Metropolis July/August 2023

Salvage Superstars

Bo Shepherd and Kyle Dubay at Throwbacks Home

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Artful acoustics for welcoming spaces

THE TAILORED COLLECTION

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FEATURES

10 Provocations for Circular Design 92

Architecture and interior design present unique challenges to the dream of a circular economy. Here’s a list of them to inspire you to action.

Rail Yard Reborn 104

In Lakeland, Florida, Sasaki transforms a heavily polluted train depot into an elegant yet hardworking green space.

Adaptable Reuse 120

Superstars of Salvage 112

Drawing on breakthrough research, tools, and sourcing systems, these seven groups are championing buildingmaterial reuse.

The bigger challenge in preserving historically significant buildings isn’t in giving them a second life—it’s preparing them for future reincarnations.

Design starts here

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Our Right to Light 77

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EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Avinash Rajagopal

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COPY EDITOR Benjamin Spier

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EDITORS AT LARGE Ver da Alexander, Sam Lubell

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ENDURING DESIGN

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CONTRIBUTORS

BETH BROOME

A former editor at Architectural Record and The New York Observer, Beth Broome writes about architecture, design, urbanism, and culture. Her work has covered a vast range of architectural types and scales—from private residences to affordable and supportive housing to large institutional projects, like university buildings and museums. With a particular interest in the social impact of the built environment, she has focused on topics such as building and infrastructure for underserved communities, the use of public space, and urban transformation. For this issue, Broome penned a feature on Santiago Calatrava’s St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at the World Trade Center site in New York (p. 78).

KATE MAZADE

Kate Mazade is based in Fort Worth, Texas, where she is the city editor for FTWtoday She serves as the design critic for Madame Architect, and her writing has been featured in Dezeen, Metropolis, Architectural Record, The Architect’s Newspaper, and American Theatre. In 2022, Mazade published Dearest Babe, Letters from a World War II Flight Surgeon, a memoir she wrote with her mom about their family’s military service. She holds a bachelor of architecture from Auburn University and a master’s degree in arts journalism from Syracuse University. For this issue, Mazade wrote about the Code Next lab, a free computer science education space for underserved students in Oakland, California (p. 38).

VERA SACCHETTI

Vera Sacchetti is a Basel, Switzerland–based design critic and curator. She specializes in contemporary design and architecture and serves in a variety of curatorial, research, and editorial roles. She is currently program coordinator of the research initiative Driving the Human: Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal (2020–2023), which supports transdisciplinary research on sustainable futures; co-initiator of the Design and Democracy platform (2020–), which maps the intersections and overlaps between design and democratic systems and practices; and curator of the inaugural edition of the architecture festival Archipelago: Architectures for the Multiverse (2021). Sacchetti teaches at HEAD Geneva, and in 2020 joined the Federal Design Commission of Switzerland. For this issue, Sacchetti shared highlights from this year’s Venice Biennale (p. 34).

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IN THIS ISSUE

Reusing materials and products from older buildings is not without its challenges, as Stantec’s Italy office discovered while creating the exhibit A Valuable Collection of Things for Alcova during Milan Design Week 2023. Read more in “10 Provocations for Circular Design,” p. 92.

The Beauty of Redemption

In the first seven months after its opening, Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, Florida, welcomed a million visitors. Just a few years prior to that, it was an abandoned site with 300,000 cubic yards of arsenic-contaminated soil (“Rail Yard Reborn,” p. 104). Knowing that the lush hills, bodies of water, play structures, and wetlands so painstakingly shaped and nurtured by the team at Sasaki were once an unloved postindustrial landscape makes them even more enjoyable—there is a sense of salvation there, and pride in the accomplishments of human persistence.

This is just one of the many kinds of beauty to be found in designs for a circular, regenerative future.

Detroit has an extraordinary concentration of abandoned buildings being converted for 21st-century purposes (“Adaptable Reuse,” p. 120). “The ways in which adaptive reuse can become a core component of our quickly changing built world—and make buildings flexible enough to adapt to today’s needs and those of the future—are playing out here in real time,” writes Metropolis editor at large Sam Lubell. His reporting points out the many challenges in adapting all kinds of floor plates, footprints, and column grids for contemporary use, but also the unique opportunity to prepare these buildings for unforeseen future uses. That is another kind of beauty in the best adaptive reuse projects—the hidden joys of flexible design details, dormant until the next architect or designer tasked with preparing the building for a new use discovers them.

A third form of satisfaction that reuse and circularity can give us is embodied by our seven “Superstars of Salvage” (p. 112) . This is the beauty of entrepreneurship, the ability to see value where others cannot and to turn that into economic and social opportunity. From the Throwbacks Home vintage store in Detroit (a supplier of curated found items for commercial projects) to the

Carbon Avoided: Retrofit Estimator (a tool to help architects visualize the climate benefits of reuse), a special group of pioneering small businesses and resources is paving the way for the rest of us.

A fourth kind of beauty is powered by the adrenaline of taking a moon shot: As I lay out in “10 Provocations for Circular Design” (p. 92),” there are nearly impossible odds stacked against the creation of a truly sustainable, equitable, and resilient built environment. We have no choice left but to find new ideals of aesthetics and to change our worldview—moving away from overconsumption and the extraction of resources toward a more harmonious way of existing. There are many practical reasons for pursuing circularity in the built environment. But what excites me the most is that in our effort to save ourselves and other life on the planet, we have embarked on a quest for new forms of beauty. —Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief

A MORE SUSTAINABLE METROPOLIS

As part of the SANDOW DESIGN GROUP (SDG) carbon impact initiative, all publications, including LUXE INTERIORS + DESIGN, INTERIOR DESIGN, and METROPOLIS, are now printed using soy-based inks, which are biobased and derived from renewable sources.

This continues SDG’s ongoing efforts to address the

environmental impact of its operations and media platforms. Earlier this year, we announced a yearlong partnership with Keilhauer to offset all estimated carbon emissions for the printing and distribution of every print copy of METROPOLIS in 2023 with verified carbon credits, including the one you hold in your hands.

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EVENT Design Optimism

Metropolis hosted the second annual Design Optimism conference at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, bringing architects and designers together for a day of finding hope in radical new ideas.

By Alisa Carroll

GROWTH MINDSET: CREATIVITY AND THE BRAIN

David

Eagleman

What are the key conditions for optimal creativity? They lie in the balance between familiarity and novelty, according to Design Optimism keynote speaker David Eagleman. A neuroscientist and adjunct professor at Stanford University, Eagleman is also the writer and host of the Emmy-nominated PBS series The Brain, and author of books including Livewired and The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World.

Eagleman shared with the audience the idea that we find comfort in repetition but growth in new experiences, and that finding even small ways to stimulate the mind helps us circumvent the path of least resistance. To “grow our neurons,” he said, “it’s the change, the making something new that matters.” According to Eagleman, “bending, breaking, and blending” are the three basic cognitive operations the brain

undertakes to remix past experience and knowledge to create new ideas. When “bending,” we change an existing idea; when “blending,” we merge two ideas in innovative ways; and in “breaking,” we disassemble and rebuild an idea.

To spur creativity, Eagleman suggested that we “proliferate options,” as 19th-century artist Hokusai did in his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, a series in which the painter continually reinterpreted the sacred site. Another of his tenets is that creatives “travel different distances from the familiar,” pointing to concept cars that never go into production but serve to engage the imagination. Eagleman also emphasized that in daily living, even small steps like brushing teeth with your nondominant hand or wearing your watch on the opposite wrist are ways of vitalizing the brain. It’s always creative, he noted, to “shake things up.”

Neuroscientist David Eagleman launched the day of discussion with a keynote presentation exploring where creativity comes from, how it works, and how we can harness it to improve our future.

Watch the inspiring talks from Design Optimism, presented by GROHE, Material Bank, Tarkett, and 3form, in partnership with Garden on the Wall and Ultrafabrics.

THE PANDEMIC EFFECT: HEALTHY ARCHITECTURES

Blaine Brownell

“A pandemic is a course correction to the trajectory of civilization,” commented researcher Alex de Waal of Tufts University to Ed Yong in a 2021 Atlantic article.

In Design Optimism’s second presentation, educator and researcher Blaine Brownell addressed the intersection of disease, climate, and the built environment. Over the course of global history, from the Plague of Justinian in 541 CE through COVID-19, 18 to 20 pandemics have occurred, Brownell noted. Urbanization has accelerated their frequency, sparking investigation of how designed environments affect—and are affected by—health.

Drawing on his new book, The Pandemic Effect: 90 Experts on Immunizing the Built Environment, Brownell outlined how structures “holistically affect our behavior and constitution.” After tracing historical architectural responses to pandemics like tuberculosis, he

demonstrated the ways that contemporary building envelopes, with fixed windows and thermally controlled climates, have resulted in a “lost connection with the outdoors in favor of efficiency.” Brownell encouraged instead a return to open architecture and natural ventilation systems and presented the pros and cons of interventions, including biometric sensors, antimicrobial surfaces, and catch-and-kill air filtration.

Turning to the broader landscape, he addressed urban ecologies, including the vital role of parks; advocated for multisensory wayfinding to increase “health and mobility for marginalized groups”; and encouraged partnerships between interior design and landscape design to maximize energy efficiency. As Brownell observed, “Architecture can be a cure—not a cause—of communicable illness and the climate crisis.”

Highlighting insights from his new book The Pandemic Effect (Princeton Architectural Press, January 2023), educator and researcher Blaine Brownell gave a thought-provoking presentation on the transformations underway in the built environment following the COVID-19 pandemic.

BUILDING TYPOLOGY: THE RISE OF T3 Peter Epping

Hines is one of the largest real estate investors and managers in the world. With a presence in 30 countries and nearly $96 billion of investment assets under management, it has the potential to make an immense impact on global standards. In the third presentation of the day, Peter Epping, the firm’s senior managing director and global head of ESG, described one of its leading models for sustainable urban construction: T3 (Timber, Transit, and Technology). Timber denotes buildings that are constructed with mass timber; Transit refers to their proximity to transportation; and Technology reflects cutting-edge building systems.

To illustrate that approach, Epping presented a case study of Hines’s T3 Minneapolis project. In 2013, Hines acquired a plot of land with an existing warehouse building featuring exposed timber and brick construction. The discovery that tenants typically stayed only a year, noting a need for AC and data improvements, sparked the development of the T3 concept: channeling the soulful sensibility of vintage buildings into sustainable new construction. Drawing on the aesthetic of the city’s adjacent Warehouse Historic District, Hines developed a 224,000-square-foot, LEED Gold building that demonstrated the advantages of timber construction, including carbon storage, low thermal conductivity, and local material availability (low transport). There was also a positive impact, Epping noted, on tenant attraction and retention.

This new typology isn’t, however, without “construction considerations and risks,” said Epping, adding that fire codes, complexities of construction, and land cost can be barriers to entry. And some projects, including some high-rise construction, may simply necessitate concrete. Hines, however, is investing in its vision of T3, expanding it to Atlanta, Denver, Melbourne, and Toronto, with development in the works for other markets.

Peter Epping, senior managing director and global head of ESG for Hines, walked attendees through the firm’s T3 model for sustainable urban construction.

DECOLONIZING DESIGN: DECONSTRUCTING MYTHOLOGIES

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall

Generating a “shift in the consciousness we have with technology, each other, and the land” was the call to action of the day’s final presentation, in which Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall gave voice to her new book, Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook (MIT Press, 2023). An advocate, educator, researcher, and design anthropologist, Tunstall is dean of design at Ontario College of Art and Design University.

Tunstall analyzed the evolution of Eurocentric tech culture, tracing its origins to World’s Fairs, the Industrial Revolution, and post-WWI culture. Driving displacement, forced relocation, enslavement, and environmental destruction, the “myth of technological progress”

was “a bad romance for most,” she observed. In Decolonizing Design, she provides a primer to help dismantle these legacies of harm. It begins with putting Indigenous first, advocating technology “based on principles of abolition and done with the consciousness of Indigenous Peoples who practice ‘all my relations,’” a phrase acknowledging the interconnectedness of all things; dismantling tech and racist bias in the European Modernist design project; making amends through more than diversity, equity, and inclusion; and reprioritizing existing resources to decolonization. Through these endeavors and others, Tunstall noted, we can work to achieve “liberatory joy” for all bodies and communities.

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, author of Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook, ended the day with an inspiring call to imagine and remake the world to better reflect the cultures of indigenous, black, and people of color communities.

Metropolis Sustainability Lab

NeoCon provided a great opportunity to bring the design community together around making a positive impact on people and the planet.

Metropolis returned to NeoCon this past June with the third edition of the Sustainability Lab, hosting workshops, programs, and a showcase of sustainable manufacturing.

The centerpiece of this year’s Lab was an exhibit of 17 products and brand initiatives showcasing the progress that manufacturers in various sectors have made toward a circular, regenerative, and healthy future.

The activation kicked off on June 12 with a Sustainability Lab Leadership Summit, bringing together leadership from industry associations and A&D firms to deliberate about the future of interior design. Leaders from ACT, ASID, CIDA, Gensler, HDR, HOK, HKS, IA, IDC, IDCEC, IIDA, Material ConneXion, mindful MATERIALS, NKBA, NEWH, Shimoda Design, SmithGroup, and the Wallcoverings Association took the opportunity to hash out some of the key challenges in designing for climate, health, and equity.

That afternoon, mindful MATERIALS conducted two workshops on how to choose sustainable materials while navigating the complexity of sustainability certifications. The next day, in partnership with Interface, Metropolis hosted a workshop by Rainey Shane, social sustainability director for JLL Americas, about SEAM, the

world’s first commercial real estate certification in social equity. The workshop was followed by a reception cohosted with Material Bank.

On both days, Metropolis editor in chief Avinash Rajagopal led groups of interior designers on showroom crawls, highlighting some of the most innovative, sustainable products on display at NeoCon.

Rounding out the lab experience were two special installations. International art consultancy Farmboy brought artist Latham Zearfoss’s Stardust to the Lab, provoking attendees to expand their frame of reference beyond the planet Earth as they think about sustainable choices. Meanwhile, San Francisco–based PROWL Studio’s prototype Peel Chair traveled from Milan Design Week to the Lab, suggesting a future for the furniture industry based on renewable resources and circular processes.

By Wednesday afternoon, the Lab had welcomed more than 10,000 NeoCon attendees to engage with ideas at the forefront of sustainability, wellness, and equity.

This year’s lab partners were Autex, Carnegie, Clarus, Division Twelve, Duvaltex, Farmboy, Garden on The Wall, Interface, KFI, Kirei, Mannington, Milliken, Mohawk, Rulon, Shaw, Turf, Ultrafabrics, and Unifi Manufacturing. M

The Sustainability Lab (left) wrapped its third year at NeoCon. An installation by PROWL Studio (below) shows the life cycle of its biobased, compostable Peel Chair.

