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Today's podcast guests are NBBJ Managing Partner Steve McConnell and John SanGiovanni, co-founder of Visual Vocal, a new company bringing virtual and augmented reality systems to the architecture industry. As an investor in Visual Vocal, NBBJ plans to foster the company in all of its design... View full entry
NBBJ and Visual Vocal will leverage current-generation VR and augmented reality (AR) systems, with a near-term focus on mobile VR platforms for optimal accessibility and scale. While a number of firms in the design industry have examined the promise of VR, this partnership marks the first instance of an established design firm incubating a VR startup inside its own offices and developing new tools to improve decision-making and remove waste from the design process. — 12newsnow.com
More from the VR-desk on Archinect:Virtually Inevitable – VR and AR, IRL on Archinect Sessions #51"A blueprint can give you an idea, but this cements it for you.” – VR's promising future in architectural communicationsAre virtual reality systems sexist?Using virtual reality to bridge the gap... View full entry
Instead of relying on a subway that breaks down and causes interminable delays, what if the 17 miles of London's Circle Line were replaced with three moving walkways, much like the ones in airports, that allow pedestrians to step on at three miles per hour and then amble over to a fast lane of... View full entry
"I have absolutely no doubt that Kaiser Permanente's new hospital in Oakland is a big step up from its predecessor in terms of the facilities offered to patients and their loved ones.
But in terms of how it looks and feels outside - even by the dismal standard of recent American hospital design - the stocky compound that opened last week is enough to make you sick."
— San Francisco Chronicle
Updated designs have surfaced for Amazon's new headquarters in downtown Seattle. Instead of the biospheres' uniformly diamond-shaped supporting structure (compare with previous renderings), the new images we just received from the project's architects, NBBJ, show a much more organic web of... View full entry
Reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, the three intersecting biodomes replace an earlier plan for a six-story office building and would establish a visual focus and “heart” for the three-block project, according to plans filed with the city.
The spheres will offer “a plant-rich environment” filled with species from mountainous ecologies around the globe, chosen for their “ability to coexist in a microclimate that also suits people,” according to the plans.
— seattletimes.com
NBBJ, a global architecture and design firm, today announced that it has appointed Tim Leberecht as its Chief Marketing Officer. Leberecht joins NBBJ from Frog Design where he led the marketing organization from 2006 to 2013 and helped transform the company into one of the world’s foremost... View full entry
Steve Jobs talked about his connection to the outdoors. So we said, 'Let's take that approach. Let's make sure every employee has access to the outdoors within one floor.' So we took a series of two-story buildings and stacked them on top of each other, and put gardens in between them. — latimes.com
The architects often walk clients through it to show how an open environment works. There’s not a private office or cubicle anywhere, and there’s constant low-level hubbub: people in motion, and gathering into small groups. The tour makes some clients nervous; they wonder how their own workers would concentrate in such an environment. — NYT
Lawrence Cheek examines new trends in office designs which focus on providing employees room to roam and thus to think. Specifically, he looks at three examples the Seattle offices of Russell Investment, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters as well the offices of the... View full entry
