Restaurant design provides opportunities to welcome, inspire, and engage guests and create high-performance culinary work spaces for owners and staff. In addition to aesthetics, restaurant design involves many design and cost considerations which will impact decisions from the earliest project stages. Planning for these unique elements up front can streamline the design and construction process, and help architects to deliver the best possible design for their clients. Whether designing an intimate café or expansive cafeteria, the architect should consider these ten critical factors at the front end of design.
Last century’s model of high school typically included two tracks: an academic path that prepared students for college, and a vocational path that prepared students to enter directly into the workforce after graduation. Today’s economy demands greater flexibility and broader options, and our 21st century models of education recognize that all students benefit from hands-on learning. Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs offer this flexibility and real-world skills development, giving all students a head start on the future with coursework which transfers to college, technical college, or the workforce.
LS3P works across a wide variety of project types, but certain specialized spaces present interesting design challenges across market sector boundaries. One such program area is a high performance room, a type of program space which might include a worship center auditorium, a corporate meeting space, or a performance space at a fine arts center. Our recent project work has included high performance rooms at Elevation Ballantyne’s new worship center, the “stairitorium” for the office’s town hall at AvidXchange, and auditoriums for Cape Fear Community College’s Wilson Center and Charlotte Christian School. Though these projects serve different functions, they draw from a similar tool kit of strategies to create a specialized space and a world-class user experience.
Unlike the compartmentalized, lecture-based school models of the past, today’s educational facilities are blurring the lines between disciplines and encouraging collaborative, hands-on learning. On a community scale, our school systems are likewise breaking down educational silos to create centers for multidisciplinary teaching and learning. Rather than building single-use, single-user facilities which will function in isolation and meet one particular need, school systems are increasingly focused on creating spaces for new paradigms of teaching and learning and building meaningful partnerships in the process.
Working on the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) campus has been an exciting experience, and one which has challenged me as an architect to explore and implement next-level strategies for sustainable design. Clemson University is deeply committed to building sustainable campus facilities, as evidenced by the recent LEED Gold certification of its Center for Emerging Technologies (CET). The design team had a mandate to achieve at least LEED Silver certification, and by using a holistic, integrated approach to sustainable design from the earliest project stages, we were able to exceed expectations and ultimately achieve LEED Gold status.
We live in an era marked by rapid progress in technology. One of our most exciting challenges as architects is to create innovative building solutions to support emerging technologies. The zenith is when our buildings support a variety of systems in a manner that sustains the ongoing real-time evolution of the emerging technology. The transportation industry in general and the bus-transit sector in particular, is experiencing a monumental technological shift. LS3P recently had the opportunity to design a facility for the City of Seneca, SC in support of the city’s recent acquisition of the latest transportation technology - a new fleet of electric buses.
It was a beautiful 1964 ½ Mustang. It was fast, and it belonged to my mother. Fortunately, she often handed the keys over to me, a teenager, and I happily put it through its paces. I remember how exhilarating it felt to drive that Mustang alongside other teenagers on the streets of 1960s Charleston.
Not so long ago, freshman orientation was a daunting experience. A college acceptance letter kicked off a lengthy administrative process: packets of forms to be filled out and submitted in hard copy, followed by long lines for student IDs, parking passes, tuition payments, and financial aid questions. Even registering for classes was an in-person, on-paper chore. Getting set up for your first semester on a new campus could take several days of navigating from building to building, waiting for your turn to submit a form or ask a question. Your first days on campus felt like a prolonged trip to the DMV.
As school districts nationwide plan for long-term maintenance and construction costs, they share a number of common concerns. Districts ask, “How much is a typical monthly maintenance bill, and what does it include? How much does it cost to bring a school up to ‘21st century learning’ standards? How much would it cost to build new? What’s the monthly maintenance cost difference between a renovated building and a new facility? What is the up-front cost difference between renovation and new construction?”
On October 27, Clemson University will break ground on a new leading-edge building for the College of Business. This 176,000 SF building will double the University’s business education space, and will enable the College of Business to build a new paradigm of 21st century learning based on collaboration and creative collisions in our increasingly interconnected world.
The Millennial Generation has entered its prime spending years. A cohort of this size, roughly 27% of the US population with over 80 million people, will inevitably impact trends across all industries, and the hospitality market is no exception. How can we best design hotels to meet the unique expectations of this generation? An emphasis on the local experience is a great place to start.
As architects, we spend our careers building a distinctive set of skills. We’re trained not only to design buildings, but also to lead teams, identify and solve problems, and see the “big picture” in any situation.
Product transparency between manufacturers and designers is critical not only to the success of a project, but also to the health of the people who will occupy a building.
Virtual Reality (VR) has been around for a while now, but for architects, it’s been thrilling to start to reap the full benefits of this powerful tool for design and communication.
Architecture has long been associated with permanence. In many respects we bear an unwritten obligation to design buildings that endure.
Designing high performance workplace environments involves “designing everything” in tandem, focusing on three distinct domains of design practice: the physical facilities, the organizational work process and the IT systems.