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 »
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 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 »