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At All Scales

Architect Mike Ford, known for his music-informed method of teaching design, is shown with the Mike Ford + Shaw Contract rug collection he designed to celebrate hip-hop’s 50th anniversary.

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“Understanding the capabilities of the machines was new to me,” Ford says of his collaboration on the Mike Ford + Shaw Contract rug collection. “Translating ideas that could then be manufactured was a process in patience.”

PRODUCT Floor Show

Hip-hop music was born in 1973, fittingly, at a birthday party in the Bronx. DJ Kool Herc played the same vinyl record on twin turntables, toggling between them to extend the song’s percussion breaks—the most danceable sections. That technique heralded a new era of creativity and forever changed America’s cultural landscape. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this beginning, Shaw Contract has partnered with self-proclaimed “hip-hop architect” Michael Ford on a new rug collection that captures the vital rhythms of the genre. Five patterns highlight elements of hip-hop culture, from Breakin, which pays homage to makeshift cardboard floors used by B-boy dancers, to Graffiti, which showcases the frenetic style of spray-painted tags and murals. The patterns largely evoke a mood rather than replicate iconography. “We sought to infuse the energy and vibrancy of hip-hop into these designs,” Ford says of

the collection, his first foray into product design after his recent reimagining of Herman Miller’s Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. Three colorways echo both layers of music and the textures of the pile underfoot. “We utilized a combination of vibrant and muted tones to mirror the dynamic contrasts often found in hip-hop, from its bold powerful beats to its introspective, poignant lyrics,” the architect explains.

A portion of the proceeds from the collection will be donated to help fund Hip Hop Architecture Camp, a program that offers students from underrepresented groups a lively and sometimes star-studded introduction to the profession. Ford launched it in 2016. He says the Shaw collaboration, paired with his advocacy, means he now has one more way to share his passion with the next generation. —Anna

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ARCHITECTURE A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

The first thing that visitors see when they enter the new public library in Pleasant Hill, California, is a selection of the latest books, arrayed on six maple tables. If the tables look familiar, you’re not mistaken— they are cousins of the promotional displays for iPads and MacBooks in the Apple stores designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ), the architects of the library.

The retail-style welcome sets the tone for a spacious, transparent 24,000-squarefoot building, in which openness and flexibility signal a readiness to adapt to whatever the future holds. “So many libraries are built around the size of the collection, but we were really focused on behavior and how each space could support different activities throughout the day,” says Michael Kross, lead designer and project manager at BCJ.

Given the dramatic evolution of libraries, the Bay Area bedroom community’s choice to go with a firm with little experience designing one was shrewd. BCJ, known for delivering warm Modernism at a variety of scales, provides both big sweeping gestures and thoughtful, intimate moments.

Supported by exposed steel framing, the free-span main space is 200 feet long, and the maple-lined butterfly roof soars to 24 feet at its south-facing apex. Glass curtain walls at both ends visually extend the space outward, and rows of clerestory windows— both external and internal—draw natural light through the $24 million, all-electric building, which is targeting net-zero carbon.

Meanwhile, three pavilions off the main hall offer more intimate environments. In the enclosed “retreat,” a corner window and its accompanying L-shaped window seat immerse you in the native-centric landscape just outside, designed by Einwiller Kuehl. And just beyond the children’s collection, a small playground with enormous 100-year-old eucalyptus sections salvaged by Evan Shively at Arborica gives kids a chance to let loose.

“You can tell when it’s people’s first time here,” says Patrick Remer, the library’s manager. “They’re overcome by the beauty of the materials and the light. You can see their jaws drop.”

—Lydia Lee

Designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the Pleasant Hill Library serves as an energy-efficient community hub for the California city. Completed in 2022, the 24,000-squarefoot building features a retail-inspired design that is targeting net-zero.

EXHIBITION Seeing the Future

On May 18 an excited audience packed against the walls of the Piccolo Teatro for a press conference on the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. Onstage, curator, architect, educator, and African Futures Institute founder Lesley Lokko enthralled the crowd with the story of The Laboratory of the Future, this year’s theme.

Anticipation had been building since the announcement of the curator and topic 15 months earlier. And a sense of urgency was palpable in Lokko’s words. Reaching out to the exhibition’s participants, Lokko emphasized that “for difference to make a difference it cannot simply be,” and urged them to “bring their authentic selves” and think about audience feelings and reactions.

Indeed, this year’s biennale attendees have been confronted with many complex and sometimes contradictory feelings, as the interventions of 89 participants radically advocate for an expanded and reinvented understanding of architecture—and it’s a lot to take in. In the Corderie dell’Arsenale, Lokko’s Dangerous Liaisons unfolds in a densely choreographed set of installations that span time, geographies, and transnational histories. Take, for example, Debris of History, Matters of Memory, in which Brazilian architect Gloria Cabral, Congolese artist Sammy Baloji, and Martiniquais art

historian Cécile Fromont reimagine common histories and connect different sides of the Black Atlantic with a monumental wall built out of construction debris and bricks made of mining waste.

Elsewhere, Johannesburg-based MMA Design Studio presents Origins, a hypnotic video installation that documents a Tswana settlement that dates to the 15th century and posits a cyclical, African sense of time in which the past helps us conceive a future where animate and inanimate beings are connected. The dense setup of the Arsenale is lifted in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini, where the double narrative continues. In Force Majeure, we see the work of Theaster Gates, David Adjaye, and Francis Kéré, arguably the most established participants of this edition. And with Afritect, MASS Design Group surveys young African architects in search of ways the profession must change its definition and expectations. The energetic conversation stirred by the event is intoxicating. It creates a powerful web of connections, centers a new generation, and signals the beginning of a new era of understanding what architecture is and what it could be. The Laboratory of the Future should be the first of many biennales of this kind. There’s no turning back. —Vera

Sacchetti

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 spotlights Africa and the African diaspora. Clockwise from top left: Debris of History, Matters of Memory, by Brazilian architect Gloria Cabral, Congolese artist Sammy Baloji, and historian Cécile Fromont; David Adjaye’s timber pavilion Kwaee; Origins by Johannesburg-based MMA Design Studio.

GRAPHIC DESIGN Global Warning

This summer, the New York City skyline was obscured by a thick orange haze created by Canadian wildfires, prompting the state and city governments to implore residents to stay indoors, close their windows, and once again pull out their N95 masks. Coincidentally, “a [Poster House] show focused on environmentalism, which is scheduled to open just a few months after the [air quality emergency,] feels depressingly topical,” says Tim Medland, curator of We Tried to Warn You! Environmental Crisis Posters, 1970–2020, an upcoming exhibition at the Manhattan museum.

The show highlights 33 posters that were made during the 50 years following the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. While the posters are visually powerful, Medland points out that they are all “failures” in that regardless of their images’ messaging—positive or negative—they did not succeed in modifying behavior.

The two posters on this page, both created in 1992, illustrate the problem. Commissioned by the U.N. as the official artwork for Earth Day 1992, Peter Max’s psychedelic image shows a joyous, idealized world where we “Make Every Day Earth Day!” Medland notes. “Rather than warning of a bleak future if more care is not taken of the planet, the artist highlights positivity.” Max’s image spread across the world on a series of U.S. postage stamps used for that year’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Medland adds, “However, the Robert Rauschenberg–designed poster for the Earth Summit itself is a lot bleaker.” In the lower right corner, Rauschenberg’s poster depicts the mythological figure of Atlas in eternal suffering surrounded by burning vegetation, in stark contrast to Max’s depiction drawn that same year.

Regardless of artists’ intentions, “the impactful images in these posters, along with the narratives they represent, have advanced both the visibility and credibility of the issues we all face,” Medland says. “Environmentalism is no longer an issue of regional pollution, but a global, systemic, existential issue.”

—Jaxson Stone

Out of 33 posters and about a dozen pieces of supporting ephemera, two in particular, both designed in 1992 around the time of the Earth Summit, stand out: Peter Max’s Make Every Day Earth Day! (above) and Robert Rauschenberg’s Last Turn—Your Turn (left).

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In partnership with Google, Atlanta-based architect Danish Kurani has revitalized an abandoned retail space in Oakland, California, to serve as a STEM lab for underserved high schoolers. Code Next offers students an introduction to 3D printing, laser cutting, robotics, a coding lab, a design studio, and more.

INTERIOR

Up to Code

Only 30 percent of Black and Latinx high school students nationwide gain college admission, and within that group, less than 20 percent are in STEM programs, according to Pew Research Center. Code Next is working to change that in Oakland, California.

Atlanta-based architect Danish Kurani partnered with Google to create Code Next Oakland, a free computer science lab space where underserved 8th through 12th graders can explore coding, robotics, and welding in inviting workshops. With its convenient location in a refurbished storefront next to the Fruitvale BART metro station and an Oakland Public Library branch, Code Next is an easily accessible 3,000-square-foot adaptive reuse lab.

Opened in 2022, the education center has flexible walls and large interior windows that allow students and instructors to move and see between the makerspace, design studio, coding room, and communal areas. Embedded systems—like lighting tuned for circadian rhythms and continuous air purifiers to support cognitive function—create a healthy learning environment.

Code Next fosters a sense of belonging with a “permission-less” approach to equipment and tools with open shelving and storage.

Kurani describes the lab as a “third space” away from home and school where students can feel comfortable and in control. With ownership of their environment, they can find inspiration in both tech and creation and grow in confidence through divergent thinking that isn’t always accepted in a traditional academic model that favors “one right answer.”

By laying bare the structure, construction techniques, and materials, the design also promotes a “maker mindset.” Small graphics are etched in discrete locations to explain how different sustainable materials and finishes are created, embedding a sense of discovery in the space. For example, the graphics teach students about carpets made from recycled fishing nets, floors and ceiling tiles that are industrial-looking but plant-based, and countertops made from recycled cardboard and aluminum scrap.

Kurani’s design stems from not only a belief in students’ ability to understand their environment but also a conviction that “architecture is a tool for creating change.” This is evident in the 92 percent of Code Next graduates who pursue higher education, 88 percent of whom go on to undertake STEM majors. —Kate Mazade

THE PALE ROSE COLLECTION

BOOK Femme Fatale

What does it mean to be a feminist? What does it mean to be a designer? Perhaps the definitions are not always as black-and-white as “someone who advocates for women’s rights” or even “someone who designs.” By embracing and expanding on the plurality of these terms, a forthcoming volume edited by Alison Place highlights the intersection of design and feminist theory while arguing for new collaborative processes that work to dismantle oppressive power structures.

Feminist Designer, which will be available this fall, moves beyond the concept of “inclusion” as a framework for discussing women in the design industries and instead compiles diverse contributions from over 40 transnational contributors on topics from anticapitalist branding and typography to mother-centered and trauma-informed design. Each of the six sections (titled Power, Knowledge, Care, Plurality, Liberation, and Community) contains an opening essay by Place followed by a selection of essays, conversations, and case studies that highlight not only theory but approachable methods

Voice-activated artificial intelligence (VAI) prototypes are often designed with cisgender individuals in mind. Designed by a majority trans and nonbinary team, Syb, a VAI prototype that “aims to generate pluralistic outcomes,” was created by researchers Cami Rincón and Andrew Mallinson. Syb was developed as part of “Queering Voice AI: Trans Centered Design,” a course at the Creative Computing Institute of the University of the Arts London.

such as notes on feminist design pedagogy or frameworks for disability design.

Claudia Marina in her contribution “On Calling Yourself a Designer” questions the boundaries of what we call “design” and who gets to do it. “Writing this essay, I started to question if capital-D design was inherently misogynistic, and when I asked myself that question, I found it harder to theorize that notion away,” Marina explains. “This book is not a capital-D solution, but rather a compendium of one of the tenets of feminist discourse, which is recognizing difference and thinking through it.”

Dedicated “to all feminist teachers— past, present, and future,” this book will be an invaluable resource for design educators and practitioners, challenging what we thought we knew while opening new possibilities for being and designing. As Place writes in the introduction, “To be a feminist designer is to see the world as it is and to continually imagine it otherwise—to willfully occupy the space between epistemological despair and radical hope.” —Jaxson Stone

Feminist Designer: On the Personal and the Political in Design Edited by Alison Place MIT Press, 2023, 264 pp., $29.95

TECHNOLOGY Moving the Needle

The University of Michigan’s Taubman College has long served as a laboratory for experimentation in material technology, engineering, and design. (Eliel Saarinen, Gunnar Birkerts, and, in more recent times, T+E+A+M are among the architects who have called the university home.) So it should come as no surprise that Tsz Yan Ng, founder of her eponymous firm and associate professor of architecture at Taubman College, is pushing the boundaries of material innovation from Chicago to Guangdong.

Ng’s firm, founded nearly two decades ago, has consistently sought to reexamine time- and labor-intensive fabrication and construction techniques, and through that approach it aims to establish new modes of design and material assemblies. That approach was partially informed by Ng’s upbringing: Her parents were involved in the garment business and, as a result, were both familiar with large-scale manufacturing

processes, as well as their shortcomings in both efficiency and flexibility of form.

Funded with support from Taubman College and the University of Michigan Office of Research, Ng’s Robotic Needle Felting project is a logical culmination of her upbringing and explores a novel manufacturing technique to fabricate nonwoven textiles. “The Robotic Needle Felting project is about changing our relationship to the material, in this case textiles,” says Ng. “Through the additive manufacturing process, the nonwoven textiles are layered, enabling complex geometries and coverage without loose excess material.” The absence of glue or

threads allows for the components to be fabricated, and assembled, as homogeneous wholes of exceptional depth. The textiles may be used for a range of purposes, from thermal insulation to acoustic panels.

Ng’s firm was recognized as a 2022 Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York. She says, “My interest in rethinking construction is how different fabrication technologies, of specific techniques paired with material performance, can present new design opportunities, new assemblies, and ultimately new ways to interact with our built world.”

—Matthew Marani

Developed by Tsz Yan Ng with support from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Robotic Needle Felting is a novel additive manufacturing technique for nonwoven textiles.

Wild Dyer

TRANSPARENCY

Above the Fold

With its latest upholstery, 126-year-old textile company Mayer Fabrics has embraced yarn made of marine plastics and entered a new era of manufacturing.

