Drywall is all around us, but it is often misperceived as a building material that doesn’t demand th e skillful manipulation of a traditional construction material. Anybody who has worked with drywall knows, instead, that the product is not so cooperative. Getting that perfect cut of drywall tape demands an expert eye, and embedding the tape…
In a recent survey of trends in American rental housing, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that fewer than one percent of units include a basic suite of universal-design accommodations. “The picture is far worse among one- to three-family houses,” says Richard Duncan, executive director of the Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based RL Mace Universal…
In order to create an ambitious indoor/outdoor eatery at Miami’s renowned Bal Harbour Shops, the in- house design team for Hillstone Restaurant Group had to go through a particular kind of window shopping. In turning to Hope’s®, leading manufacturer of custom steel and bronze windows and doors, Project Architect Rakesh Patel found the solutions to help…
Emerging from progressive studios, public works and social-enterprise investments, integrated design has entered mainstream architecture. For no surer sign that this highly collaborative process has become a new best practice, look to the residential projects in which most of the industry works: architects of single- and multifamily buildings are assembling teams of partners and consultants…
Since it opened inside Chicago’s Merchandise Mart in 2003, LuxeHome has been a tremendous resource t o retail consumers and the trade alike, and quite literally so. Located on the ground floor of the Merchandise Mart, LuxeHome currently features 37 residential building and renovation brands stretching 125,000 square feet, making it the world’s largest collection of…
Biophilia proposes that humans have a deep-seated attachment to the world around them. Indeed, becau se human evolution has almost exclusively taken place in nature, then affinity for it is encoded into our biology. Remove the forces that stimulated our species’ formation — you can take the boy out of the country, as it were —…
With standing water in the shower base, even the most elegant and responsive bathroom can become a n ightmare. This is where companies like QuickDrain USA come into play, with a great offering of low profile channel drainage systems for showers and wet areas that not only do the job, but look as unobtrusive and sleek as you need them to be.
A crucial environmental factor that affects people, daylighting is more than a tool for beautifying spaces or reducing energy use. Scientific research indicates that its use strongly correlates with improved human health and performance.* As a result, today’s building developers and owners do not consider natural light an amenity; instead, they have embraced it as…
When it launched in 2013, Dekton — a universal architectural application material — stormed out of t he gate: the ultra-compact surface already accounts for 10 percent of manufacturer Cosentino’s U.S. market share. No doubt, performance partly explains the surfacing’s immediate appeal. To produce Dekton, Cosentino — who also manufactures Silestone — employs what it calls…