset to analyze disability wage payments, state disability insurance, sick leave wages, and employee benefits for its calculation. The states of California, Texas, New York, along with the metropolitan areas of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago exhibited the highest lost work time.

Construction Dive notes that many costs due to the pandemic lie in more intangible areas that aren’t as easy to track. This includes productivity issues due to increased levels of stress, which can take away time spent on work. One suggestion made is for employers to emphasize and implement preventative mental health care in order to assist individuals before conditions become severe.

Cities can make us happier, says UChicago study

2021-08-10T11:26:00-04:00

Researchers at the University of Chicago have released a new study examining the impact of cities on human wellbeing, concluding that the socio-economic networks and active environments of large urban areas in the U.S. can result in lower rates of psychological depression.

The findings are part of a broader research project that aims to quantify and map what it feels like to live in a city, building on previous research that showed how people’s use of a city’s infrastructure networks can lead to increases in social interaction, innovation, and wealth production. “We wondered if those same principles and mathematical models could be applied to psychological phenomena, such as depression, to see if the actual social and infrastructure networks of cities—and how they change as cities get larger—could affect people's psychology in a consistent way,” said Andrew Stier, one of the study’s authors.

Previously on Archinect: Architecture Community Experiences a Noticeable Impact on Mental...

Demand for mental health facilities on the rise

2021-01-07T11:32:00-05:00

For decades, psychiatric hospitals were grim settings where patients were crowded into common rooms by day and dorms at night. But new research into the health effects of our surroundings is spurring the development of facilities that feel more residential, with welcoming entrances, smaller living units within larger buildings and a variety of gathering spaces.

Architecture and interior design firms have reported an increase in demand for mental health facilities, writes Jane Margolies for The New York Times. "At the design firm Architecture+ in Troy, N.Y., one or two major mental health facilities are typically in the pipeline, with total construction costs for those projects at about $250 million a year, said Francis Murdock Pitts, a principal and founding partner. Last year, the firm was working on 16 large mental health projects totaling about $1.9 billion," she explains.

Moreover, Margolies goes on to outline a case for an "evidence-based" design approach intended to "lessen patient and employee stress and aggression" in hopes of facilitating a more fruitful treatment process.

Architects and designers — how's your personal wellness been lately?

2020-11-09T12:58:00-05:00

How are you doing? It's funny how many of us answer that these days. In the context of architectural practice, our response might focus on our work status, or our busyness, or even our un-busyness. But, architects and designers have a lot of other things unfolding in their lives, too. Some are rethinking their careers, others are taking on new hobbies, and there are those who are balancing work with home-schooling kids.

Archinect user Black_Orchid recently created a forum thread aimed at providing a level of catharsis for those here on the site: Wellbeing Check-in? The discussion is at over 200 comments so far, and they keep coming in. It's become a place for people to open up and share their struggles, obstacles, excitements, and reflections around this year. Black_Orchid kicked off the discussion:

"WFH since beginning of the year, was pretty stressful at first with a lot of 70 hour weeks. Cancelled the gym membership, got more into being outdoors and spending time cooking with my ...

Archinect's COVID-19 and Mental health survey

2020-05-29T13:47:00-04:00

With the COVID-19 quarantine period entering its third month in the United States, Archinect is seeking input from the design community regarding how the crisis has impacted issues of mental health.

Archinect has covered mental and workplace health issues extensively in the past and would like to see how this focus can incorporate the new pressures and changes brought on by the pandemic.

The survey below asks questions that attempt to grasp how the Archinect community is handling the crisis with the goal of using information gathered to guide and inform forthcoming editorial initiatives.

The responses collected may be shared in some of these new initiatives, though all names, contact, and identifying information will be kept confidentially.

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Construction workers are struggling

2020-05-15T15:23:00-04:00

Construction workers across America have suffered staggering job losses in recent weeks as the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted, and in many cases shut down, construction sites around the US.

A recent report from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that nearly one million construction workers across the country were laid off during the month of April.

The report states, "Construction employment fell by 975,000 in April, with much of the loss in specialty trade contractors (-691,000). Job losses also occurred in construction of buildings (-206,000)."

This news comes as the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) publishes a new report, Understanding Mental Health in the Built Environment, finding that "26% of construction industry professionals thought about taking their own lives in 2019 – before the COVID-19 pandemic had hit the industry – and 97% recorded being stressed at least once in the last year."

The report, part of a new mental health initiative launched by...

Architectural professionals share the emotional impacts of COVID-19

2020-03-26T13:22:00-04:00

There's no hiding the emotional toll this unprecedented pandemic has had on the entire globe. As a part of our efforts to learn about the impacts of this situation, Archinect reached out to its international community to get a sense of how things have been going. We wanted to hear how our colleagues have been holding up, discovering along the way that many of us share the same challenges, concerns, and uncertainties. As a part of our outreach, we asked how professionals were doing emotionally. Through that inquiry, we found 4 main areas of emotional impact:

Feeling distracted, drained, and anxious from news and updates
Worried about the economic implications of the pandemic
Hit to productivity and focus due to stress and anxiety
Familial concerns and impacts

We'll look at each one more in-depth and share some personal remarks from our colleagues across the industry.