By Kelly Beamon

SEAQUAL INITIATIVE COLLECTION: CASPIAN + MIRA

Mayer Fabrics’ newest line of upholstery signals an impressive leap forward: a single collection marked by a slew of manufacturing advancements the company has adopted in its 13-year journey away from traditional mill relationships and toward radical reductions in its virgin polyester feedstock, VOCs, and operational carbon. Caspian and Mira, the first styles rolled out under the new SEAQUAL Initiative collection, are also noteworthy for the following features:

01

RECYCLED CONTENT

Recycling is a theme within Mayer Fabrics: The latest wovens feature a warp made of recycled marine polyester (24 percent in Caspian, 35 percent in Mira); 100 percent of shipping pallets are either reused or converted to fuel and livestock bedding; and 63 tons of cardboard from packaging have been recycled since 2010.

02

SEAQUAL YARN

Sourcing SEAQUAL YARN for the recycled content makes Mayer a responsible user of plastic marine litter, a process that helps clean waterways and reduces its reliance on petroleum-based virgin polyester.

03

GREENGUARD GOLD

This level of the indoor air quality certification means that the fabric exceeds industry standards for low VOC emissions.

04

PFAS-FREE

The new fabrics are also free of polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS—thousands of chemicals traditionally added to performance textiles to repel water and oil, but which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say are so resilient they’re found in the blood of 98 percent of Americans.

05

CARBON

NEUTRAL

In 2011, Mayer was officially certified as CarbonNeutral by Climate Impact Partners, a group that funds carbon removal and carbon-avoidance projects.

06

ZERO FLAME RETARDANTS

The manufacturer has eliminated the toxic compounds normally used to make fabrics fire-resistant, and known to contaminate wastewater.

07

HEAT-RECOVERED WASTE

Mayer Fabrics has directed roughly 23 tons of heat-recovered waste to a Subtitle D landfill (the classification for nonhazardous solid waste), which captures gas from the waste so it can be dispersed and used again, turning waste into energy.

PRODUCTS Builder Grade

The best building materials are easy to install and safer to touch.

By Kelly Beamon

Building products are evolving from the inside out. Structural elements appear streamlined for easy installation, surface patterns mimic natural materials, and the lists of material ingredients are increasingly brief (for worker and user safety) and recycled. One virtual capsule of these trends is Aspire’s LEED-friendly line of stone-look recycled rubber and plastic pavers. Review more of today’s simpler, smarter building products on the following pages.

An alternative to poured concrete, individual pavers have always boasted better drainage and a flexible design that’s forgiving of shifting earth. What’s new are durable recycled ingredients and colorful options such as the nine shades available on these interlocking units (4" x 4", 4" x 8", and 8" x 8") from Aspire.

ASPIRE BY BRAVA aspirepavers.com

For a visually smooth integration of controls, this mounting hardware can be recessed in any material to house Lutron’s popular Pico keypad insert flush within the surrounding surface.

WALL-SMART wall-smart.com

Developed in collaboration with health-care designers, this door is engineered to work with space-saving radius walls that offer medical staff better sight lines for patient care.

CONSTRUCTION SPECIALTIES c-sgroup.com

04

A collaboration between interior design firm Float Studio and hardware company Modern Matter resulted in this collection of simplified and softened profiles of kitchen pulls, handles, and hooks. The aesthetic works well with transitional styles.

MODERN MATTER modern-matter.com

These recyclable, washable, heat-molded tiles are made of nonwoven PET fibers, containing up to 50 percent recycled material and zero chemical treatment for a mold-resistant acoustic product that absorbs 75 percent of sound.

GENESIS PRODUCTS qweltiles.com

02 FLUSH MOUNT FOR LUTRON PICO

03 ACROVYN CURVED DOOR

OTTO

05 QWEL DESIGNER ACOUSTIC TILES

01 INTERLOCKING PAVER SYSTEM

What looks like vintage wood floorboards is actually a hand-molded, self-healing timber composite. The innovative outdoor decking is insect-, rot-, and warp-resistant.

MILLBOARD millboard.com

The subtle impact of address numbers is amplified in this midcentury-style collection that can be mounted flat or raised on brick, wood, siding, and concrete. Numbers are available in 4" and 6" sizes and Aged Bronze, Brushed Nickel, or Matte Black finishes.

ATLAS HARDWARE atlashomewares.com

08

The latest architectural mesh from Kaynemaile signals the company’s transition from sourcing virgin fossil fuel–based materials to using an advanced polycarbonate made from a circular feedstock of upstream waste and residues. The shift shrinks the polymer’s carbon footprint by 80 percent, without sacrificing performance.

KAYNEMAILE kaynemaile.com

09

This cabinet organizer comes preassembled to help streamline kitchen build-outs. Two insert options add storage for bottles or cookware.

HARDWARE RESOURCES hardwareresources.com

07 MODERN AVALON COLLECTION

RE8

ROLLOUT ORGANIZER

06 WEATHERED OAK

10 YAKISUGI SIDING

Emphasizing the no-maintenance durability of wood treated with the ancient, chemical-free yakisugi (or shou sugi ban) preservation process, siding manufacturer Nakamoto Forestry has scaled it up and added carbon footprint labeling for the North American market.

NAKAMOTO FORESTRY

nakamotoforestry.com

11 ULTRA-PURE

Unlike other spray foam insulation, this one developed by Natural Polymers (now owned by Owens Corning) has a low-VOC formula that is

GREENGUARD Gold and UL Bio-based certified.

OWENS CORNING owenscorning.com

12 ASHLAR DRYSTACK

What appears to be stacked stone is really high-tech mimicry, made by combining rigid foam core, a fiberglassreinforced compound, and real stone particles in a panel system.

ARCITELL qoracladding.com

13 ADVANCED PVC DECKING

Unlike other composite decking, this is made from 85 percent recycled PVC waste. Owned by AZEK, North America’s largest recycler of landfill-bound PVC, manufacturer TimberTech mixes pipes and vinyl siding with reclaimed wood fibers and internal factory scraps in a circular process that diverted 500 million pounds from landfills in a single year.

AZEK timbertech.com

MADE Artist vs. AI

Designed by seven creatives in collaboration with Wolf-Gordon’s Marybeth Shaw, a collection of wallcoverings showcases the value of traditional methods in the age of artificial intelligence.

At this year’s HD Expo 2023, Wolf-Gordon launched “Project: HI > AI,” a concept-driven collection of digitally printed PVC-free wallcoverings designed by seven creatives in collaboration with chief creative officer Marybeth Shaw, design director Michael Loughlin, and AI imaging software Midjourney and DALL-E.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, threats of obsolescence in creative fields have sparked waves of anxiety among artists and designers. In response to this advancing technology, wallcovering company Wolf-Gordon’s chief creative officer Marybeth Shaw has brought creatives has brought together creatives across disciplines to reflect on the relationship between human and machine intelligence through a new collection of conceptual, processbased wallpapers.

The collection, titled “Project: HI > AI,” examines original artwork from seven creatives who wrote verbal descriptions of their work and input them into the AI imaging software programs Midjourney and DALL-E. The expectation was to reach something close to the original work; and the artists repeatedly adjusted the

According to the wallcovering company, the project provides “a timely snapshot of the meeting of human intelligence and artificial intelligence” and is an industry first for commercial-surface design. Participating artists include Hilary Lorenz, Raylene Marasco, Jen Mussari, Pat Pruitt, Christine Tarkowski, Frank Tjepkema, and Ghislaine Viñas.

Mussari’s Pattern 2

Pictured:

For Christine Tarkowski’s Large Square pattern, the artist and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago drizzled molten glass onto wet, folded butcher paper. As the glass burned through several layers, a dynamic pattern was revealed once the paper was unfolded.

language until they arrived at something that had a visual relationship to the original. The process showcases both the limitations and possibilites of current AI technology.

Take, for example, calligrapher and commercial artist Jen Mussari’s Pattern 2. Versed in employing traditional lettering techniques on embroidery and hand-painted signs, she creates bold and graphic work that lives upon various flattened surfaces, tuning in to the potential of two-dimensional surfaces as a space for experimental potential. In Pattern 2, Mussari borrows from the primordial building blocks of written language, creating a pattern made of forms found across various alphabets, with periods and tildes becoming decorative borders. Prompted by the innate humanity of language, Mussari asks: “Trained human hands have made words from these shapes

for centuries to communicate, but what would a machine do with something seemingly so simple?” The result is a compelling three-dimensional take on 1970s supergraphics, resembling a virtual paper sculpture. The AI-created pattern begets its digital heritage: Whereas pressure from ink and brush leaves spots more saturated than others on Mussari’s original artwork, Midjourney creates “a linear pattern of calligraphy brushstrokes”—in a language only the software can interpret.

In the case of Christine Tarkowski, a conceptual artist working in textile and glass, the design of her wallpaper Large Square emerges entirely from a process intended to prank the AI software. An intentional trickling of molten glass from an oversize industrial steel ladle onto folded butcher paper casts a diamond-like geometric image, burning away layers of paper to leave behind a record of its

destruction. Unfolding into an esoteric visual language with a mathematical pattern to its chaos, the order of the folded paper is dismantled when faced with the alchemical processes involved in glassblowing.

“As an artist, I look to geometry to explore what the literal cannot. The physical traces of geometry are often a superstructure of my making, yet always paired with an entropic action,” says Tarkowski. Her artistic process of transformation and revelation, unknown to the viewer, seems to be further iterated upon through AI, which can only match up with the logical order of folds in her original process. While the various verbal prompts achieve a slight similarity, the result reflects the haphazard disorder associated with AI, pulling from stock images on the internet of fire to create a collage of parchment and flame. M

It’s hard for AI to match Christine Tarkowski’s handcrafted process, but once inputted into Midjourney, the artist’s experiments still yielded a lively pattern on folded paper set aflame.

SUSTAINABILITY Playing Bridge

The firm CambridgeSeven creatively reprograms an old pump station to welcome users from two very different community groups.

By James McCown

A 19th-century steam pump company in Massachusetts is now The Foundry, a multiuse project by CambridgeSeven that is targeting LEED Gold certification and net-zero carbon emissions.

East Cambridge, Massachusetts, is like a city of two tales. To the south is booming Kendall Square, arguably one of the strongest office and lab real estate markets in the country because it adjoins the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). To the north is a traditional residential neighborhood fiercely proud of its workingclass roots. How to bridge this divide with one project?

Enter The Foundry, an 1890 landmark that once housed the Blake and Knowles Steam Pump Company but was converted last year into a lively multiuse community center.

“You have this established neighborhood that watched the transformation of Kendall Square and said, ‘That’s not for us,’ ” says Stefanie Greenfield, a principal at CambridgeSeven, the local architecture firm responsible for the project. “This building is the result of the persistence of residents of East Cambridge, who were asked what they wanted from [it].”

SUSTAINABILITY

As The Foundry was a community-led adaptive reuse, energy efficiency measures focused largely on window replacements, additional roof insulation, and strategic interventions that preserved the landmark building’s brick and timber framing.

Playing Bridge

They wanted a lot, and the architects complied: The 50,000-square-foot structure is first and foremost a triumphant example of adaptive reuse in the context of the city’s progressive sustainability targets of LEED Gold certification and net-zero carbon emissions. Its energy efficiency measures focused on window replacements and additional roof insulation, strategic interventions selected to support a more welcoming design in the formerly introverted industrial building.

Now it accommodates makerspaces for crafts such as fiber art and jewelry, a theater, a dance studio, cooking facilities, music venues, and more. The architects are

proud of both the sustainability features and the people-centric ethos.

“ ‘Bridge’ is a good word for what this [project] is,” says Justin Crane, also a principal at CambridgeSeven. “This building is a large experiment. We kept the industrial character while bringing it up to 21st-century code and accommodating market-rate offices, which helps pay for the community facilities.”

On a recent early-summer morning, a walk-through of the building showed a handsome original brick facade emblazoned with the address: 101 Rogers Street. “It’s a nod to education,” Greenfield says, “like Performing Arts 101.” An addition with an elevator, a transformer, and other

infrastructure is clad in aluminum. Visitors enter The Foundry through a soaring skylit, triple-height atrium. Look upward and there are original wood joists supporting the ceiling. Columns abound throughout, but a contrasting insertion of modern steel beams forms an overlay construction system and gives a clear sense of what is new versus what is original. Light ash wood matched with the new black steel lends a vaguely Scandinavian feel.

The 19,000 square feet designated as leasable office space are already occupied by biotech start-ups, and the lobby and elevator are completely shared to encourage interaction between the

The project is equipped to support various maker activities (above), including cooking (opposite). Exposed steel supports (left) ensure the new spaces don’t feel too precious. “We didn’t want [it] so clean people would feel they couldn’t be messy,” says firm principal Justin Crane.

neighborhood’s two groups—encounters that could underscore their commonalities. “The idea was, if we make a spectacle, people will come. The city gave us a challenge to [design] all of this programming, and it was our job to shoehorn it all in,” Greenfield says.

While The Foundry is open to all Cantabrigians, as locals are known, access is not free. It operates on a sliding scale wherein groups approach staff and request space for a certain time and disclose their financials so it can be determined what they should fairly be charged.

“Our sliding scale means groups can use space for up to an 80 percent discount, which comes to about $4 per hour,” says Diana Navarrete-Rackauckas, executive director of The Foundry Consortium, a

group of civic entities that, along with the city, were the project’s clients. She adds that The Foundry, which opened in 2022, has received inquiries from similar-size cities and towns in Massachusetts. “They want to know ‘How does it work? Does it work?’ ” she says.

The response from various arts organizations and community groups has also been gratifying. “We have a lot of walk-ins, people with a lot of questions. It feels like neutral ground for everybody. And since it’s a neutral community space, the intimidation factor goes away,” Navarrete-Rackauckas explains.

Overall, The Foundry appears well used and appreciated. “The neighborhood said, ‘It’s something we need, we’ve earned it and we will use it,’ ” NavarreteRackauckas says. M

Selected Sources

• Design Architect: CambridgeSeven

• General Contractor: W.T. Rich Company Inc.

• Structural Engineering: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger

• MEP Engineers: AKF Group

• Lighting Design: Lam Partners

• Civil Engineering: Nitsch Engineering

• Cladding /Facade Systems: Stiles & Hart Brick Co., Waterstruck Brick, ATAS International (metal wall panels), AkzoNobel (coating)

• Doors: Reynaers Aluminum

• Glazing: Oldcastle Building Envelope

• Ceilings: CertainTeed

• Flooring: Shaw, Milliken

HOSPITALITY Southern Comfort

The newly opened Hotel Genevieve celebrates the French and the feminine in Louisville, Kentucky.

By Anna Elise Anderson

A new hotel in downtown Louisville plays with contrasts. Whether it is the dichotomies of masculine and feminine, vintage and modern, or pastoral and industrial, Hotel Genevieve incorporates a more nuanced history of the city, rather than the typical bourbon and horse-racing past it’s known for.

