I recently presented at and co-hosted a BIMForum event in Miami. The BIMForum is an interest group of the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America with which the AIA also collaborates. Twice a year, the BIMForum conducts events that are based on a specific theme. The Spring 2013 theme was “The Human Side of BIM” in which all presentations focused on topics such as training, change management, and firm culture.

An interesting aspect of this conference was that ALL presentations were delivered in pecha kucha (or 20×20) style! This means that we had to share our content with 20 slides, 20 seconds each, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Sounds crazy, right? The …

Imagine going to a lecture hall that automatically transforms into a banquet hall with minimal human effort.

This is truly an option at the the Plenary Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Recently a guest from Australia enlightened me….so I am excited to pass this along. Check out this place out in action!

Way back in 2011 I wrote about a volunteer effort that involved some of us at HOK SF: documenting BART stations around the Bay Area to create “talking” tactile maps for the blind. Conducted under the guidance of Lighthouse for the Blind, this effort was a great learning experience in terms of how the blind navigate complex spaces that the rest of us take for granted (transit hubs, malls.. the list goes on). It was also a great look at how technology is being harnessed to aid the differently abled. These maps have raised symbols for important navigational landmarks like escalators and stairs overlaid on a simple outline of BART stations. What’s cool is that in addition …

The HOK Design Board recently held its annual meeting at the San Francisco office from April 26th – 28th. The weekend kicked off with dinner at the home of HOK San Francisco Design Principal Paul Woolford. Sessions Saturday morning covered topics such as HOK Product Design, Genius of the Biome, Living Building Initiative, and Mass Timber Construction. During the afternoon, each Design Board member and guest gave a 10 minute TED-like presentation on a particular project. The design board then took a tour of the California Academy of Sciences and its 2.5 acre living roof before having dinner at the famed Original Joe’s in North Beach. Sunday morning concluded …

“We’re just not using our space effectively” is one way clients typically sum up their pain points when we first sit down to talk with them.

“Well, walk us through your typical work day” will often be one of the first follow-up responses a workplace strategist will ask to begin to discover what’s working and what’s not in terms of how people use their space.

As we continue to look for more effective ways to improve the overall workplace experience, one tool we can use is measuring and analyzing space utilization. To gain better insight into how companies utilize their office space, there are several ways to approach these …

Congratulations to HOK in San Francisco’s Justin Kelly, who was recently named the 2013 Young Architect of the Year by the AIA San Francisco Chapter.

“Justin is a rare individual whose combination of deep technical knowledge and a sensitive eye uniquely position him as a special professional. His leadership brings visions to reality; his dedication improves the public realm.” – Paul Woolford, Design Principal, HOK in San Francisco

A licensed architect, Justin has been with HOK for five years. In both his personal and professional activities, Justin is motivated by engagement with the physical world. A love of materials and making things drove him to become a successful engineer, and further to …

For 20 weeks this past winter, HOK’s Chicago office was proud to host local high school students from all over the city as part of the Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE) Mentor Program, an integral community program that inspires students to pursue careers in design and construction. Beginning last October, HOK mentors, in partnership with Halvorson, Lend Lease and GSA, worked with students once a week for two hours to develop an original design project. The students presented their concept to peers and esteemed members of the community at a special awards ceremony at the UIC Forum (an HOK designed building) earlier this month.

…

We’re going to find out….. I am immensely honored to be selected by the AIA President as a member of the newly formed Sustainability and Health Advisory Committee. The committee consists of some amazing talent from around the sustainable industry. These individuals have all been my mentors and inspiration for the past 8 years and I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with them on the future of sustainable education and training at the AIA. Although sustainability is becoming more and more of a mainstream design process, as an industry, we are not achieving our goals and we have A LOT of work to do.
I know that …

Ted Davalos, Senior Vice President and Director of Architecture for HOK in San Francisco, celebrated his 34 years of service with HOK at his retirement party on Thursday evening, April 18, with 100 of his colleagues and guests at the Thirsty Bear restaurant in San Francisco. The event was also attended by his wife, Pam Davalos, and their son, Brett. In Ted’s tenure with HOK, he was responsible for some of the more notable projects designed and produced by the San Francisco office. These projects include NOAA Pacific Regional Center, Pearl Harbor, HI; Levis Plaza, headquarters for Levi Strauss, San Francisco, CA; the Genetics and Plant Biology Laboratory on the University of California …

Thanks to Leila Ray in our Chicago office for passing along this guest post on Cagri Kanver’s involvement at the MIPIM conference in Cannes, France.

HOK in Chicago’s Cagri Kanver attended this year’s MIPIM conference as a guest of honor of the Turkish Delegation. MIPIM is the leading real estate event for the property professionals worldwide and was held this year in Cannes, France. At the conference, Turkey was recognized as the 2013 Country of Honor and had a dedicated Turkish Pavilion, conference program and events. Besides its growing economic power, Turkey has a dynamic real estate sector and is attracting the attention of large and powerful international investors. HOK’s work on the …

A few weeks ago Stephen from Office Snapshots stopped by our office to show us his website. Similar in idea to Apartment Therapy, Stephen’s website focuses on interesting new office spaces around the world. The HOK folks who were part of the presentation thought the website a great place to scope out new trends and directions in office design, since no such online repository really exists currently (and if you know of any such sites, do let us know). We also offered some suggestions on how this website could be improved from our perspective – material tagging, searchability by designers and floor plans were some of them.

