Building simulation tools can empower architects to evaluate and optimize the performance of their designs. Thus, it is essential to integrate building performance simulation modeling from an early design stage. A critical piece of the simulated environment is the weather file. It is a compilation of 20- 30 years of historical weather and hourly data... Read more »
Perkins&Will supports small, focused explorations proposed by staff members with micro-grants of money and time through the Innovation Incubator program. The Innovation Incubator promotes the exploration and development of ideas that improve our work, open new areas of business and stretch our collective creativity. The results of these explorations further our design work, improve our design process and contribute to the knowledge base of our industry.
The program was launched in 2010 and was an immediate success. With more than 700 entries over 20 cycles, sustained interest in the Innovation Incubator at all levels of the firm is testament to its relevance in our ever-growing culture of innovation.
Browse some of the Innovation Incubator projects that have helped grow the profession’s intelligence over the years. Explore more at: innovation.perkinswill.com.
In order to stay innovative, it is crucial that we keep asking ourselves the disruptive questions, which form the basis of great architecture. The more we share knowledge, talk about and discuss architecture on a daily basis, the more likely we are to remain critical, come up with innovative solutions, create social engagement and bring... Read more »
Arenas are large, expensive, non-continuously-used, energy-intensive luxuries. To date, there have been no arenas built that meet any definition of “zero net energy building.” How do we move beyond the AIA 2030 Challenge, and design ecologically sustainable Net Zero energy Arenas? While Perkins and Will has generally made great progress towards meeting the 2030 goals,... Read more »
This article investigates bedroom as a typology that occurs across different building types: student residential life, private dwellings, hospitality and healthcare. The article also explores synergies between design strategies. We questioned whether these synergies could translate into innovative bedroom design ideas in unexpected ways. Research methods included literature review, qualitative and quantitative assessments, and design explorations.... Read more »
Urban designers, architects, and planners are well versed in understanding how to shape, form, and adapt cities, but is there more to understand in how those cities are shaping their residents? Could lifespans be the best new urban design metric? This report summarizes a high-level urban analysis on the world’s longest-lived communities, commonly known as... Read more »
The human crowd simulator tool is a way for designers to measure, track and formulate understandings behind human crowd patterns and relationships. It maps and generates human movement patterns based on a series of parameters given to the tool via the script. The script parameters run on behavioral movement and science analysis, these parameters have... Read more »
Glare can cause annoyance and discomfort when it becomes the source of vision problem. Although discomfort glare has been studied extensively as an academic topic, evaluating the risk of glare and its mitigation strategies are limited in the architectural design process due to the lack of an established workflow. From building design perspective, architects tend... Read more »
The past 30 years has produced growing documentation of the numerous health benefits of nature. While this has reduced the demand for “proof” of the value of green space in healthcare settings, there remains a critical need for research that focuses on the design elements that can best serve specific patient populations. In the United... Read more »
Before stepping into the virtual world we needed to start in the physical world. This Incubator began by experimenting with different types of models and different methods of photographing these models. We discovered several things which would be usual to know for future photogrammetry work: Less is more – more photos do NOT give you... Read more »
The healthcare sector in Brazil usually does not use any kind of technology or software to change the experience of the client. During the Use and Occupancy Program discussions, an Excel spreadsheet with all the calculations and metrics or a Word document report are presented. The entire process of defining a hospital program and its... Read more »
So often our imagination is captured by the concept of unseen forces behind the workings of the world. Of course, we often think of the living environment when imagining these forces, but the cycle of decomposition is equally as graceful and important. In this case, the unseen hand behind the entire process is the simple... Read more »