The hotel officially opened on May 3—just days ahead of the Kentucky Derby, the city’s largest weekend for tourism. Developed with owner and real estate developer Mountain Shore Properties, the hotel was designed by Austin-based Bunkhouse Hotels in collaboration with the women-run, Philadelphia-based interior design firm ROHE Creative. Located in the heart of Louisville’s rapidly changing East Market District (referred to as “NuLu” by locals, for “New Louisville”), Genevieve is Bunkhouse’s largest hotel to date. With 122 rooms, a rooftop lounge, a hidden bar, a ground-floor restaurant, and a vibrant mini market (the Mini Marché), the hotel offers a lot in the way of Southern comfort and convenience.

Boxy and unassuming, the new Hotel Genevieve in Louisville, Kentucky, designed by Bunkhouse and ROHE Creative, features a brick facade that opens up into a distinctively inviting abode filled with color, plants, vintage furniture, and idiosyncratic local art.

Every aspect of the hotel’s design is inspired by history and deeply rooted in local culture. “When we first visited Louisville, we were struck by the plethora of really beautiful, masculine spaces—and the lack of feminine counterparts,” says Tenaya Hills, senior vice president of design and development at Bunkhouse. “We pulled from the city’s heritage of opposites: It’s named for King Louis XVI of France, but it’s a decidedly American city.”

A reference to the city’s French origins, the hotel is named after the patron saint of Paris as well as a regional type of limestone, also called Saint Genevieve, which plays a key role in the production of bourbon. Genevieve’s

influence shines throughout the hotel, from the rounded archways to the antique, French-inspired touches, while elegant architectural details reference the city’s namesake, King Louis XVI.

Rooms feature zines made in collaboration with local creative studio ZimmerDesign as well as artwork from Wheelhouse Gallery. Kentucky’s rich history of quilting is also showcased throughout the hotel, with the help of local, women-run nonprofit Anchal Project (which specializes in sustainable design and textiles). Several artworks, as well as a custom carpet in the lobby’s main corridor, pay homage to the

“The space is visually stunning—just a wave of Pop Art serotonin that’s also fully functional for you to stop in and grab a latte or a bottle of wine or a gift that’s been handmade by local artisans,” says Tenaya Hills, senior vice president of design and development at Bunkhouse.

region’s classic quilting motifs, and most rooms feature pillows made of upcycled vintage quilts from Psychic Outlaw.

The guest rooms feature shades of vibrant blue, warm terra-cotta, and glowing goldenrod yellow on walls, carpets, and even ceilings. There’s a playful mix of furniture, including a custom ivory console by ROHE. The console’s curves are echoed in the bathroom vanity, crafted from cultured marble made from a mix of marble dust left over from the ’60s and ’70s. “We wanted to do a new play on an old material. It felt like a fitting way to take the ‘stone’ culture of Louisville to a new level,” says Hills.

The hotel features a ground-floor restaurant, a rooftop bar and lounge, a hidden bar, and a mini market, which Bunkhouse hopes will be a public amenity for the neighborhood. It’s also next door to a distillery: One of several local-art-themed collaborations linked with the hotel’s design, the Rabbit Hole is crafting a new signature, single-barrel bourbon specifically for Hotel Genevieve, which will feature labels customdesigned by local artists.

The hotel’s four distinctive food offerings, conceived by culinary director Ashleigh Shanti, serve up Southern classics filtered through the star chef’s distinctively AfricanAmerican tastes. Ground-floor restaurant Rosettes (named after a shade of ribbon won in horse races) is a lively, rustic spot inspired by Parisian brasseries as well as Shanti’s Appalachian background. Rooftop lounge and venue Bar Genevieve provides stirring views of the city lights on the Ohio River, with 2,700 square feet of seating beneath a grand

chandelier sourced from Olde Good Things. Part bazaar, part pop-up art exhibit, the Mini Marché offers handmade goods from local artists and various grab-and-go food options. “Think 7-Eleven run through an Andy Warhol filter,” says Hills. And tucked behind Mini Marché is the speakeasy-like entrance to the hotel’s not-so-well-kept secret: an intimate bar called Lucky Penny, which serves cocktails and snacks late into the night. Lucky Penny’s vibey design creates a fizzing contrast to the rest of the hotel’s

historical charm, but its glitter and glam are also rooted in local pride: It’s a subtle nod to Louisville’s claim to fame as the home of the last operational disco ball factory.

“Louisville is so dynamic,” concludes Hills. “But many places here feel masculine and heavy. Considering the location and the building itself, we decided to play with that dichotomy. Why not make this a feminine, rich space? We wanted to create something that represented and celebrated the lineage of Louisville’s women as well.” M

Genevieve is Bunkhouse’s largest hotel to date with 122 guest rooms and suites filled with custom fixtures and finishes designed by ROHE, quilt-inspired artwork from local Anchal Project, in-room Bluetooth speakers, and Block Shop Textiles x Bunkhouse custom-designed Kimono Robes.

Selected Sources

• Architect of Record: LLW Architects

• Interiors: Bunkhouse Group and ROHE Creative

• Developer: Mountain Shore Projects

• Graphics: Bunkhouse Group, Zimmer Design, Trackmeet

INTERIORS

• Accessories: Psychic Outlaw, Oley Valley Architectural Antiques, Maria Flora, Blue Ocean Traders

• Bath Fittings: Waterworks, Kohler, Toto, Bemis, Kingston Brass, Rejuvenation

• Bath Surfaces: Vanity Marble North Coast Cultured Projects

• Terrazzo: Rosa Mosaic

• Custom Carpet: Oriental Weavers

• Rugs: Kyle Bunting, Jaipur Living

• Custom Floor Mural: Often Seen Rarely Spoken

• Furniture: Carl Durkow, Faustine Furniture, Verde Home, The Stone Resource, Munrod Custom Upholsterers, Maison Drucker

• Lighting: Bluebird Lighting, Currey & Company, Visual Comfort

• Paint: Portola Paint, Farrow & Ball

• Textiles: Schumacher, Samuel & Sons Passementerie

• Upholsteries: Kravet Fabrics, Pindler and Pindler, Wolf-Gordon

• Wall Finishes: Schumacher

• Plants: Anything Groes, Mahonia, Forage

WORKPLACE An Inside Job

How Lake|Flato Architects renovated its way to a dream office, right inside its existing headquarters.

By Addie Broyles

In downtown San Antonio, a 1920s-era car dealership–turned–law office–turned–architecture studio serves as Lake|Flato’s answer to the post-pandemic return-to-work problem. The local firm has transformed its existing headquarters building into its dream workplace, enticing employees back to the office with outdoor space and flexible design.

“We wanted to make the office so wonderful to work in that we ultimately get people thinking, ‘Why would I stay at home?’ ” cofounder Ted Flato says. One highly visible perk is a newly created courtyard that was once the auto dealership’s service center. Now staff eat at tables under the shade of a pavilion they designed.

In January, Lake|Flato completed a renovation of its 1920s-era San Antonio office building. The architects reinforced the facade of its single-level former garage, and added a gate and glazing to delineate a new courtyard from the street.

Designers everywhere recently have struggled to achieve a similarly enticing workplace, but Lake|Flato’s project leaders Jamie Sartory and Evan Morris say they started imagining the future of this one about four years before the COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020.

When it became apparent they would be home longer than expected, the firm committed to an overhaul of the 22,545-square-foot building it has called home since 1984, when Ted Flato and cofounder David Lake set up shop on the second floor. They kept the historical facade of the old service center and

removed the roof, creating the new courtyard that also serves as an outdoor living room and the building’s main entrance. “We have always encouraged our clients to have people enter through nature, so we had to do that ourselves,” Sartory says.

On the second floor, in the main work area, the firm kept its existing open floor plan and focused on adding better acoustics and different kinds of meeting spaces with varying degrees of privacy, including individual rooms for Zoom calls.

One of the biggest changes—which sparked a lot of chatter during the planning

stages—was moving to a system of shared workstations. Sartory notes that not sitting next to the same people every day means younger staff are int eracting with more tenured professionals in ways they might not have otherwise. Flato, who once had a separate office, reserves a desk just like everyone else. He says it’s one of many welcome changes: “We used to have paper everywhere, and some of it would go back decades. All that has gone away. Everything’s electronic now. It’s fantastic.”

Not having assigned desks also allows the cofounders to welcome more

The main entrance (opposite) is through the courtyard, which leads to glass doors that open into the lobby anchored by a massive steel-and-wood reception desk.

Workspaces (above and left) take up the remainder of the first, second, and third floors, and are minimally furnished to show off the building’s concrete structure.

Using a range of conference areas of all sizes (left) along with open desk areas (below) and Zoom rooms, the building responds to evolving needs of the contemporary workplace. The architects say their building is on track to become the first in Texas to achieve both WELL and Zero Carbon certification.

employees without expanding the office footprint. People can still work at home up to half of the week, but Morris and Sartory say that in the three months since they’ve officially moved into the renovated space, everyone has felt the benefits of being back in person. “It’s amazing that you don’t have to fly across the country to have a meeting; it’s good for us, it’s good for our time, it’s good for the environment, but at the same time, we don’t want to only communicate digitally,” Morris says.

They recall that as the pandemic waned, colleagues found themselves looking for other excuses to gather. During the last stage of the build, Flato hosted a hands-on workshop in the temporary office to show the team how to weave rope on some old metal chairs that they planned to reuse in the new courtyard, a skill his dad taught him when he was growing up on the Texas coast.

“It’s amazing to take the same [place] you’ve been in forever and clean it up,” Flato says. “COVID was marvelous to get people to figure out how to work at home. But this place has its own bubbly personality. All the texture comes from the people in it.” M

SIMON T. BAILEY

Simon’s purpose is to Spark listeners to lead countries, companies, and communities differently. His framework is based on his 30 years’ of experience in the hospitality industry, including serving as sales director for Disney Institute, based at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL.

BY ASID

All members of the design community are invited to gain insight and new perspectives at ASID’s national conference, GATHER. Three energizing keynote sessions will feature outstanding leaders sharing their unique stories to motivate, activate and inspire your design practice!

GENEVIEVE GORDER

Genevieve’s soulful style and genuine enthusiasm have made her one of America’s favorite interior designers for years. She is the founder and director of the Genevieve Gorder brand, a television host, designer and producer, a home product designer, contributing author, and global ambassador for home and human rights.

CHRISTIAN DUNBAR

Christian is a graduate (MFA) of Savannah College of Art and Design, as well as NY School of Interior Design. As a member of Waterfront Workshops collective, he is the principal of a custom design/build company. His aesthetic is a contemporary blend of the organic and industrial.

The courtyard is now an extension of the office and serves as a backdrop for work and community collaborations throughout the year.

Project Credits

• Architect: Lake|Flato (Greg Papay, Brandi Rickels, Jamie Sartory, Evan Morris, Chris Currie, Pam Dailey, Margaux Palmer, Kate Sector, Heather Holdridge)

• General Contractor: Malitz

• Structural Engineer: Datum

• Landscape Architect: Ten Eyck

• MEP Engineer: Interface Engineering

COURTESY ROBERT GOMEZ

Recruiting (and Retaining) Gen Z

New ThinkLab research reveals surprising data about the newest generation to enter the workplace.

By Amanda Schneider

ThinkLab assembled more than 60 of the industry’s brightest minds from ten design firms, as well as forward-thinking sponsors, to serve as our inaugural ThinkLab Design Hackathon Advisory Council. The typical process for our hackathon market research spans roughly six months, during which we gather input from outside experts and then conduct quantitative and qualitative research specific to the interiors industry. Our goal for this year’s hackathon was to study Gen Z.

Gen Z will make up 27 percent of the workforce by 2025, which makes understanding them crucial. By looking at Gen Zers as prototypes, not stereotypes, and studying data trends across all generations, we can learn how to recruit them, how to retain them in our firms and our industry, and how to connect multigenerational teams amid hybrid workflows. Here’s what our research revealed:

THE BIGGEST SURPRISE

The pendulum always swings back—that’s what you’ll see in much of our data, which frequently follows a trajectory that some call “the boomerfication of Gen Z.” While

there are trend lines to our future, our data suggests that Gen Zers are not as different from other generations as we thought and often land somewhere closer to boomers in many (but not all) of their preferences.

For example, we assume that as the most digital-first generation, Gen Z doesn’t value face time as other generations do. In many cases, however, millennials showed up in our data as the most digital-forward. Often Gen Z’s preferences aligned more with the views of boomers or Gen Xers. In fact, Gen Z values in-person networking events more than any other generation.

GEN Z DESIGNERS VS. THE BROADER WORKFORCE

Our research revealed a few areas where Gen Zers who work within the design industry differ from their generational counterparts outside the industry. A few areas where they stray from broader workforce trends include:

• Strength of Culture

Companies in the design industry have a strong culture, even in hybrid work environments. According to Gallup, outside the industry only two in ten U.S. workers feel

connected to their organization’s culture. But our research found that eight out of ten workers in the design industry feel connected to their company. This is true across all generations.

• YouTube Use

Generational expert Ryan Jenkins told us on a Design Nerds Anonymous podcast episode that when it comes to researching a position they’re interested in, Gen Zers first approach family, friends, and then folks they might know who work at that organization. The second step catches everyone by surprise: They go to YouTube. Most people assume Gen Zers primarily consult Glassdoor, Indeed, or Google—and maybe even Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok—but the real answer is YouTube.

However, while our ThinkLab data says Gen Z designers in the interiors industry are leveraging their human connections whenever possible, they are not leveraging YouTube at all. We did see increased usage with each successive generation, whereby each generation was more likely than the previous one to turn to YouTube, but usually more for exploring new skills than for job hunting.

• Interest in the Gig Economy

According to McKinsey research, “A little more than half of Gen Zers are likely to be gig or independent workers, compared with 36 percent of the American workforce overall.” But ThinkLab data reveals roughly 10 percent of Gen Z designers in the interiors industry find the gig economy “extremely” or “very” appealing. They are more likely than any other generation to find it “somewhat” appealing, but that still doesn’t make us ready to sound the trumpets.

We believe that by studying the newest entrants to our industry, we can uncover “arrows to our future” in the data, helping us understand this generation whose behavior in the workplace will bring about a ripple-up effect on how all of us work. For the latest and to view the hackathon keynote, visit ThinkLab’s Hackathon Advisory Council page.

Amanda Schneider is president of ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW DESIGN GROUP. Join in to explore what’s next at thinklab.design/join-in.

Need Help Communicating Your Impact on People and Planet?

With decades of experience as the leading resource for the A&D industry on climate, health, and equity, METROPOLIS can help you decipher and communicate your impact with storytelling support. Contact sustainabilityservices@metropolismag.com to explore services.

