Latest Reports

Carnegie Mellon University is rethinking the way it approaches change management by broadening how it approaches the people involved. A workspace is not just four walls that contain an employee; there are also memories and a sense of identity tied up in that space. Doing the hard work of acknowledging those feelings, and working closely with employees to address their fear of change, can lay the groundwork for a more successful transition into a new space.

Project SagaMORE is an office building addition to a 2001 former biopharma pilot plant, the Protein Production Laboratory. In 2014 the building was converted to a high-performance collaborative office space with an industrial loft aesthetic. The facility was designed without private offices, and instead features multiple shared “we” spaces that include project, conference, huddle, and phone rooms. The original conversion project achieved a LEED Platinum CI rating. 

The Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) is designed for the researchers of the future: up-and-coming scientists who prefer a streamlined, team approach to research, rather than being trapped by organizational limitations; a collaborative, not leader-driven, environment; and technology-enabled methods and workspaces. The intention is to foster multidisciplinary interaction in flexible spaces, as they pursue innovative solutions for cancer research.

The SUNY College at Oneonta’s extensive rehabilitation of the Physical Science Building (PSB) includes renovation of 58,000 gsf and 18,000 gsf in new construction. The 1970s brick building with a concrete structure required replacement of about 70 percent of the exterior envelope, including the northwestern elevation to control glare and solar heat gain. The brick addition complements the style of the campus at large, with syncopated windows facing southeast, and glass and metal panel accents all around.

The Francis Crick Institute (informally known as “the Crick”) is one of the world’s largest dedicated biomedical research centers. Its formal agenda is “to discover the basic biology underlying human health, improving the treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of disease, and generating economic opportunities for the UK.” Achieving this agenda has required some unusual architectural strategies, centered on the notion of “discovery without boundaries”—boundaries between scientific disciplines, institutions, laboratories, and individual researchers—which lies at the heart of the Crick’s culture.