From your first waking moment to lights out, the guestroom bathroom plays a pivotal role in setting the tone for a phenomenal guest experience. This integral, multi-use space is the true hotel chameleon, serving as both mood-setter and pure function: a private, spa-like sanctuary and place to decompress, or a highly serviceable, get-in, get-out necessity.
Thomas Jefferson, the great American President and architect, addressed the concept of intergenerational remote tyranny – the idea that one generation might pollute the earth and destroy the ability of future generations to celebrate its abundance. He penned a letter to his colleague James Madison in 1789 that stated the following:
“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs to the living……..no man may by natural right oblige the land he owns or occupies to debts greater than those that may be paid during his own lifetime. If he could, then the world would belong to the dead, and not to the living”
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Healthcare facility designers continue to further develop the concept of a healing environment, which includes the use of natural light, views of nature, strategic use of color and the elimination of noise, according to the experts judging this year’s Modern Healthcare Design awards. However, they note new hospitals will have to go way beyond that to stand out.
HKS’s Phoenix Children’s Hospital Thomas Campus is doing just that. The hospital received a Modern Healthcare citation/built design award.
This is less a question to be answered directly, but rather a provocation for a conceptual business model for the continuation of the architectural profession. I believe that this concept is interesting for HKS in that HKS is interested both in the innovation of architecture [the built environment] and the longevity of the firm itself. I would, therefore, not be looking for a direct answer, but rather a moment of reflection for the future of the architectural profession and how we [architypes] might secure our longevity and relevance in a dynamic and ever-changing political and economic landscape.
With the future uncertainties of the architectural profession, among many other trades, in lieu of a declining economy, it appears to be critical to rethink current business models (relationship between architects/clients/cities/etc.) that limit the discipline to a confined role. It is important to note precedents in other fields whom are ahead of the economic curve despite recessions as well as cultural trends. Two trends I believe architecture could take advantage of, for both increased monetary gain and building performance, is the media-driven world of cloud-computing and sustainable practices (“the green movement”). To increase their longevity, as do species in biological nature fighting for survival, increased their diversity and stretched their web-of-influence within the ecology.
This year, Boeing will no longer sell jet engines; rather they will lease them, so that overtime they may continually monitor the performance of the jet engines from larger ranges as opposed to only monitoring an individual engine—where little information can be gathered compared to the emergent information that will be seen from looking at the entire field of engines within the world. As a business model this allows them to have access to a continuous flow of finances from both a product and service. Their monitoring not only allows them to see in real-time the performance of their product/design, but how to better re-design future engines—which will undoubtedly lead to patentable products/designs.
This type of business model can be seen in relation to another profession that was at once losing out on it services/product due to piracy and outsourced/generic models—mass-media: music, videos and software. To combat the problem of piracy, in conjunction with novel ideas of distributed networking and cloud computing, allowed software companies to hold on to their product while the users merely tap into this continuous stream of product. This allows both the company to monitor the popularity and profitability of their services (the performance) and also allows for a continuous stream of financial income by increasing their web-of-influence.
These examples are interesting models considering the current atmosphere that the architectural profession is now immersed. Architectural firms, in this scenario, would design and simulate architectural solutions, both seek-out clients and become more available to new clients, lease the product to the client, and continue to monitor the product throughout its lifecycle. This would allow the profession to take a lead role in the enhancement of building performance through quantitative and qualitative monitoring—where currently we lack real-time quantitative data to back up our computer simulated data of building performance. This would produce valuable information for the built environment, as a scientific and technological vantage, through the increased data afforded by the monitoring of multiple buildings in the environment. This type of model might, in fact, be a more pleasurable model considering the changing sociocultural landscape for those seeking rapid exchanges/transactions (mobility as opposed to stability/lease as opposed to outright ownership). The second cultural shift affecting this movement is the increased call for sustainable technologies over the lifecycle of a product [decreased carbon footprint and waste reduction] and the increased monitoring, simulating, and tracking of every known product and service in both the present and past. In addition, to its benefits toward better understanding our built environment and sustainable technologies (monitoring, sensing, and simulating), at a time when there are large fluctuations and instability in the economy and world markets, whether the architectural firm was in fact designing new buildings/infrastructure or not, there would still be a steady-income and need from the monitoring and upkeep of the buildings and the built environment at large—the web of interdependence would be too great between the two for either to be pulled apart—a symbiotic relationship.
Located at the southernmost tip of the Baja Peninsula where the Sea of Cortes meets the Pacific Ocean, Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa Cabo San Lucas celebrated its official grand opening.
Designed by HKS Hill Glazier Studio, the resort is set along the naturally exclusive white sand beaches of Playa Solmar. The Grand Solmar is a poetic return to the origins of Solmar Hotels & Resorts and the site of the first Solmar Hotel built in the 1970′s. The property’s 119 suites boast unobstructed views of majestic Pacific Ocean and azure waters of the Sea of Cortes.
“The architecture features old world Mexican décor while highlighting the raw natural beauty of its setting,” said Sergio Saenz, senior designer with HKS Hill Glazier Studio. “The resort engages the environment and creates spaces that highlight the site – from the foot of the mountain to the water’s edge of the Pacific Ocean to the infinity of the horizon.”
COMFEN is a tool designed to support the systematic evaluation of alternative fenestration systems for project-specific commercial building applications. Developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for architectural façade designer, COMFEN provides a simplified user interface that focuses attention on key variables in fenestration design. Under the hood is Energy Plus, a sophisticated analysis engine that dynamically simulates the effects of these key fenestration variables on energy consumption, peak energy demand, and thermal and visual comfort. The results from the Energy Plus simulations are presented in graphical and tabular format within the simplified user interface for comparative fenestration design cases to help users move toward optimal fenestration design choices for their project.
HKS DesignGreen is beginning to assist design teams in analyzing façade options with this software and believe that it will be a very promising tool in the near future.
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