Our Right

In this special lighting review, Metropolis ponders the ways that our expectations for lighting have changed since Edison’s 19th-century patent. Beyond relying on lamps for evening tasks or to enhance a room’s mood, users now expect to control the brightness, color temperature, and energy e ciency. Systems respond intelligently to a building’s occupancy and to the organic cycle of daylight. Designers are even starting to address the social impact of lighting: Firms are concerned with communities where people are disenfranchised of goodquality street lighting, the dark sky time that humanity is losing to light pollution, and the overlooked harm that conventional reworks pose for wildlife. In the form of products, case studies, and rms’ own initiatives, the solutions on the following pages are illuminating.

to Light

Since its completion in 2022, the Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at Manhattan’s 9/11 Memorial site has been celebrated in part for its beaconlike halo.

The Glow Up

DLR Group shares details of the exacting lighting design work behind the halo e ect for Calatrava’s Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.

By Beth Broome

Last December, one of the final and smallest pieces of New York City’s re-envisioned World Trade Center site opened to the public. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, composed of a hemispheric dome flanked by four square towers, replaces the congregation’s former home, which was destroyed in the September 11 attacks more than 20 years ago. While the building appears as a monolithic stone structure by day, as night approaches, it glows from within, becoming a beacon on its prominent site.

“This was a very exciting project for us because light was everything,” says Tom Gallagher, NYC studio director and lead lighting designer at DLR Group, which designed the glowing effect. Specifically, the team installed LED modules within a cavity between the dome’s thermal envelope and its rainscreen, which is made of thin sheets of Pentelic marble sandwiched between glass. Mounted on the structure at 18 inches on center, the LEDs—at a warm 2,700 Kelvin—beam inward to reduce shadowing of the structure on the rainscreen and to bounce illumination off the thermal envelope’s white surface to cast an even glow.

and within stone arches. And discreet adjustable lighting within the cornice at the base of the dome highlights the iconography, creating the impression that light is emanating from the images themselves.

Working with Calatrava, DLR had two principal goals for the church nave: first, to create a contemplative space for worship and reflection; second, to achieve the perfect balance of illumination between the room lighting and beams aimed at the rich iconography that covers the surfaces. Daylight seeps in through apertures in the envelope; at night, the rainscreen LEDs provide ambient indoor light through the same openings.

To ensure they were achieving the desired lighting effect and that color temperatures between different lighting products matched, the lighting team mocked up every single fixture at full scale. To elicit different moods,

designers specified four scenes. An ambient setting where only the diffuse and indirect lighting is illuminated makes it feel as if you have walked into a medieval church, says Gallagher. Other scenes they designed add lighting for the altar, seating, and the iconostasis, which screens the sanctuary from the nave.

Above all, the DLR team was careful not to overpower nature’s own special effects—the changing quality of daylight as the sun moves across the sky and clouds shift. In concert with lighting designers’ carefully conceived strategies, sky conditions elevate the dynamism of this sacred space—inside and out. M

Opposite: To make the dimmable interior fixtures practically invisible, DLR Group concealed them within architectural elements: the oculus, between the dome’s structural ribs, edging the triangular pendentives,

Light Privilege

Driven by a socialjustice agenda, Los Angeles design studio Chromatic seeks to bring everyone access to the transformative power of good lighting.

By Adrian Madlener

An architectural lighting treatment by the designers for L.A. restaurant Asterid

Artificial lighting is easily taken for granted by those with abundant access to it and the luck of positive experiences with its application. (Think ambient restaurant lighting versus the harsh white-hot floodlights deployed around some public housing developments.) Realizing this, lighting designers Lauren Dandridge and Nick Albert established their three-year-old Los Angeles–based firm Chromatic with a social mission to improve surroundings for a broader range of people. They assert that “light privilege” is another form of environmental racism, leaving marginalized groups with less access to it or vulnerable to its use as a surveillance device. To rectify that imbalance, they developed a framework and action steps for designers available at lightprivilege.org. Here they speak with Metropolis about this important mandate.

Metropolis: Talk about your background and how you came to lighting design.

Lauren Dandridge: I was first drawn to lighting when I observed the technology used to stage a school play. I was amazed by what it could do to change the look and mode of a set. [After] studying theater at Northwestern University, I eventually found myself in L.A. working at electrical engineering and architectural lighting firms.

Nick Albert: I started out in construction but discovered the medium when I had to fabricate and install a curtain wall system. Lighting was an important part of the equation. I stuck with this facet of the industry from then on. While helming the regional division of interna tional firm Illuminate Lighting Design, I focused on hospitality projects and discovered the power of lighting in shaping the perception of a space.

Metropolis: How did you join forces and establish Chromatic?

LD: We’d known each other for years and found we were thinking about a lot of the same things. We came together around the idea that light is a powerful design tool and started to talk about our aspirations for the future.

NA: But it was difficult to think about that with any seriousness, given what was happening in the world. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we started asking ourselves what our work actually meant and how we could contribute to a better world. Through those discussions, we kept coming back to this idea our grandfathers taught us that “first you have to take care of your corner of the shop.” The mission of [broadening human access to good lighting] centers on not just wanting to help build better places but also creating opportunities for folks who didn’t think they could have a career in design. This is something Lauren focuses on a lot in her role as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture.

LD: When trying to orient our design concepts—like the one we developed for the Asterid Restaurant a t the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles—we focus on the human aspect, what people need from their surroundings on a case-by-case basis. What we want

them to feel when experiencing the architecture. For this project, light played an integral role in blending interior and exterior spaces.

Metropolis: What’s behind your Light Privilege blueprint initiative?

NA: Light has a long history of being used as a mechanism of control. In the early days of electricity and electrification of cities, it was the most obvious example of progress. But this advancement was only offered to white Americans, while Black communities were left undeveloped and under-illuminated. This kind of di sinvestment still exists today in areas such as Rio Grande, where Hispanic populations don’t have appropriate street and municipal lighting to feel safe at night.

LD: The Light Privilege framework is about creating equity through access, and developing tools others can use to find the lighting that’s right for them. It’s important for architects and engineers to think about the role this medium plays in their projects. It all starts with asking questions. They need to ask their clients and all the stakeholders involved what they need. It all goes back to the ethos that lighting is a quintessentially human aspect of architecture. It renders our experience of space and shapes our view of the world around us. When we keep the human experience at the center of our design, we can build better places and provide the right amount of light to everyone. M

True Skies

Glare, sky glow, light trespass. There are many ways to describe the negative impact of harsh, blue outdoor lighting. The current clutter adversely a ects upwards of 80 percent of the world’s population and disrupts wildlife ecosystems. But there are innovative solutions to preserve a healthy dark sky. Metropolis rounded up some that have earned the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) seal of approval.

By Joseph P. Sgambati III

01 TORRES AREA LIGHT

This IDA-approved street lamp prides itself on having a quiet profile that works against a variety of architectural backdrops, from classical to contemporary styles. Torres is a collection of compact tenon-mounted LED luminaires that can be installed on existing poles in five configurations to accommodate site specifics.

02 ESTELLA OUTDOOR WALL LIGHT Available in two sizes, Estella’s hexagonal design adds warmer illumination in residential settings. The aluminum-housed LED is dimmable and Title 24–compliant for energy efficiency and dark sky conditions. KICHLER kichler.com

03 TEMPE This wall sconce meets dark sky standards because it can use a warm 3000K LED bulb and is shaded to emit no light above. The Tempe’s metal canopy and backplate are available in two muted colors and two lengths. TROY LIGHTING hvlgroup.com

04 OPTIFORM OptiForm is a family of area lights with 11 optical distributions that can be modified to illuminate specific spaces but shield others to minimize light pollution. The fixtures, offered by Signify company Gardco, are available in three sizes, all IDA-approved. GARDCO signify.com

Cloud Bursts

For the good of the planet, a Dutch artist replaces traditional reworks with a display of biodegradable bits of light.

By Adrian Madlener

Whether it’s Independence Day celebrations in the United States or New Year’s Eve in Northern Europe, fireworks have been an event staple for centuries. But in these climateconscious times, it is hard to ignore the fact that the joyful displays also cause environmental harm: Traditional reworks have been known to ignite wild res, and the colorful explosions rain down plastic particles, unburnt propellants, and metal by-products (used as colorants) across vast swaths of land and water. Those synthetics are nonbiodegradable and dangerous to the animals that inadvertently ingest them.

Seeking to rectify this problem while preserving the tradition, Dutch installation artist Daan Roosegaarde has succeeded in turning a mass of naturally glowing and biodegradable materials into an entertaining display called SPARK, which behaves like atmospheric bioluminescence and dances like fireflies or bird murmurations—both of which his team studied for inspiration. Composed of thousands of individual light particles, a cloud spanning roughly 164 by 98 feet forms in the air and gradually swarms out of shape, following wind patterns. The only fireworks-like feature missing is the classic boom. But crowds still experience the same level of awe and wonder.

Roosegaarde has taken this light show on tour, staging it for festivals and conferences in cities such as Bilbao, Spain; Melbourne, Australia; and Amman, Jordan. SPARK has emerged as a new celebratory medium. He says, “It shows the beauty of a better world, combining design and nature to create a place of wonder.” M

One of Daan Roosegaarde’s SPARK displays was released this summer over Melbourne’s Federation Square as part of the city’s RISING 2023 festival.

DAAN ROOSEGAARDE AND PHOTO BY MATT IRWIN

Bright Ideas

Contrast—as in pairing delicate aesthetics with durable materials or classic forms with high-tech components—is a device in lighting that never ceases to spark joy. In practical terms it adds unexpected utility, as in the case of Design by Us’s luxe-looking but garden-friendly Trip lamp. In more poetic interiors it adds mesmerizing drama, like in the case of Ingo Maurer’s deceptively chaotic Signature pendant (its tangled cable actually simpli es high functions). Metropolis gathered several products that embody such juxtapositions—examples of the creative tension that moves lighting design forward.

By Joseph P. Sgambati III

01 MULTIVERSE

This track lighting system breaks with tradition by navigating a room’s surface topography with its low-profile power ribbon that unfurls 150 linear feet on a single driver and hosts up to 15 fixtures. Spotlights, suspensions, and monopoints can be added using magnetic mounts. The system is available in ten finishes. JUNIPER juniperdesign.com

Colors and convenient clip-on bases make John Tree’s versions of a traditional banker’s lamp feel fresh, versatile, and user-friendly. Folded steel adapts the classic form for contemporary LEDs, available in two table lamp base styles and long- or short-stemmed clip-ons.

An elliptical polyethylene diffuser that filters light glare-free is the feature that distinguishes the Nans S/55 from 14 siblings in its collection. The handwoven shade showcases an elaborate technique that combines weaving methods and comes in brown, red, and beige. BOVER bover.es

04 MOOD COLLECTION

Built on the tenets of a nomadic lifestyle, this luminaire designed by Nahtrang Studio transforms when users attach it magnetically to a system of optional bases and fixtures to create freestanding, tabletop, suspension, and wall mounted lighting.

ESTILUZ estiluz.com

02 APEX LAMP COLLECTION

03 NANS S/55

05 KONOHA WALL LAMP

Designers Yabu Pushelberg created this interactive twin-function sconce to anticipate many settings and user needs. While a generous shade can enable a soft glow, a spot housed beneath it can be adjusted 360 degrees to aim its beam up, down, and at any angle in between.

MARSET

marset.com

06 TRIP

Already a surprise as a rechargeable, dimmable outdoor-friendly LED, the little Trip table lamp also bucks material expectations with its mouth-blown glass shade and rich marble body available in eight colors. Matching charger bases deliver nine hours per charge.

DESIGN BY US design-by-us.com

07 IRIS SERIES

Visually weightless, the Iris pendant is encapsulated in an elliptical shell available in two acrylic shade profiles and black or silver suspension finishes to create four combinations of aerial luminaires. Also available as a sconce, it accommodates various customizations.

ANDLIGHT a-n-d.com

08 CHAPEAUX

The product of a continued collaboration between Foscarini and Rodolfo Dordoni, this family of table lamps is durable but looks delicate: A translucent glass base supports an illuminated core containing technical components and hatlike shades in metal, glass, and bone china.

FOSCARINI foscarini.com

09 CONO DI LUCE

Ron Arad’s deceptively simple design for this suspension lamp features a flexible printed circuit board (PCB) scrolled and inserted into a transparent Pyrex cone. The combination exudes a decorative sculptural essence while turned off, and a moiré effect when switched on.

LODES lodes.com

10 SIGNATURE

What seems to be an uncontrolled form marked by a falling black cable and origami-like shade is actually Signature, Ingo Maurer’s highly reconfigurable pendant. Its luminaires can be combined to form a large cloud, and downlights can be bent into uplight positions. Clips allow the cable to connect with the shade at any point.

INGO MAURER ingo-maurer.com

Explore Metropolis's Design for Equity Primer, a guide to all existing resources to improve equity in the process and outcomes of architecture and interior design.

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In Depth

The desire to do something to enchant and delight others is a big driver of design. But the next generation of design projects can inspire even deeper emotions—like the sense of harmony and wellbeing that comes from projects and products that halt extraction, repurpose the discarded, and sport the virtue of reuse. Our reporting follows that thread through cases of rebuilding in Detroit, the resuscitation of a Florida rail yard, and buildingmaterial suppliers across the country that proudly curate salv age. The era of virtuous materials and structures is officially under way. The most attractive resources are those extracted from waste, not the earth.

During Milan Design Week 2023, the SENSBIOM II installation at Alcova used color-changing biopolymers to indicate the amount of UV radiation that visitors were exposed to.

1

Architecture and interior design (plus the associated activities of product manufacturing, construction, and demolition) present unique challenges to the dream of a circular economy. Here’s a list of them, all presented as glass-half-empty takes on our future. May they inspire you to advocacy and action instead of dismay.

By Avinash Rajagopal

01.

How much must we recycle?

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the leading nonprofit promoting the idea of the circular economy, lays out three principles for circularity: eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerating nature. The building sector, as it is structured today, remains largely intractable on all three principles.

If we want to create a built environment that is in harmony with nature, then we must stop downplaying the elements of the built environment that are currently the most discordant and contribute most heavily to our reliance on fossil fuels. Switching our buildings to renewable energy is a vital first step, but another challenge looms beyond that. According to the International Energy Agency, the petrochemicals used to make plastics are slated to become the largest driver of oil demand in the near future—outstripping the demand for energy and fuel by 2035. Meanwhile, the building and construction industry is the second-

largest consumer of plastics (after the packaging industry), using up about 16 percent of all plastic produced globally. Plastics, not energy, will be the bête noire of a sustainable built environment. And the outlook for a solution isn’t promising at the moment. An October 2022 report by Greenpeace found that the United States’ plastic recycling rate actually fell to a historic low of 5 percent last year. It is clear that even as we continue to advocate for recycling, we must explore other avenues. Extending the life of products by simply reusing them is one option, but there are barriers to that idea (see provocation #2), and switching to bioplastics is an enticing solution that might come with its own challenges (see provocations #7 and #8). The hard truth is that we simply must consume less. But to face that future, an architecture and design culture rooted in trends and consumerism needs to find other creative ways to remain economically viable.

