Insights
Transforming Office Buildings to Livable Spaces
Key considerations for commercial conversions to residential uses
Conversion, Flex and Spec Design for Life Sciences Uses
[…] active and completed projects. Design Considerations So how do you determine a real estate footprint? There is data and trends in the industry to support options for conversions, flex spaces and hubs. Depending on your requirements, we look to core design considerations in every project to enable workflow processes, flexibility and future capacity. Considerations […]
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
September 30, 2021 is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, a day that honours First Nations, Inuit and Métis lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. The Day responds to one of 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada to ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of […]
Board Appointments at Global Architecture and Engineering Firm NORR
[…] “When designing new projects, we must build flexibility into their designs to accommodate future adaptive reuses more effectively, maximizing lifespans and minimizing the carbon footprints created during conversions. By doing so, architects and engineers are helping to solve global challenges such as climate change and the housing crisis.” Anthony Ricciuti, Executive Vice President, Retail, […]
Designing Meaningful Engagement with Indigenous Groups
The world of design has much to learn from Indigenous Peoples. Tradition and knowledge are valued through harnessing personal and collective principles, thinking of buildings as living stories and embracing design as a way of building relationships, not as producing an innate object. As the A&E industry begins a journey to find meaningful ways to […]
Urban Regeneration Strategies
[…] measured through economic growth, as well as sustainable benefits for cities, owners, developers and occupants. While the industry talks a lot about the value of single building conversions, which is a big part of urban regeneration, the larger focus is acting on holistic strategies that attract capital to downtown cores through land and asset […]
Mental Health is a Universal Human Right
How empathy plays a pivotal role in designing for wellness
Planning for Seismic Intervention
Defining characteristics of heritage buildings is what makes them grand, yet these same characteristics can also pose a threat to occupant safety due to their vulnerability to seismic forces. A balance between the need for seismic upgrade and the constraint of maintenance of character-defining elements invariably comes up with almost every renovation project of a […]
Designing to Retain History and Improve Building Efficiency
Heritage buildings are a part of our collective consciousness. They are the sites of monumental events, symbols for change and indicators of what’s to come. As designers and architects, it is our role to maintain the characteristics of a site while increasing its efficiency and viability. What are the merits in conserving a heritage building […]
Making Our Cities Cool Again
Globally, urban centers are 15-degrees warmer compared to their adjacent natural hinterlands. This is caused by a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect. It’s driven by a city’s amalgam of heat-absorptive materials, such as masonry and asphalt, which by their nature store heat. Vegetation, on the other hand, controls temperatures by reflecting solar radiation, […]
Engineering Approaches to Green Building Strategies
Green building strategies is a large and complex topic that can take many paths. Achieving a green building depends on what route you take to realize your sustainability objectives. In a world where regional and regulatory requirements and tax incentives are driving the greening of the built environment, the positive impact is important to measure […]
Talk it Out: A primer on debriefing for simulated clinical events
Simulation is the re-creation of real-world events, using a suite of tools that includes table-top exercises, role-playing, patient actors, task-specific trainers and sophisticated full-scale computer-controlled mannequins. The latter resembles a flight simulator for training pilots: When you interact with the mannequin, it responds as a real patient would, by way of sounds, movement, and physiology. […]
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