Sheila Kim
Like plants to the sun, most of us possess the innate desire to bask in — or just have access to — n urturing natural light. But in the deepest of building cores or lowest of subterranean floors, true openings or daylight harvesters might not be feasible or affordable. So architects and interior designers have found ways to simulate daylight, whether through faux skylights, cove lighting or strategic material and color palettes.
Lighting has the ability to transform a project and how it’s experienced more than you may realize, particularly when it’s used to highlight vertical surfaces and ornaments. Consider, for a moment, what the New York City skyline would be like at night without the recognizable beacon that is the Empire State Building’s crown. The building’s…
From a sanitation department garage to an upscale corporate office, 31 projects were announced as Ho nor and Merit winners of the 2016 AIA New York Design Awards earlier this year. While all of them embody great design, we take a moment to look at the material applications that a handful of them employed. Get inspired…
Herman Miller’s Aeron was the chair when it launched in the ’90s. It catapulted the word “ergonomics ” into the workplace, and, with its foam-free mesh-seat design, it looked nothing like office chairs before it. Everyone from the early dot-com techies to Hollywood producers — and their mothers — had to have one not only because…
Back in August, the tech world went wild upon hearing Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla was enteri ng the solar roof market, and then everyone wondered just how effective the product could be compared to standard photovoltaic panels and what exactly it would look like. As of last weekend, we know the answer to the latter:…
A jury has spoken and selected six projects as demonstrating excellence in kitchen and bath design i n the 2016 Das Design Competition. The annual awards program, sponsored by Hansgrohe/Axor, recognizes both residential and commercial projects completed within the last five years that deftly combine function and aesthetics with the brands’ various fixtures, fittings and accessories,…
Imagine that over the course of three days, random installations ranging from architectural structur es to interactive art pop up out of nowhere along your city’s main thoroughfare to offer you a bit of a respite from the hubbub or an intriguing sensory experience. That’s just what San Franciscans encountered last month during the Market Street…
Over the last few years, the media has been weighing in on workplace design trends with articles lik e “The Open-Office Concept Is Dead” (Fortune magazine) and op-eds like “Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace” (Washington Post). Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you know these authors who may not be as embedded in our industry aren’t necessarily wrong: Research conducted and presented by office furniture manufacturers and major design firms like Gensler has suggested that open plans can actually impede productivity and employee well-being but they also point to possible solutions such as hybrid offices, where there’s compromise between open-office plans, casual lounge areas and privacy zones.
If you were one of the estimated 20,000 people to attend Greenbuild 2016 in Los Angeles, but were st uck in the meeting rooms earning CEUs, chances are you may have missed a slew of product offerings and interesting news from the show floor. So we present a roundup of our top picks for recent under-the-radar…