02.

Are reclaimed materials good enough?

Many currently popular materials and products typically depreciate in value— or are simply appreciated less—in their second life.

Postconsumer PVC products, for example, are generally recycled into carpet backing, outdoor decking, or filler; ground-up ceramics must be either combined with virgin material for new products or used as aggregate in concrete. These two materials are commonplace in every building, and there are scores of others like them that currently have no clear recycling stream and cannot be reused as is or recovered without costly and extensive new manufacturing infrastructure.

Even products and materials that escape damage during decommissioning have t rouble finding a place in another project. Upholstered furniture is always a challenge for circularity because reupholstering is as expensive as buying new. Meanwhile, good luck finding a sustainable upholsterer like Kay Chesterfield in your area. How might this situation change? We need technological innovation in new materials and reasonable recycling processes, design shifts in how we build for disassembly and incorporate disassembled components, and a cultural revolution in how we value “used” commodities.

During Milan Design Week 2023, Stantec composed artifacts and materials recovered from Ex Macello, a former slaughterhouse that was also the site of the Alcova exhibition, into beautiful compositions for the installation “A Valuable Collection of Things.” Many of these building components were rusted, broken, or otherwise unusable—as the materials of abandoned buildings often are—but “the

installation helped us read the place with a ‘magnifying glass’ and visualize the elements that compose and characterize it, enriching our knowledge of the place itself,” says Valentina Mariani, an architect at Stantec. Ex Macello is also the site of the firm’s proposal ARIA, which reimagines the 37-acre area as an urban park, a university campus, social housing, and a museum.

03.

Can we recycle buildings?

Construction and demolition debris account for about 30 percent of all waste produced globally. And while scrap materials from construction and the detritus of demolished buildings can’t be recouped with the same value as virgin materials, it is estimated that 75 percent of all that waste still has some residual usefulness.

This suggests two avenues of opportunities for the building industry. The first is to innovate in the decommissioning process—not just taking things apart with more care but perhaps removing assemblies or systems in ways that leave them intact for other immediate applications. (Architecture firm New Affiliates is piloting an approach that reuses building components in this way, and with a positive community impact.) The second i s to build more horizontal integrations with other sectors. That will entail first aligning owners, contractors, architects, engineers, and workers around the value of building materials, then building new bridges with other industries so we can become part of their circular loops of materials and they can become part of ours.

Mock-ups have become a standard part of the design and construction process, but what happens to these expensive and well-crafted prototypes after they’ve served their purpose? New York–based firm New Affiliates began to notice a “correspondence of scale” between these mock-ups and the small sheds, greenhouses, and shade canopies in community gardens. This is how Testbeds was conceived— a collaboration with NYC Parks GreenThumb to repurpose building

mock-ups in smaller structures. In a pilot project completed in September 2022, New Affiliates reused a concrete facade mock-up provided by the developer Cape Advisors in a new facility for The Garden by the Bay Community Garden. The project raises a question about building circularity: If structures could be carefully disassembled instead of being demolished, could we find similar reuses for whole assemblies rather than individual materials or products?

04.

Is adaptive reuse enough?

Among those who are passionate about sustainable architecture and design, an adage coined by former AIA president Carl Elefante has come to be accepted wisdom: “The greenest building is the one that has already been built.” There seems to be a corresponding shift in practice, with billings for renovations and retrofits outstripping billings for new construction for the very first time in 2022.

However, all retrofits and renovations are not equal. Many buildings are repeatedly adapted for different uses over time—see the case of Detroit’s Book Depository Building (p. 120), which is now in its third incarnation—but whether those adaptations are done with an eye to long-term resilience, circularity, and regenerative impact on the planet’s life and resources is another matter altogether. We must also consider the social impact when low-income communities find that the old abandoned building around the corner is now a boutique hotel that makes their neighborhood too expensive to live in.

For adaptive reuse to be truly considered a part of circular design principles, the retrofit itself must be as sustainable as possible (see our write-up on the CARE Tool on p. 119). It must support our role in creating equitable communities and prepare the building for similarly sustainable retrofits in the future.

Clockwise from top left: Mill 19 in Pittsburgh by MSR Design, Hines office in Seattle by LMN Architects, argodesign’s headquarters in Austin by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, and WPP’s Detroit office by BDG architecture + design

05.

Do you really need that renovation?

Any building tends to experience many changes in its interiors over its lifetime. On average, most offices are renovated every ten years, and hotels might be refreshed much more frequently than that. With each renovation, old materials are pulled out and generally sent to the landfill; then new products are installed, which generates embodied carbon emissions.

As studies done by Seattle-based LMN Architects show, these emissions tied to interior updates can add up to be more than those embodied in the structure and envelope combined. This is an aspect of carbon emissions that needs urgent attention because it’s a booming business—renovations and refreshes accounted for 49 percent of all projects at Interior Design Giants firms in 2022.

In the face of the climate crisis, we must ask—is that renovation project worth the greenhouse gases it is going to send into our atmosphere? And if we must renovate, can we do it more responsibly?

Düsseldorf, Germany–based start-up Urselmann

Interior used the renovation of its own office to demonstrate that interior fit-outs and tenant improvements can incorporate circular strategies and materials. In selecting products and materials, the team prioritized five principles

inspired by the Cradle to Cradle standard—material health; recyclability; clean air and low emissions; protection of water, soil, and biodiversity; and social fairness. Material choices included secondhand lighting, Flokk’s Giroflex 313 chairs, and Kvadrat’s Really surface materials made from reclaimed textiles.

Are trends destroying the planet?

In his 1971 book Design for the Real World, sustainable design pioneer Victor Papanek incisively diagnosed what he called “Our Kleenex Culture”: “When people are persuaded, advertised, propagandized, and victimized into throwing away their cars every three years, their clothes twice yearly, their high- delity sets every few years, their houses every ve years…then we may consider most other things fully obsolete. Throwing away furniture, transportation, clothing, and appliances may soon lead us to feel that marriages (and other personal relationships) are throw-away items as well and that on a global scale countries, and indeed entire sub-continents, are disposable like Kleenex.”

More than 50 years later, things have barely changed. Meanwhile, home renovation and DIY videos amassed 39 billion views on TikTok in 2022, more than any other design topic. This, then, is the most resonant aspect of architecture and interior design to the larger public: a means to discard a previous lifestyle like used Kleenex and adopt a new style because we have been sold this behavior over and over by media. We’ve built a design culture that valorizes retrofits and renovations—acts that look circular at the architectural scale because they extend the life of existing buildings, but in actuality rely on wasteful practices at the level of interiors and products.

07.

Will biobased materials save us?

Over the past decade, we have seen something of a revolution in biobased materials—especially in soy-, corn-, sugarcane-, or hemp-derived plastics that offer comparable performance to their conventional fossil fuel–based counterparts. Can we avoid ecological catastrophe by switching our material economy to biobased alternatives?

The first warning that both critics and admirers of bioplastics issue is that the sources of these materials must remain renewable and not impose a new burden on the planet. To produce enough materials to serve our current needs, we’d no doubt require a large-scale shift in our agricultural system. The second caveat is that these materials haven’t been around long enough for us to accurately predict what will happen at the end of their useful life—a November 2022 paper published in Frontiers of Sustainability found that 60 percent of plastics marketed in the United Kingdom as “home compostable” fail to disintegrate even after six months. With these unknowns, it’s best to be cautiously optimistic about biobased materials, but know for certain that there is no salvation for us that does not involve consuming less.

At this year’s Alcova exhibition during Milan Design Week, crafting plastics! and DumoLab presented “SENSBIOM 2,” an installation that responded to ultraviolet radiation (UVR). Strings of lattices made out of Nuatan bioplastic and cellulose-based biomaterials automatically changed color from yellow to brick red in response to UVR in the sunshine streaming through a skylight above.

The colors served as a warning—anything darker than a golden orange represented a Global Solar UV Index of 3 or higher, a range determined by the World Health Organization to be harmful to our skin and eyes. The lattices remained in the orange and red range in the Milanese spring, causing some alarm to visitors while also demonstrating the new potential of biomaterials.

Who will compost your chair?

Here’s a thought experiment: If we could wave a magic wand and make every material in every product today biodegradable or compostable, would that be a good thing? Unfortunately, without the millions of composting facilities we would need, all those products would end up in landfills where they would decompose to produce methane—a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent in its ability to warm the planet than carbon dioxide. Or, as Dr. Andrew Dent, EVP of research at Material ConneXion and chief material scientist at Material Bank, explains, “when bioplastics do end up in the ocean and begin to decay it will raise the acidity levels of the oceans.”

So anyone who is enamored with the possibilities of biobased and biodegradable materials needs to become a composting advocate. It’s easy to learn how to properly tend a compost heap in the backyard; it is more challenging to petition local governments to scale up composting in places where people aren’t always lucky enough to have backyards. But pick one of those options, because if o ur industry is set to become the number one consumer of fossil fuels through our use of plastics, we’d better become the number one adherents of composting.

Samuel Aguirre, an MFA furniture design student at the Rhode Island School of Design, showcased his 03VXX series of chairs at WantedDesign’s Launch Pad exhibition during NYCxDESIGN 2023. Made of a variety of compostable materials including hemp fibers, cotton fibers, and postconsumer paper pulp, the handcrafted chairs are designed to biodegrade in less than a year.

Oakland, California–based company Model No. 3D prints its furniture using bio-resins at a facility that runs entirely on wind and solar energy. Any hardwood components are FSC-certified or salvaged, and all finishes are nontoxic and made with natural oils and waxes. The pieces are produced to order and packaged in recycled materials.

09.

Is circularity sustainable?

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines the circular economy as a “resilient system that is good for business, people, and the environment.”

Many initiatives in the architecture and interior design industry fall far short of this standard by merely focusing on recycling or reclaiming materials. Not every building component (looking at you here, asbestos insulation) is worthy of being reused, and not every material—PVC with orthophthalates, for example—should be recycled because of the harm it could cause to people and the environment. Each year, new chemicals are added to an already long list of toxic components, and indeed the day might arrive when a future generation might consider all petroleum-based materials worthy of being Red Listed.

10.

Can we design less?

Closing the loop on materials and energy is not enough if it merely confirms and facilitates our current culture of overconsumption. Indeed, is expending the energy needed to keep materials in constant use worth the cost to our planet’s already exhausted resources—especially when imperfect waste collection and recycling processes could release new, less understood toxins or cause unintended harm to ecosystems? The scenario generally painted in our industry, where business as usual can be tweaked into a closed loop through supply chain management and material substitutions, is a pipe dream.

Instead, in the ideal circular design approach, we would continue to apply our design abilities in areas where proven, clean, and r egenerative

extraction, manufacturing, construction, and reclamation processes are available. Where such processes cannot exist, we must eventually stop designing, producing, and building.

Could we then redirect those efforts into areas where our skills as shapers of space are sorely needed but rarely provided—outside of downtowns, commercial districts, and booming neighborhoods, and in places currently shaped by default to the detriment of people and the planet?

In such places and communities we might need to become listeners, partners, and advocates, learning and honing skills that many of us still lack. We might find we need less design as we practice it today, and more new forms of creativity that still need to be imagined. M

Rail Yard Reborn

In Lakeland, Florida, Sasaki transforms a heavily polluted train depot into an elegant yet hardworking green space.

By Timothy A. Schuler

Winner of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Stewardship Achievement Award, the 168-acre Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, Florida, is a privately developed public park on the site of a former rail yard. The park was designed by landscape firm Sasaki and completed in October 2022.

In 2017, Sasaki was hired to create a master plan for the park, followed by a six-month outreach period when the firm took input from the Lakeland community. The park design includes heritage gardens, botanical gardens, a canopy walk, boating, accessible playgrounds, an event lawn, and more.

hat do you do with 300,000 cubic yards of arsenic-contaminated soil? (That’s enough to fill nearly 100 Olympic-size swimming pools.) This was the question the landscape architects at Sasaki faced when their team was hired to turn a 168-acre former rail yard in Lakeland, Florida, into an ecological jewel and public park. The toxins in the soil are the result of arsenic-based herbicides that were used back when the rail yard was one of Florida’s largest, at its peak servicing 25 trains per day. After the rail yard closed in 1952, the land, located less than a ten-minute walk from downtown, languished for almost 50 years before a group of developers, philanthropists, and former park professionals decided to purchase it (and roughly a dozen adjoining properties) for use as a public park.

By the time Sasaki got involved, says Anna Cawrse, co-director of the firm’s Denver office, most remnants of the rail yard were gone. The contaminants, however, remained and became a key driver of the design. “We could have proposed taking [the soil] off-site to try to create a clean slate, but instead [we started] talking about reusing it and seeing it as a design opportunity—as a moment to create a whole new landscape,” Cawrse explains. “That started to unravel all these other opportunities. How do we tie in architecture? How do we think about engineering? How do we use the se big infrastructure moves to create these incredible places?”

Completed in fall 2022, Bonnet Springs Park is now an amenity-rich public space and a prime example of the heavy-duty environmental work that modern parks are increasingly being asked to do. In addition to remediating toxic soils, the park voluntarily treats 300 acres of urban runoff that had made the adjacent Lake Bonnet one of the most

polluted in the city. This component, which was not mandated by city regulations, has ripple effects for Florida’s natural environment, says Andrew Gutterman, another principal at Sasaki: “By improving the water quality of Lake Bonnet, you’re really impacting a whole chain of other water bodies and environments all the way from Lakeland to Tampa Bay.”

This isn’t the first time that refuse has been repurposed in an act of land-making. New York City is currently laboring to transform the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island into a 2,200-acre oasis, and Los Angeles County is undertaking a similar effort at the 1,356-acre Puente Hills Landfill east of downtown L.A. In Lakeland, the contaminated soils became the raw ma terial for two massive, 45-foottall landforms, which buffer the park from a nearby highway and offer 360-degree views of low-lying Lakeland. To comply with federal regulations, the sculpted hills were capped with clean soils dredged from Lake Bonnet, a move that allowed the design team to establish a naturalistic, boardwalk-lined lagoon and wetland ecosystem along the lake’s eastern edge.