Feeling distracted, drained, and anxious from news

As we learn about this novel situation together, our tendency to check ...

Turning obstacles into opportunities in architectural practice

2020-03-23T18:04:00-04:00

Today, with the developing inconveniences of life, the hardships and frustrations, and the multitude of circumstantial consequences many of us face, it can be tough to know how to navigate the challenges we encounter. How do we trek this rocky path?

In his book The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday takes the timeless teachings of stoic philosophy and translates them for the modern reader, pulling stories from history to teach the art of "turning obstacles upside down." The book is based off of a passage written by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius:

Our actions may be impeded...but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting...The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

As we all face obstacles in our professional and personal lives, the lessons Holiday expounds are crucially important during this time. Many firms of all ...

Building mental resilience in architecture during COVID-19

2020-03-20T13:27:00-04:00

With the rise in measures due to the impacts of COVID-19, many are battling the subsequent mentality driven pandemics of worry, fear, and anxiety. While we collectively strive to fulfill our work duties, we must couple them with parental, familial, economic, and a slew of other bombardments that have overcome our global community. How can we combat these mental intrusions during a time when poise and clarity are so needed?

Rasmus Hougaard, the founder and managing director of Potential Project, a firm that brings mindfulness to companies to unlock new ways of thinking and working, offers insights to how our minds respond to crises and how we can overcome the weight we often bring upon ourselves. In a recent essay, along with colleagues, Jacqueline Carter and Moses Mohan, Hougaard outlines a case for mindfulness that architects can pull from, as we tackle the complexities in our work and the complexities in our lives.

Our Tendency For Negativity and Distraction

As our minds wander, w...

Tips for architects on balancing life while working from home

2020-03-18T19:24:00-04:00

In this rapidly evolving socio-professional landscape, remote work is the talk of the town. In an ongoing survey, Archinect has learned that an estimated 78% of architectural professionals are working from home or have been given the option to work from home during the current COVID-19 outbreak. As we all tackle this pandemic together, virtual operations has become the new normal, with some of us more experienced than others. As we continue to dive deep for our audience, Archinect will be working to investigate many difference facets of this novel phenomenon.

Working from home comes with its benefits and challenges, one of which is maintaining balance throughout our day. How might we do that? Ensure we don't overeat, become physically stagnant, or go stir-crazy? Much can be said, but here are a few tips to hopefully contribute to well balanced mind and body.

Fuel mental performance with physical health

In The Importance of Physical Fitness in Mental Performance we looked at the inse...

When work keeps you up at night, what do you do?

2020-02-24T18:58:00-05:00

Losing sleep can be a drag. Especially, since we know sleep deprivation drastically impacts the cognitive functions so crucial to work in architecture. Things like judgment, critical thinking, problem solving, planning, and organization, are but a few of the influenced aspects of our mental health, writes Rebecca Zucker in her Harvard Business Review essay entitled How to Stop Thinking About Work at 3am. In the piece, Zucker offers some strategies to combat one of the causes of sleep deprivation — thinking about work when we should be sleeping. Here are 3 of her pointers:

Make a to-do list: According to research by Baylor University and Emory University, makings a to-do list for the following day helps us fall asleep faster, writes Zucker. Many times, our preoccupations with work at home are due to uncompleted tasks. Writing them down acknowledges them, putting them out of the mind.
Engage in physical activity: Exercise and overall physical fitness help in our mental performance. Whe...

Managing back-to-school stress

2019-09-06T16:15:00-04:00

With the back-to-school bustle underway for the fall, many students have hit the ground running. As the work load begins to pile up and studio projects commence, anxiety and stress also sneak their way into the forefront. How can the architecture student tackle this intrusion?

Nicole LeBlanc, MA. and Luana Marques, Ph.D. have some insights. In their Harvard Health article, the pair delineate the current research concerning anxiety in college. Some findings are:

It's quite common. A 2018 study conducted by the American College Health Association showed that "63% of college students in the U.S. felt overwhelming anxiety in the past year." The study also found that 23% of students "reported being diagnosed or treated by a mental health professional for anxiety in the past year." LeBlanc and Marques highlight the fact that the bulk of anxiety amongst students tends to be during the initial transition into college. For the design student, first year does indeed prove to be a formidable a...

The key to peak performance lies in three different types of fitness — physical fitness is only one of them

2019-08-01T18:49:00-04:00

As architects operate in a profession so demanding mentally, the need for peak performance in the workplace can become a relevant and much-needed desire. How does one capitalize on the intellectual challenges faced on a difficult design problem, construction site, or management setback? Author and leadership development leader, Tim Tobin says that the answer lies in "thinking about fitness in new ways."

According to Tobin, there are three types of fitness: mental fitness, social fitness, and physical fitness.

Mental fitness includes seven practices that range from getting a good night's rest to having adequate "play time." It is grounded in activities that promote mental health and increase sources of energy that help us achieve focus in clarity in our cognitive pursuits and ambitions.