Check out HOK’s work on the website here (more to be added!).. http://www.officesnapshots.com/designers/hok/

As many smaller to mid-size companies evolve into global organizations, the way we collaborate with one another also needs to evolve. We continue to see a plethora of technology based solutions being rolled out to enable more global collaboration. I personally rely heavily on the hardware, software, apps, and the ubiquitous 24/7 access to get the job done, whatever that job may be at any given time. But lately I’ve been working with more remote teammates and I realize that while we definitely have good technology to collaborate, we sometimes forget the human element to how we effectively communicate with one another. No matter how good your technology, the effectiveness of simple …

Thanks to Dominick Gallegos in our Chicago office for passing along this guest post on Senior Designer David Genc’s recent speaking engagement at the 4th Annual Bisnow Chicago Multifamily Summit.

Several of HOK Chicago’s interior designers and architects recently attended the 4th Annual Chicago Multifamily Summit, hosted by Bisnow. To kick off the events covering the future of residential development, HOK Chicago’s David Genc, a Senior Designer and Residential thought leader, delivered the opening remarks to more than 450 of the foremost real estate owners, developers, and financiers from Chicago and abroad.

David delivered a message on how residential design will have to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly diverse demographic while building …

I’m reading The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz and have just finished a chapter that describes how people react to choices differently, depending on whether they perceive them to be a loss or a gain.  It struck me as useful on multiple levels when it comes to providing choices to our clients and to the people who move into the spaces we design.

Loss Aversion

Schwartz references a study by Kahneman and Tversky who have done research on framing and how it affects our ability to evaluate options and make decisions… called prospect theory. The idea with prospect theory is that people feel a “loss” more strongly than a “gain” when compared with the status quo.  According to this framing research, …

If you’re in New York City on March 19, please join us at Inscape NYC for a Workplace Salon discussing the Yahoo! No-Work-From-Home Memo. HOK will help moderate the event and participate in a debate on both sides of the argument. We’ll be joined by folks from Gensler, Credit Suisse, BrightSpot Strategy and Perkins + Will.

Workplace Salon: The Yahoo! Debate
March 19, 2013 from 8:00-9:30 a.m.
Inscape NYC Showroom
414 W. 14th Street, 6th floor
RSVP by March 15, 2013
jfeuerborn@inscapesolutions.com

The audience will be polled on which side they most agree with before and then again after the debate. Let the …

When he was six years old, Todd Bertsch, AIA, moved with his family to Atlanta from Pocatello, Idaho. Through what he calls “serendipity,” Todd never left. He earned his architecture degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has spent his entire professional career in Atlanta. In 2008, he joined HOK as design director in our Atlanta office.

Todd and his wife, also an architect, live with their 11-year-old daughter in a house they designed together near Piedmont Park in Atlanta’s vibrant Virginia Highland neighborhood.

“I have seen Atlanta undergo a tremendous transformation over the past 30 years,” says Todd. “It is still young compared to Paris or …

It was a little more than one year ago that I wrote about kicking off the 2012 session of ACE Mentor. The clock ticked, seasons changed, calendars were flipped …and here we are in 2013, with an exciting new year for ACE! A lot has changed over the last one year for us ACErs. Olive and Andy, ACE Team 3 leaders from years past have moved onto bigger things (Olive is now Regional Leader for SF, while Andy’s helping build a hospital!)

Which means there are big shoes to fill – and trying our best to do that are Jose (HOK), Jamie (Flack and Kurtz) and myself (HOK)… the three new leaders for ACE Team 3. Also new this …

It all started with a phone call and a deadline. It was May 2012. Active Voice was moving into their new office space in the SOMA district of San Francisco within a month, and would HOK SF help them create an optimal space “so Active Voice can thrive, grow and make the world a better place”?

It was a challenge right up our alley, so of course we said yes! But then – what does Active Voice do? From their website : Leveraging the unique power of documentaries, feature films and digital media, Active Voice creates opportunities for people to connect and take action around shared values – strengthening community ties, …

As an addition to the original Moscow Chancery designed by HOK more than 20 years ago, the 241,000-sq.-ft. New Office Annex at the US Embassy in Moscow is one of the first embassies built under the new Department of State Design Excellence Program. It is scheduled to open in 2016.

At the request of our clients, Roger Schwabacher, AIA, and director of graphics Jim Doussard in HOK’s DC office recently designed and installed this display in the main lobby of the US Department of State’s Overseas Buildings Operations headquarters.