Strung between the hills is the new home of the Florida Children’s Museum, which occupies a pair of clean white volumes connected by a ribbonlike roof structure and punctuated with pops of primary colors. “Early on, we came up with this concept of the ‘bridge building,’ ” Cawrse says. “We wanted it to be something that when you walked through the building it was like entering a different world.” From that gateway, the crescentshaped park spools out to the north and south, wrapping around Lake Bonnet. Paved paths whisk visitors to a collection of variously wild and cultivated garden spaces, including a nature-inspired playground, a Zen-like nature pavilion, and a curvilinear canopy walk that weaves through moss-covered mature oaks.

In general, those spaces become quieter and more contemplative as a person moves from the eastern, more active edge of the park toward the lake. “With big parks, you want to create that attitude of gathering and celebration of being together. But you also have to have those really small, intimate, quiet moments,” Cawrse explains. “Wha t we want to do when we’re designing these parks is

Walking and biking paths connect the park spaces and buildings, also designed by Sasaki: the Welcome Center, Nature Center, Event Center, and the Florida Children’s Museum and Café (this page), which helps develop educational and cultural programming throughout the park.

create spaces where everyone can have the moment that they need, whether it’s to sit down, unplug, and just look out at the lagoon or [have] a crazy afternoon with their kids going to the children’s museum and getting ice cream.”

A spirit of preservation and reuse informed more than the park’s remediation strategy. Sasaki carefully designed around an existing spring in the northern half of the site and cataloged and preserved nearly every tree larger than six inches in diameter, including an oak that had fallen over. “The client, Bill [Tinsley, president of Bonnet Springs Park], said, ‘This is going to be that climbing tree that every kid comes to,’ and that’s exactly what it is,” Cawrse recalls.

What visitors won’t find, outside of a small, train-shape play structure, are overt nods to the former rail yard. This is partly because most of the rail infrastructure had been removed prior to design. But it’s also in recognition of the many

forces that shaped the site over the years. The linear plantings and ladderlike follies in the park’s heritage gardens are nods to the orange groves that once occupied the area, while the denser, wilder plantings and wetland areas celebrate the rich native ecology of central Florida.

Bonnet Springs Park counted a million visitors in its first seven months, making it a clear success as a cultural and recreational draw. But the de signers at Sasaki hope that it will also help inspire a new ethic of landscape-based resilience and reuse. “People are looking for these old, abandoned lands and being more creative in how they’re finding spaces for parks,” Cawrse says. “But what you do with it varies. And this, we hope, is showcasing how you can utilize land that is right next to downtown to create this amenity that is helping clean the water, that is helping with a huge contamination issue, and that is really trying to set up a new standard for environmental stewardship.” M

The Nature Center (opposite) features a classroom and exhibition space as well as a café and boat rentals. It is perched above a remediated lagoon and overlooks a lake surrounded by preserved oaks, including a 200-year-old grandfather oak. The center is nestled within the existing trees that visitors can encounter by strolling on a quarter-mile-long walkway.

Superstars

of Salvage

Drawing on breakthrough research, tools, and sourcing systems, these seven groups are championing building-material reuse.

By Nigel F. Maynard

ANEW CARE Tool

Circular Construction Lab Doors Unhinged

Renovation Angel

Rheaply x San Francisco Woodward Throwbacks

Clockwise from top left: Garry Cooper Jr., CEO, Rheaply; Bo Shepherd, cofounder, Woodward Throwbacks; Rose Tourjé, founder and president, ANEW; Kyle Dubay, cofounder, Woodward Throwbacks; Andrew Ellsworth, CEO, Doors Unhinged; Felix Heisel, director of the Circular Construction Lab at Cornell

Doors Unhinged

Andrew Ellsworth spent his entire career at the intersection of architecture and sustainability, including stints at a material reuse center in Pittsburgh and a local chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. It made total sense, then, when Ellsworth founded Doors Unhinged, a company that sources and sells used commercial doors, frames, and hardware.

“I started the company about five years ago, though I conceived of it maybe ten years ago,” says Ellsworth, who has a BArch from Carnegie Mellon University. Specifically, he got the idea during his time working on construction projects, when the demolition of buildings generated mountains of materials–including barely used doors.

“I [saw] an unrealized opportunity in construction waste. We ha d all these high-quality materials going to the landfill because there was nothing else to do with them.”

Ellsworth’s mission was simple: take those doors, frames, and hardware and put them back into projects, unlocking both environmental benefits and cost savings. Since starting in his home, the company has expanded into a 5,000-square-foot headquarters with almost 1,000 doors in inventory, and claims to be the only supplier of reclaimed commercial door systems in the United States.

The doors, sourced from commercial projects, are often in pristine condition but occasionally need a slight touch-up. “Sometimes the customer wants to have them painted, so it requires us to remove the existing finish so the paint adheres well,” Ellsworth says.

The potential stream of material is vast, so the company does very little prospecting to keep up its inventory. But it does have to work to find clients interested in taking items. “There’s an imbalance in the market right now where there’s so much material being thrown away and so few projects that are installing them again,” Ellsworth says.

But he remains hopeful. “Ideally we’d love to scale up our capacity and move a lot more doors in inventory and very quickly be able to respond to the needs of an individual project.”

Lab at Cornell Circular Construction

Is there a way for us to construct buildings for easy disassembly so their materials can be reused in new projects? Felix Heisel, an assistant professor at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, founded the Circular Construction Lab (CCL) to help answer that question.

“The CCL is essentially a cross-disciplinary research lab that tries to move ideas of the circular economy forward and implement them in the construction industry,” says Heisel, director of the lab.

According to him, the lab has two tracks: On one hand, it thinks about existing building stock as a material bank for future construction. “That means we need new technologies and new methodologies to access the se materials, understand the material content, and then process materials and bring them back into the construction industry,” he explains.

The lab’s other mission is looking into ways the industry can design and build differently. Ideally, new buildings would be designed in a way that makes them easy to take apart for salvage.

Heisel says the lab is working on different tools to help the industry build with reuse in mind, including an innovation that allows users to scan buildings and get a quick estimate of their material contents, construction complexity, and how much value is present.

Ultimately, the problems are complex and don’t have easy answers. Older buildings, for example, tend to have high-quality materials and are assembled in ways that favor deconstruction. But they’re also more likely to have contaminants such as lead paint and asbestos. Younger buildings tend to have less of these contaminants but a lower quality of materials.

“The most pressing thing is that if we continue building the way we’ve built, we’re going to run the earth into the ground,” Heisel says.

ANEW (Asset Network for Education Worldwide)

Rose Tourjé had a successful career doing corporate interior design work. For a time, she worked as the vice president, planning and design, corporate real estate, for Warner Brothers, then as a senior associate at architecture firm Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall.

Back then (the early 1990s), the U.S. Green Building Council had just been established and momentum for sustainability was ramping up, so Tourjé tried to be mindful of these issues in her work.

But one day in 2005 she saw something that changed the trajectory of her life. “I witnessed furniture being pushed out windows of a mid-rise building in downtown Los Angeles,” she says. “It went on for three days. It changed me as a person and as a professional.”

Shortly after that, Tourjé established the Asset Network for Education Worldwide (ANEW), a Los Angeles–based nonprofit that works with corporations to procure office furniture, fixtures, equipment, office supplies, and office appliances, and match them to nonprofit organizations.

“We work with companies who might be downsizing or having to leave a leasehold, and we raise awareness and teach them about our method,” she explains. “We have a platform of steps and processes we call the ANEWmethod that teaches stewardship, social connectivity, and circularity.”

For nonprofit groups to receive items, they must go through a rigorous vetting process. They must sign liability waivers and understand that they’re taking products that are gently used. “There’s no cost to them except for perhaps renting a vehicle to receive items or labor to load the trucks,” Tourjé says.

ANEW doesn’t do traditional marketing and relies mostly on word of mouth and support from its sponsor companies. Inquiries come in weekly, and existing and past clients send referrals. In 2015 the company expanded and established a presence in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Seattle; Tucson, Arizona; Chicago; and Tampa, Florida.

WoodwardThrowbacks

Woodward Throwbacks started the same way a lot of maker companies do–through necessity. Years ago, Kyle Dubay and Bo Shepherd needed to furnish their apartments, and as they rode around and explored Detroit they would discover items they could repurpose in their spaces. “We were just making stuff for ourselves and friends and family, and then we just started selling them,” Dubay says.

Fast-forward ten years and Woodward Throwbacks has a staff of nine people and operates out of a 24,000-square-foot facility where workers fabricate furniture, home accessories, and other items using materials found around the city.

Dubay and Shepherd believe all materials are fair game, and they accept metal, stone, and wood. Some salvaged mat erials are used as ingredients in new pieces, while other products are used to make new items, like furniture made from reclaimed wood.

Though Detroit has many abandoned houses, the company acquires most of its material from commercial sources. “We always want to set the record straight that we’re never just going into houses and getting materials,” says Shepherd, who used to design automotive interiors for General Motors. “We’re a really big part of the community, and we’re known as the people to call when materials are coming out of a home, or a building is getting renovated.”

In recent years, the company has diversified its products and services, incorporating interior design and collaborating with retailers s uch as Target and Nordstrom. The couple bought, renovated, and sold an old house that was originally intended to be a potential material salvage project. And a little while back they bought a warehouse that will become their new home.

Despite the company’s success, Shepherd says it’s hard work: “There’s sourcing the material, deconstructing material, then processing the material, then creating. There are so many layers, but it’s a labor of love.”

Woodward Throwbacks opened its first showroom, Throwbacks Home, last year in downtown Detroit’s Capitol Park. The shop features furniture made from reclaimed and recycled materials, and a selection of curated home goods, vintage clothing, and gifts.

San Francisco Rheaply x City of

Rheaply is a B2B climate tech company that is bringing ingenuity to the salvage and building-material recycling game.

Using money from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance Game Changer Fund, the company built an online exchange for building products and other resources in the Bay Area. The exchange allows businesses in the greater Bay Area to access surplus and reclaimed resources at cost-e ective rates.

“This network, or marketplace, focuses primarily on materials streams within the built environment and aims to increase the economic activity of the rescue and reuse of salvage and surplus items,” says Tom Fecarotta, chief marketing officer for the Chicago-based company. “Any Bay Area organization looking to sell, donate, or acquire building products and office supplies or furniture can sign up for free.”

Once users register for the company’s marketplace hosted by the San Francisco Environment Department, they can list or claim materials and communicate with each other via the messaging option. A “pro” version of the reuse marketplace tool adds permissions-based listings and advanced reporting.

The San Francisco project primarily focuses on commercial construction and includes items such as reclaimed bricks, marble slabs, metals, office furniture, lamps, and blinds. Rheaply is currently expanding to seven additional cities with a goal of 50 sponsored cities by the end of 2024.

Fecarotta concludes, “We need more introductions to large commercial suppliers and receivers, and municipality leaders, to continue the momentum we have and build the supply-and-demand partners necessary for a thriving circular economy.”

CARE (Carbon

Wouldn’t it be grand if there were a tool that could let architects know if they should renovate a building or replace it? It would, and there is.

The CARE (Carbon Avoided Retrofit Estimator) Tool allows users to compare the total carbon impact of renovating an existing building versus replacing it with a new one.

The tool originated in 2019 from a conversation between the tool’s codeveloper Larry Strain, a founding principal of Siegel & Strain Architects, and a colleague at the University of California’s Office of the President. “[The fellow faculty member] asked Larry what tool they should use to determine when it makes more climate sense to reuse campus buildings as opposed t o replacing them with new construction,” says Erin McDade, senior program director at Architecture 2030 and a founding CARE Tool developer. “Larry realized no such tool existed, so he started making it in Excel.”

According to its developers, the tool focuses on existing buildings because the older structures are essential to achieving carbon reductions. “Leveraging buildings we already have avoids embodied emissions from new construction, reduces operational emissions from existing buildings, and provides social and economic co-benefits,” McDade says.

To utilize the tool, users provide basic information, such as the project location, climate, electrical grid, construction type of the new building, and scope of renovation. The system generates information based on these inputs.

For now, the tool analyzes commercial and multifamily residential structures, but planned enhancements will include data to support single-family homes as well.

Renovation Angel

Organizations that sell recycled and reclaimed building materials are common in the United States, but Renovation Angel is no mere reuse center. The Fairfield, New Jersey–based group specializes in recycling and repurposing luxury kitchens, high-end appliances, and bath fixtures.

President Steve Feldman said the idea of the organization came to him in the early aughts, during a moment of need.

“I was fundraising in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2001 and my one donor had just lost $30 million in the stock market,” he explains. “She said, ‘Here is your last check’ and ‘Good luck.’ Her next-door neighbor was the empress of Iran. There was a sign in the driveway that said, ‘Demolition in Progress.’ I drove up to this Rockefeller mansion and it was gone. That’s when I had the idea to fundraise through recycling and reselling kitchens and interiors from mansions being demolished.”

Today Renovation Angel’s mission is simple: reduce landfill waste, create recycling jobs, and repurpose luxury kitchens and interior items. The group acquires most of its material via an “organic pipeline” of people who are familiar with its activities. It also has project managers who network with architects, builders, designers, kitchen showrooms, and real estate agents.

“We also receive materials from luxury mansions, estate homes, and apartments,” Feldman says. “Pre-owned luxury kitchens are donated, and the donors receive significant tax savings, free white-glove removal, and a sust ainable alternative to disposing in a landfill.”

Unlike other salvage operations, Renovation Angel prefers to acquire entire kitchens with all the elements. If a kitchen doesn’t include the appliances, the cabinetry must be good enough to justify the labor for the removal. The organization travels throughout the lower 48 states, but in the coming years it hopes to expand into other markets with “boots on the ground.”

“We are looking to continue to expand and fulfill our mission of reducing the carbon footprint,” Feldman says. “Our focus is twofold: increasing our reach into luxury residential markets nationwide and creating a circular economy for the kitchen and bath industry through establishing channels for the ‘gray market’ inventory to be repurposed.” M

Designed by Albert Kahn as a post office and mail-sorting facility, this 1936 building in Detroit has had a few lives, including as a book depository for the city’s public schools. This year, the building reopened as the home of the Detroit outpost of Newlab, a tech collaborative for mobility, energy, and materials innovation start-ups (opposite). Newlab’s flagship location is another repurposed building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City.

