by Jennifer AliberIt might be tempting to think of hospitals and large medical centers as indestructible entities that once built stay built and can be ignored. While that is probably more or less true of the structural system, almost everything else that has been...
News
Is there a way to test for Covid-19 without PPE?
by Luke Voiland, AIAA thorny issue shaping the current public health crisis is broad access to COVID-19 testing. If we could conduct wide-scale testing, we would be able to pinpoint the carriers and contain the spread of the infection. Yet testing has not been keeping...
How can campuses be repurposed during the COVID-19 pandemic?
by Luke Voiland, AIAAs the corona virus sweeps across our nation, it has emptied campuses and disrupted operations. And as faculty and administrators adapt to a remote learning model, many are asking what can be done with the physical campus buildings that are now...
How can educational institutions successfully pivot to distance learning?
by Alison F. Rainey, AIAAs designers in the higher education space, we have seen online learning grow at a gradual pace over the past decade. Yet, since the COVID-19 outbreak, many institutions have had to abruptly move all their courses online. Our clients say...
The Link: Phoenix’s new living room
by Arlinda ShtuniThese days people are flocking to Phoenix, a gravitational center of urban activity and the fastest growing city in America. Teeming with entrepreneurial energy and economic development, it is expanding both outward and upward. Students and...
Giving great writers rooms of their own
By Arlinda ShtuniIn her seminal “A Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf wrote: “A writer needs money to provide her with the time, and she needs room to provide her with the space.” Envisioning Harvard University’s new Creative Writing Center gave us the rare pleasure of...
The making of a makerspace
by Amanda VigneauMakerspaces are everywhere. They are popping up in schools, community centers, libraries; emerging as hubs for experimentation, learning and cross disciplinary inquiry. As we envision these spaces, we often ask: What makes a makerspace successful? And...
Celebrating visionary leadership
by Arlinda ShtuniWe congratulate our CEO, Carole Wedge on being named the 2020 recipient of the Kemper Award. This significant award celebrates the legacy of Edward C. Kemper, the first Executive Director of the AIA. For the past seventy years, the award has been...
Integrated patient care leads the way
For more than 30 years, we have partnered with Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) to support their strategic vision and evolving medical practice. Our design thinking has guided their transformation from a single academic medical center into a system of campuses and...
Evolving our connection with nature: Six principles of biophilic design and biophilic design elements
by Sonja BochartWhat makes the spaces we envision indelible, serene, restorative—places where people and communities thrive? Biophilia—our intrinsic human connection with the natural world—continues to guide our design thinking and process at Shepley Bulfinch. We are...
Elevating mental health at North Shore Medical Center
by Cathleen LangeAs designers, we’re enabling a critical shift in the perception and treatment of behavioral health. Mental illnesses affect tens of millions of people each year in the U.S., yet according to estimates, only half of the people with mental illnesses...
Giving students room to grow
by Joel PettigrewAn evolution has taken place in higher education over the last decade. Today’s campuses have come a long way from the narrowly focused academic institutions of yore. They are not just places where one goes to study, but dynamic microcosms of activity...