The Windy City’s Merchandise Mart is the home of superlatives. When it was completed in 1930, the 4. 2-million-square-foot building ranked as the biggest in the world. Today, it is still Chicago’s number one commercial building. And, within this behemoth, the 650,000-square-foot Design Center is the world’s largest venue of its type, while the separate ground-floor…
Few manufacturers in the world can boast as long and influential a history as Villeroy & Boch’s. With origins that stretch back to 1748 as a small ceramic manufacturer in Lorraine, France, Villeroy & Boch has also developed a deep, guiding sense of tradition — a tradition of always staying on the cutting edge of…
Sinks, soap dispensers, and hand dryers in public spaces are so commonplace that washing your hands typically goes by without a second thought. But, for anyone tracking resources, the germ-conscious, and detail-oriented designers, these mundane systems can pose huge problems. Protruding dispensers make it difficult to get the most use out of a space, and…
“Funnily enough, I think Sir John Soane might have liked the Digital Age,” says Robert Stern, Founde r and Senior Partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, referring to the neoclassicist architect as perhaps the “first modern architect,” one who had both “a firm grasp of history, especially of Classical Rome” and “a sense of his own…
For architects, designers, and their IT support, working on shared Revit® models outside of the offi ce can create costly and time-consuming headaches. Previous work-around solutions like VPNs with virtual desktops open up security vulnerabilities, add expensive hardware, and create long wait times for changes to save and update on the central server — minutes that…
Koreatown in Los Angeles offers a lot more than most traditional ethnic enclaves: it’s one of the bi ggest, densest, and most diverse areas in a city often criticized for sprawl and segregation. Challenging this popular conception of L.A., high rises and eclectic businesses line Koreatown’s walkable main corridors. Meanwhile, historic Art Deco apartments pack side…
Quick! Name three ways to improve a building’s energy efficiency. While the most obvious solutions a re often expensive and highly visible — upgrading windows, replacing old kitchen appliances, and installing a building automation system — the biggest gains often run just below the surface. Closed-cell spray foam insulation products, like Icynene’s ProSeal, are just that:…
In Chicago, during NeoCon 2015, Allsteel demonstrated its forward-thinking adaptability to a changin g workplace by unveiling its reconfigured 14,000-square-foot Chicago Resource Center. Designed in collaboration with a team from IA Interior Architects, a series of 16 vignettes was laid out over the 11th floor of the city’s Merchandise Mart like a neighborhood of city blocks…
What’s the point of working in a cool office space if you can’t show it off once in a while? Surely you’ve seen the case study on the Architizer/HWKN office, decked out in Allsteel furniture, but of course the photos only go so far. In the interest of celebrating the summer here in NYC, Architizer…