By Sam Lubell

The bigger challenge in preserving historically significant buildings isn’t in giving them a second life— it’s preparing them for future reincarnations.

a handful of years ago Detroit’s towering Michigan Central Station (1913) felt like the edge of the world. Once one of the grandest Beaux Arts train depots in the country, it had become a must-see for ruin porn photographers, an overgrown relic filled with twisted metal, decomposing concrete, tree-size weeds, graffiti, and a sense of hushed despair. In 2018, Ford Motor Company bought the property (which had come razor-close to demolition in 2009) to transform it into the centerpiece of a new 30-acre mobility innovation campus, a collection of industrial buildings rehabbed into offices, labs, test spaces, cafés, and more. Five years later, Michigan Central’s first major facility, a former book depository that is now a home to maker, research, and development facilities, has opened, with more projects to follow. The campus, which includes four buildings knitted together by plazas and parks, is indeed becoming a center of mobility experiments. But largely owing to the unprecedented changes taking place in office, retail, hospitality, everything—dramatically amplified by COVID-19—it has also become a center of architectural experimentation. The ways in which adaptive reuse can become a core component of our quickly changing built world—and make buildings flexible enough to adapt to today’s needs and those of the future—are playing out here in real time.

This isn’t the first reuse rodeo for the 270,000-square-foot Book Depository Building, a brick-clad Art Deco structure next to Michigan Central originally known as the Roosevelt Annex. Designed by legendary Detroit architect Albert Kahn in the 1930s to serve as the city’s main post office and mail sorting facility, it had an open, concrete-supported skeleton that allowed it to later become a book storage center for Detroit’s public schools. It closed in 1987 after a major fire. It is now, of course, launching its third act as a mobility incubator overseen by Ford and Brooklyn-based tech collaborative Newlab (whose other location is in New York City’s Brooklyn Navy Yard). Its design team, which includes Gensler (the shell) and Civilian (interiors), has made it flexible for workers now and ready for the acts that will inevitably follow.

In adapting the depository, the designers introduced much-needed natural light and space, cutting through the three-story building’s patterned blond-brick walls and its ceiling to create massive steel-edged window walls and a pillow-top skylight. They also strove to create flexible spaces by slicing open sections of the second and third floors to create an open atrium with connecting stairs, and carving out interwoven spaces for working, prototyping, lounging, gathering, exhibiting, learning, and dining. They modified some of the building’s trademark martini columns and pulled out a large loading dock to introduce an expansive new entrance and buzzing groundfloor paseo. Within this open palette the team inserted independent elements, including a prefabricated millwork reception desk, a building-within-building café, and Sheetrock walls and suspended drop ceilings.

This kind of elasticity—adaptable open spaces, tall ceilings, impermanent dividers—is vital for scrappy companies developing products like autonomous and electric cars, electric bicycles, drones, mobility software, and streets built for autonomous vehicles. Their businesses and technologies are constantly

The interiors of the Book Depository Building contain plenty of nods to the building’s past lives in the Art Deco and midcentury eras—bookmatched veneers and industrial metal finishes—while also providing the kind of airy, flexible spaces that 21st-century start-ups have come to prefer. Gensler served as architect of record for the project, Ghafari as interior architect of record, and Civilian as interior designer and architectural design consultant. MYK designed the exterior spaces and landscapes.

evolving, and they anticipate shifting their focus and size quite regularly. What if, for instance, they get a VC infusion and need to bulk up? Or need to add a new CNC machine or a robot arm or two? Even individual studio spaces, of which there are plenty, can be reorganized via movable partitions and furniture. (These MillerKnoll furnishings, adds Civilian principal Nicko Elliott, can also adapt to new uses and eras thanks to their inherent timelessness.)

“We don’t make any promises of permanence,” says Civilian’s Elliott. Adds Gensler Detroit design director Lily Diego: “Everything we did was about how flexible this can be to adapt for everyone who is using it.”

The building, its designers say, is also set up for future “e volution,” be that in two years or 20. Under the shop areas, extra structural steel reinforcement can accommodate the weight and mass of the next generation of machinery, while extra steel under the roof deck would allow for a much larger expansion. Capacious public spaces like the atrium, rooftop, and paseo, which can host virtually any type of program from lectures to pop-ups, could be subdivided into offices or conference rooms via glass dividers, or could host completely new uses, provided zoning can catch up. Furthermore, a restored tunnel between the depository and Michigan Central Station now provides egress for mobility prototypes and space for enhancing prototypes. But future occupiers of the building could do anything with it.

This kind of mutability makes the book depository a model for flexible adaptive reuse. By contrast, its soon-to-open neighbor, Michigan Central Station—despite being another very creative reuse and the gorgeous centerpiece of the whole development—is a case study in navigating its limitations. The building’s flexibility is reined in both by its original structure and by its historical significance—particularly since part of its funding comes from historic tax credits. While it’s a more straightforward project in terms of renovation, it’s much less so in terms of elasticity.

“It’s a tall challenge,” notes Richard Hess, principal at Quinn Evans, the project’s architect of record. Nonetheless, he adds, it is still being designed for as much flexibility as possible. “A building can serve multiple uses over time,” he says. “But you have to know what can work within the historic context.”

Michigan Central is essentially two buildings in one: its cavernous base, which once contained a magnificent waiting room, concourses, an arcade, and a reading room; and the tightly spaced 13-story tower, with long corridors of offices with stairs and elevators at either end of each floor. The whole building’s exterior envelope, says Hess, was basically off limits to change, outside of masonry cleaning and repairs and unseen improvements for insulation and energy efficiency. In the base, while the look of existing areas—gorgeous Guastavino tile, intricate terra-cotta, eye-popping expanses of up to 62 feet—remains the same, the hidden infrastructure—HVAC systems (including specialized ventilation systems for restaurant kitchens), elec tricity (able to adapt to massive loads for everyday use or special events like concerts), lighting, etc.—is being completely replaced to adhere to modern standards for a plethora of uses.

While the base’s original mixed-use program remains virtually the same, including retail, dining, events, and public assembly, the manifestation of these programs will be very different, and much more flexible. The grand spaces, Hess points out, could host

conferences, lectures, performances, or banquets, showcase Ford vehicles or a giant Christmas tree, or provide endless other uses, given the proper scenario planning. The station’s carriage house, once a partially enclosed porte cochere, is being wrapped in glass and adapted for hospitality. “You have to know what can work in this historic context,” says Hess. “Will there be enough power for this? Will this meet the egress standards? Will the fire marshal sign off on this?” To prepare for the future, the team is planning for much larger loads, in both infrastructure and occupancy.

The tower is far more restrictive. The 53-foot edge-to-edge floor plates are quite narrow, and the arched, double-loaded corridors and divided bays of the first three floors are historically protected. That and the double-hung windows will limit the variety and space that most modern companies are looking for. “It gets harder to do the skinnier it gets,” says Hess. He could not yet reveal which tenants will move into the offices (with the exception of Google’s Code Next lab), but regardless of who is there, the tower’s flexibility will be severely tested moving forward.

The divergence, both flexibility-wise and strategy-wise, between the book depository and Michigan Central Station indicates the extraordinarily wide spectrum of possibilities and tests facing all adaptive reuse architects. Creative responses are always needed, but they can never be one-size-fits-all. They will shift dramatically from project to project, and the ability to maintain flexibility will shift with them.

The entire city of Detroit has become a laboratory for reuse, with its exceptional variety of historic buildings—most of them

The Book Depository Building is the first piece to open in the 30-acre Michigan Central mobility campus, consisting of a number of formerly abandoned heritage buildings that will now house businesses and facilities focused on

developing next-generation mobility solutions. The campus hopes its forward-thinking, tech-based approach will contribute to and strengthen Detroit’s community and economy.

sitting vacant for decades—just now being brought back to life with endless approaches for reuse and flexibility. Classical skyscrapers are becoming offices, Modernist offices are morphing into residences, and Art Deco boardinghouses are transforming into hotels. The city, which has bought hundreds of decaying structures, often sells them at affordable prices if owners guarantee the y will undergo reuse. Local nonprofits like Detroit Future City promote industrial reuse by identifying local opportunities and sharing successful case studies.

On Washington Avenue, architect Louis Kamper’s Book Tower (1926), a 38-story Beaux Arts office building with a 13-story annex, reopened in June with a program that includes a long-stay hotel, residences, restaurants, event spaces, and more. The project was led by Detroit developer Bedrock and New York architects ODA. The tower’s central rotunda, topped by a majestic glass dome consisting of more than 7,000 individual jewels and 6,000 panels that have now been restored or replaced, had long been hidden by internal offices and has been brought back to life as the building’s focal point. Most of the

building has been reconfigured via flexible floor plans (there are 46 different unit types) and a wide range of amenities, including a gym, restaurants, a coworking space, and idiosyncratic gathering spaces shaped by the original building’s bones. The broad mix of uses, points out Bedrock’s vice president of architecture and design James Witherspoon, will keep it flexible if needs change over time, as will the significant investment in elements like the rotunda, which will be a popular focal point no matter who future occupants may be.

At Michigan Central, a similarly diverse mixed-use program, including office, light-industrial, retail, dining, hospitality, event, and outdoor gathering spaces, is an effective futureproofing strategy intended to foster energy (“We were trying to create a center of gravity,” notes Ruchika Modi, principal at PAU) and flexibility.

“Each building, no matter its limitations, is designed to both morph and provide space for small companies to grow into,” says Melissa Dittmer, head of place at Michigan Central. That flexibility extends to the campus as a whole: A company, she notes, could start at The Factory, a relatively small former

Sitting on the extreme end of both flexibility and creativity is another industrial project about 600 miles east of Michigan Central: Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Refinery, an emblem of New York’s industrial past that is now being converted into the centerpiece of its own office and retail campus. (The site is already beloved for Domino Park, with its grassy waterfront expanse, elevated walkways, and reused industrial remnants.) Built by the blue-blooded Havemeyer family in 1856, Domino posed significant challenges to flexibility with its landmarked facade. Challenges mounted inside, since the building was never a real building, but essentially a steel-supported armature for massive sugar processing

machines. To remedy these limitations, the project architects PAU made a radical plan: maintaining the masonry facade with its arched window openings but removing the entire interior and replacing it with a glass-and-steel structure topped by tall barrel vaults, supporting the facade via steel I beams. Now column-free internal office spaces can be organized for virtually any configuration, from one office per floor to eight. And with relatively shallow 30-foot edge-to-core floor plates and plenty of natural light and air through floor-to-ceiling operable windows, the program could be shifted to, for instance, residential if need be (although developer Two Trees insists it’s committed to offices for the foreseeable future).

Eero Saarinen’s Bell Labs (1962), whose adaptive reuse as Bell Works was led by New York–based Alexander Gorlin Architects and developer Ralph Zucker with interiors by NPZ Studio, proved the ideal armature for flexibility, with its cavernous glassand-steel shell, gargantuan internal plazas and atria, and reconfigurable partitions. “Flexibility was part of its DNA from the beginning,” explains Gorlin. The building still needed a major modernization, and Gorlin’s team was able to enhance the complex’s inherent adaptability through a few key moves. First came removing the fixed planted areas in the atria and replacing them with “tabula rasa” open space. The team also

obtained an exemption from the National Park Service (which administers historic tax credits) to open once-opaque outer walls, allowing light to penetrate all offices (a must for modern office standards). And finally, they obtained a zoning variance to allow for a mixed-use program, allowing them to add cafés, bars, convention space, and much more. Now the building, once a restricted research center unfavorably dramatized in the television show Severance, hums with energy from its reconfigurable makerspaces, tech incubators, coffee shops, farmers markets, and a colorful new outdoor terrace that spills out onto the property’s pond.

knitting factory now housing Ford’s autonomous vehicle business and operations team, move to the book depository for research and prototyping, then set up business offices inside Michigan Central. The Bagley Mobility Hub, a six-story parking garage on campus clad in polycarbonate and steel and adorned on its north facade with public art, is set, as operations expand, to double as a testing ground for mobility technologies related to electric charging, automated parking, and more. “We’re not rethinking a single building, we’re establishing a complex community,” adds Dittmer.

Michigan Central is also a reminder that the scope of reuse, and flexibility, extends beyond buildings and into the spaces around them. In contrast to a time when the car ruled and campuses were tightly sealed, Ford is working to fill its campus with new and renewed parks, plazas, and walkways—employed for congregation, recreation, events, and more—connected to the city via arteries like the Joe Louis Greenway, which extends to Downtown and the Detroit River. A set of elevated former train tracks behind the station are being converted into The Platform, a place to test and showcase mobility solutions like scooters, drones, e-bikes, and autonomous vehicles.

“Cities are living organisms that evolve through different chapters and ride waves of cultural and technological change. Every aspect of what goes into a city evolves over time,” adds Dittmer. “We need to give businesses the opportunity to create, test, and showcase their work inside and outside and in all the spaces in bet ween.” M

Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock purchased the vacant 1926 Book Tower in 2016. Last year the building, redesigned by New York–based firm ODA, opened as a mixed-use tower consisting of 229 residential apartments; 117 hotel apartments as part of the ROOST hotel; 52,000 square feet of retail, office, and hospitality spaces; and spectacularly restored common areas.

ON MARIO GOODEN’S SIGNATURE

As a college student at the University of Florida, I first tried my hand at premed courses. Eager to impress my traditional-minded Asian-American parents, I was full of promise as I embarked on my academic journey.

Immediately it was a disaster. Seeking direction, I found my way to design. In my new major, I had the good fortune of studying under Professor Mario Gooden. I was drawn to him instantly. He garnered great respect from other students and faculty, and his passion for design was contagious.

As an intern for Gooden in his studio, I learned how to read my surroundings and how design must respond to our world, anticipate the direction we’re going in, and help solve the challenges facing us all. He showed me that there were no limits to how much you can achieve in design—that success comes from focus, dedication to your craft, and pure hustle.

Today I find an even deeper appreciation for Gooden and the impact he had on me. Although he never spoke about it, I wonder what

kind of adversity he could have encountered as a young African-American man in Gainesville, Florida, in the 1990s, as he forged his path in a predominantly white profession.

I treasure this signed copy of an architecture pamphlet from Gooden because it represents the ideals he taught me about the limitless nature of design, and the potential of a creative mind when it is focused and applied. Achievements that could make even the most discerning Asian-American parents very, very proud.

Khoi Vo is CEO of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). Most recently a leader at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Vo has touched the design world for nearly two decades as both a designer and an educator. In 2002 he founded Studio Four Los Angeles. He later founded Khoi Vo Design and operated as the studio’s design director for 12 years. He currently sits on the board of directors for the Interior Design Educators Council Foundation and has also served as site visitor and cochair for the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA), and as a member of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) and Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) for more than a decade.

Embarking on the Living Building Challenge

Every aspect of the space has been meticulously considered, and the dedication to sustainability and fostering innovation was evident throughout the entire process. It has been remarkable to be part of bringing the Stanley Center’s vision to life.”

Jason Heredia HNI VP of Product Design

Stanley Center for Peace and Security

Muscatine, Iowa

Furnished by Allsteel, Iowa’s newest 100% self-sufficient building educates and inspires others to be mindful of the planet, the opportunities for action, and the importance of diverse perspectives.