Earlier this month, we used our Job Highlights series to ask the question: ‘What does a building scientist do, and how can architects become one?’ Our vehicle to answer this question was an open position at Boston-based Payette, whose search for a building scientist to join the practice offered an insight to where design firms see the specialist role integrating into the wider team.

For this week’s Job Highlights edition, we are adopting a similar tactic with another open role at Payette. Where our previous piece sought to understand the role of an individual position in the practice, we are broadening our scope this week to explore how an entire in-house team at Payette leverages data science to inform the design process.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is recruiting for an Architectural & Campus Planner to join Payette Space Strategies; an in-house operation which describes itself as “an interdisciplinary group at Payette working at the intersection of planning, programming, and design.” The team, comprised of planners, architects, data scientists, and software developers, targets its focus primarily on science, educational, and healthcare typologies, where they believe custom digital tools have the heaviest impact on achieving client expectations.

Readers of our 2021 feature Meet the Architects Designing Software to Fight Climate Change may draw similarities between Payette’s team and that of fellow Bostonian practice Sasaki, whose in-house Sasaki Strategies team is centered on the creation of interactive apps and software, data visualization, and web development. Like their Sasaki counterparts, Payette Space Strategies places an emphasis on programming and digital tools to achieve design outcomes in complex briefs.

“We transform layers of client input and data into design ideas rooted in lab and healthcare planning expertise,” the group explains. “Space Strategies enhances Payette’s design capability to address the specialized relationships between people, space, time and money particular to science and healthcare institutions. We develop and deploy planning and analysis tools, interactive dashboards, and customized software apps, enabling clients to make informed decisions about space in a way that impacts operations, cost and culture.”

Our recent awards coverage has offered evidence of vindication for Payette’s specialized, tech-driven focus on educational and healthcare buildings. In May, the firm won an AIA 2022 Education Facility Design Award for their Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex at Northeastern University, while one month previous, the AIA COTE Top Ten Awards for green new buildings included Payette’s Tufts University Science and Engineering Complex.

In February, Payette’s Amherst College New Science Center was one of seven projects to take home top honors at the AIA Interior Architecture Awards, while in 2021, the American Architecture Awards named the firm’s Lafayette College Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center as one of the 100 best new buildings designed by American architects.

For those interested in joining the Strategies team, Payette’s description of their ideal candidate demonstrates the team’s intersection between architectural design, an expertise in academic and laboratory typologies, and an affinity with data analytics programs.

Full details on the role can be found here on Archinect Jobs. Stay tuned for future curated job highlights, and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for more exciting opportunities on Archinect's industry-leading job board. Recent editions of our Job Highlights series have seen career opportunities for an Executive Director role at the Center for Urban Pedagogy, Architect roles at Hawaii Off-Grid, and Embodied Carbon Researchers at the University of Washington.