Social fitness "refers to how we interact with others across situations." It is our ability to communicate what's important to us amid "situational pressure" and ultimately creates fruitful collabora...

Walking or cycling to work could make you more productive

2019-07-29T14:14:00-04:00

Productivity is one of those things most of us try to optimize. Especially when it comes to the day to day work we have in architecture. As dynamic and wide-ranging as a day can be, the focus and concentration needed to compose those remaining wall details, check those door schedules, or look over that code analysis are quite demanding. There are numerous approaches and methods toward better productivity, perhaps even an endless number. But, one way to improve our performance at work, says Australian researchers, Liang Ma and Runing Ye, is in how we commute to work.

"Our research investigated how and to what extent our daily commuting can influence workplace productivity," the pair write. According to their findings, people who commute longer distances tend to have more days off, while those who commuted shorter distances, walked or cycled, tended to perform better in the workplace. Additionally, driving has also been found to be the most stressful way to commute.

Anyone living in a...

Everything's Gonna Be Great; A Conversation with Eva Hagberg

2019-03-22T15:40:00-04:00

On this episode of Archinect Sessions we're joined by Eva Hagberg, a NY-based writer and architectural consultant. Our conversation covers Eva’s architectural studies at Princeton and Berkeley, and how that transitioned into a successful writing career spanning architecture criticism to writing about her own life in her recently published memoir How to Be Loved. We also talk about the unique personality traits of architects and her approach to helping architects communicate.

Listen to episode 138 of Archinect Sessions, “Everything's Gonna Be Great”.

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As Brutalism gains new popularity, what are the mental health consequences of concrete architecture?

2019-03-06T16:17:00-05:00

Antipathy to the “concrete jungle” is rooted in the assumption that concrete-heavy environments are by nature detrimental to psychological health. One study of more than 4 million Swedes, published in 2004 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, seemed to suggest that moving from a rural to an urban environment had a detrimental effect on individuals’ mental health.

"Has the material been made a bogeyman for the urban environment – assumed to be harsh and unforgiving, rather than liberating and inclusive – when many of the problems it seems to embody are more directly related to how inequality and segregation manifest in cities?," writes Lynsey Hanley for the excellent Guardian concrete week series.

How architecture plays a key role in fighting loneliness in our cities

2018-12-20T19:12:00-05:00

Winston Churchill once observed that we shape the buildings and then the buildings shape us. I have written elsewhere about how architects and planners, albeit unwittingly, are complicit in producing an urban landscape that contributes to an unhealthy mental landscape. Can we think of different ways to be in the city, of a different architecture that can “cure” loneliness?

Tanzil Shafique, a Ph.D. researcher in urban design at the University of Melbourne, conducted a graduate design studio where students came up with potential architectural and urban responses to loneliness.

New Yorkers with elevator phobia share how they've coped with their lifelong fear

2018-10-05T18:26:00-04:00

The elevator-phobic people of New York City are almost our own subculture [...] I’ve fantasized at times about a kind of utopia: a gleaming glass city free of elevators. But for now I, just like Gabriella and Rachel and Kevin and Nakia, still live in New York, and still constantly have to force myself to enter slim or squat boxes of despair. Why haven’t we left? What strange fate have we dealt ourselves, to live in a place full of hellscapes.

Having a deeply ingrained fear of elevators while living in a vertical landscape like New York City — which has over 60,000 elevators, by the way — isn't easy for some folks, like writer Amos Barshad. He and other fellow New Yorkers he interviews talk about how their phobia began, their search for answers to why they still have this fear, and how they manage it in their everyday lives.

Construction on Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier has begun

2018-08-09T14:37:00-04:00

Construction has begun on a steel net to prevent people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, after years of debate over whether such an obstacle would mar the bridge’s romantic image. For at least the next two years, crews will toil throughout the night to build a coarse web of marine cable beneath the Art Deco span that is both an international symbol for engineering beauty and a magnet for suicides.

"Oakland companies Shimmick Construction Co. and Danny’s Construction Co. won the contract to design and build the net for $211 million — about three times what the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors had proposed when it put the project out for bid in 2014," the Chronicle reports.

Archinect Sessions Episode 121: Mental Health in Architecture

2018-05-11T10:02:00-04:00

This week Ken, Donna and I are joined by architect and writer Esther Sperber to discuss the very real and serious issue of mental health in architecture. Esther owns Studio ST Architects, a small practice in New York City, and frequently writes about mental health, with a specific focus on psychoanalysis and it’s relationship to architecture.

Creative fields, especially those with long hours and high stress levels, are often rife with mental health issues. Anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, chemical abuse... these are just a few of the indicators common in architecture. If you’re not suffering from any of these, you’re likely working around people that are. On today’s show we barely scratch the surface of this extremely complex subject. Our conversation ranges from learning to listen and empathize, to simple daily strategies for coping with mental health issues of your own and those around you, to addressing more serious problems including chemical imbalances and professional trea...