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.
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 »
The Bus Delay Analysis Tool (BDAT) is a set of software and analysis procedures Nelson\Nygaard has been developing for our transit agency clients. Through the Innovation Incubator we developed the new and improved Project & Treatment Module, which enables our clients to sketch bus transit speed & reliability improvements. Additionally, using the tool to document... Read more »
This research project proposes a Framework and Toolkit to create a holistic, incremental approach to gas station adaptation & transformation. Given the current policy timeline of phasing out production of combustible-engine vehicles by 2035 in California and transition to a carbon-free economy nation-wide by 2050, the adaptation scenarios focus on tangible strategies for a near-term... Read more »
The COVID-19 public health crisis has affected many aspects of daily living and working behavior, impacting carbon footprint. This research aims to explore adaptive working behavior and its direct and quantifiable environmental impacts. It studies various working and commuting behavior scenarios on energy consumption and the carbon footprint of commuting and building operations. The paper... Read more »
The pandemic revealed that the challenges facing K-12 schools are examples of what are referred to as ‘wicked problems’. What is a wicked problem? Problems that are complex and difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements. As 2020 revealed, these crises come in a variety of forms and are often hard to... Read more »
Designers are storytellers. From the procession to a building’s entrance to the interior, the real experience of architecture is defined by a journey of visual cues, spatial implications, and curated thoughts. Yet too often when presenting design ideas, we are limited by two-dimensional tools of screens and slides. Real Presentations in Virtual Rooms proposes spatializing... Read more »
We investigated the resiliency of two commonly used wall types with current and projected future weather. We modified existing weather files using linear regression to predict future increases in rainfall in Houston TX. We found these weather files unreliable and ended up purchasing project files. We utilized the increased rainfall data and varying permeability of... 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. This report summarizes design relevant information including the role of wildfire in California’s ecosystem and the... Read more »
Passive House design requires users to create a complete building model to determine the energy performance of both the whole building and its individual elements. It makes traditional PHPP modeling a dilemma at the initial design stage when design decision making through optimization is necessary, without feeding too much design details. This research explores an... Read more »