All of this talk about Yahoo, mobility, flexibility in the workplace, and the list goes one, has sparked some interesting dialogue. There are those that see working from home as beneficial not only to an employee’s well-being and job satisfaction, but also to productivity, reduction of churn, greater efficiency, and slimmer real estate costs. However, there are also those that see a lack of innovation, difficulty managing and measuring productivity, and missed opportunities for serendipitous encounters and communication.

Accenture’s Survey Results for IWD2013

But we have tasted the freedom that technology offers (as well as the tethering – who checks email before even getting out of bed …

Bill Hellmuth, AIA, who joined HOK in 1991 and ascended to president in 2004, leads design projects worldwide. But he is especially proud of the local architectural contributions of HOK’s Washington practice, which is located in Georgetown’s historic Canal House. Under Bill’s leadership over the past two decades, the DC studio has designed more than 25 buildings across the city.

Why is contributing to Washington’s built environment so important to you?

BH: I am committed to cities. They are my focus. Washington is a high-energy city with great institutions and museums and terrifically interesting things to do. It’s a wonderful place to live.

I love being able to …

image from Wikimedia Commons

Several organizations have asked for our advice on “work-from-home” policies, particularly in light of the recent policy change at Yahoo, effectively rescinding their work-at-home program.  I can’t speak for Yahoo, but the issues they are facing are very real… how can organizations encourage employees to connect with one another now that we’re so all so mobile and can work anywhere?  Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s current CEO and formerly with Google, has seen the benefits of a culture that encourages employees to come into the office.

As our team learned in HOK’s design of Google Canada’s new Toronto office, they go to a lot of trouble to make …

Any design project, even the simplest one, involves some sort of change for the occupants of a space. Sometimes it means moving them to a different location in the building. Maybe it means moving them across town. Perhaps, for good reasons,  it means that their new work environment will look and operate differently than it does now. It is crucial to keep in mind that many people have a tough time when it comes to adopting a new environment. Change is hard and takes some mental effort to take on fully. Making any change – even when it might be better in the long run – is often resisted. Resistance to change is in our DNA.

It seems counterintuitive, …

Not only have I been seeing this NYT article (Relax! You’ll Be More Productive) circulating around Facebook lately, but a coworker also just emailed it to our whole group.  It seems that many people are yearning for both increased productivity and relaxation – and this article by Tony Schwartz just may be the golden ticket to helping us achieve that magical balance!

It seems a bit counterintuitive at first.  Schwartz states that they key to achieving greater productivity is not found through getting swept up in a whirlwind of working/going/doing longer and faster, rather, it is found in quite the opposite state: that of relaxation and rejuvenation.

Schwartz’s thesis …

Just in time for Mardi Gras, HOK Chicago celebrated in proper New Orleans style by trading beads for tiles, adorning forest crowns, and creating a mask worth celebrating at the 8th Annual STITCH Event. The Chicago Chapter of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) hosts the event every year as a way to connect designers with industry manufacturers and showcase unique, hand-constructed designs on the runway. This year the Big Easy came to life as a live Mardi Gras marching band precluded a sea of folklore masks that left the audience soaking in the glamour and mystique.

Abiding by the 2013 folklore theme, the HOK Chicago Interiors Group created a Little …

And no, I don’t mean “killing you” in the mental sense, if you’re dissatisfied with your current employment situation (though that can be harmful too). I mean in the cold hard physical sense. If you sit for 9+ hours a day (most of us sit for 9.3 hours/day), you could be dramatically decreasing your shot at a long and healthy life.

In the recently published Harvard Business Review article “Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation,” Nilofer Merchant explores the dangers of the sedentary lifestyle that is plaguing our nation. She argues that the association of the obesity epidemic with this generation is similar to the smoking epidemic of previous generations—except far worse. …

Imagine a world in which buildings and communities clearly and definitively help to prevent some of our most widespread illnesses, improve our mental health, and strengthen our overall wellbeing.  We are now one step closer to this place after last week’s Summit on Green Buildings & Human Health, hosted by the US Green Building Council.   

If there’s one thing that I took away, it’s the enormous potential of public health professionals joining forces with the green building community to significantly improve human health and wellbeing.  We’ve always cared about the basics, of …

HOK offices across the United States participated in We Care this December. We Care connects Boys and Girls Club chapters with local design firms and a holiday celebration ensues! The event showcases a variety of craft stations where children can create holiday gifts for family and friends.

“Just watching them jump up and down with excitement at getting to make the crafts you create – it truly is a holiday miracle and so incredible to be a part of. We are forever grateful for your commitment year after year for We Care.” –Robin Martin, We Care Hostess

The Dallas HOK office won first place for the best craft and most popular table. The kids …

It has been nearly one thousand days since Earth Day 2010.  I’m proud to be part of a firm that celebrates this day as passionately as we do.  It means something.  Our belief in and commitment to sustainability is unparalleled amongst our competition.  Every year we campaign and rally around our messages as if an election was at stake.  We’ve turned the lights out.  We’ve recharged.  We go above and beyond to prove to the world that we care about the world.  I like this.

One thousand days ago, it was this passion and commitment that drove me to stop driving.  On Earth Day 2010, I sold my car.  For many of …