Project teams want buildings that are healthy for people and the planet. Two sometimes competing criteria to evaluate the sustainability of building products are embodied carbon and material health. For this case study, Perkins&Will partnered with Healthy Building Network to identify key drivers of embodied carbon and material health by looking at specific examples of... Read more »
Employee Retention is a concern for every industry because turnover is costly and disruptive. For healthcare organizations the turnover rate is approximately 16.2% with the average cost of turnover for a bedside Registered Nurse (RN) ranging from $38,900-$59,700. Our healthcare workers continue to be at the front line of the COVID-19 global pandemic where their... Read more »
This article aims to identify and explore the links between design practices for natural disaster victims, refugees, and displaced houseless communities. This study employs an urban design framework for the evaluation of three case studies that provide design standards for housing populations in transitional situations. The approaches observed from these three case studies have been... Read more »
This article focuses on sustainable design considerations and strategies for achieving a high-performance retrofit of an existing higher-education laboratory building, located in a cold climate. The primary objective was to evaluate the present state and potential retrofit strategies to improve building performance. Research methods included analysis of archival data and empirical data, and computational software... Read more »
The threat of wildfires in California has significantly altered quality of life in the region. Adaptation will require fundamental corrections in land stewardship, development patterns, and building practices. Design professionals must make sense of an overwhelming array of information. In this article a literature review summarizes design relevant information including the role of wildfire in... Read more »
This research incubator explores the concept of flexible streets championed by leaders in the planning and mobility industries, including our own colleagues at Nelson\Nygaard, to establish a “flex street” definition that planners and urban designers can use to communicate with communities and local officials. In establishing this flexible street definition, we looked to recent street... Read more »
Researchers in the Process Lab have developed the Design Optimization Toolset (DOTS), a user-friendly, freely accessible generative design plugin for Rhino Grasshopper. DOTs allows designers to interactively develop design alternatives that reconcile project-specific constraints with the geometric complexity of architectural forms. Perkins&Will designers have applied DOTs in space planning, site parcellation, massing, and urban design... Read more »
The rise of telemedicine during the pandemic proved that a new care model was an unstoppable force in Healthcare which generated extensive data that deserves examination to understand its effect on the built environment. Innovations and solutions are needed to provide comprehensive medical care experience on par with physical encounters and consider lessons learned from... Read more »
The Bus Map Design Guideline project provides an empirically informed design guide and template for bus map production, one of Nelson\Nygaard’s core capabilities. By surveying map viewers and producers on the broad goals and specific practices common to bus map design, we identified key audience priorities and preferences that map designers should take into account.... Read more »
Lab building embodied carbon is significant, due to intensive structure, finishes, and MEP systems. Recent projects are experimenting with designs uncommon to labs: CLT structure, wood cladding, demountable partitions. But no resource collects these into a common framework for evaluating their carbon benefits. Low Carbon Labs evaluates (3) choices for (14) different building systems within... Read more »
Moisture performance in building assemblies affects building indoor air quality and integrity. Building on Perkins&Will’s implementation of WUFI for hygrothermal analysis, we propose a parametric workflow and extension of WUFI that allows architects to explore different wall assembly permutations specific to their project and check for potential moisture and mold issues. The back-end process of... Read more »
