Architecture firms are increasingly offering in-house design awards in an effort to boost morale and inspire creativity. Photo courtesy Perkins+Will (Left to right) Casey Jones, Ron Bogle, Nancy Easton, and Steve Turckes assess entries in Perkins+Will's annual design competition in 2011. Ed Feiner, the former chief architect of the General Services Administration, made a name for himself creating the agency’s well-regarded Design Excellence program, which raised the creative bar for government buildings. Today, he’s taking on a similar challenge at Perkins+Will (P+W), which he joined in 2009. As director of the firm’s design Leadership Forum, started in collaboration with chief
For the fourth straight year, heavyweights AECOM and Gensler have landed at the number one and two spots, respectively, on our annual Top 250 Architecture Firms list, which ranks companies according to architectural revenue in the prior year.
Now three decades old, has the IDP lived up to its lofty goals? The AIA and NCARB created the Intern Development Program (IDP) more than 30 years ago in order to establish a structured training process in architecture firms for students and graduates. The program was meant to expose students to different aspects of the profession, and help them become competent licensed architects. Now three decades old, has the program lived up to its lofty goals? G. Chaise Nunnally is a freelance writer and editor in Southern California. In an attempt to assess the program and its impact on
As any good psychologist will tell you, names are destiny, imposing on newborn babies parental expectations that often become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Lawyers say integrated-project-delivery documents have come a long way, but caution is still in order. It may seem unusual to find lawyers agreeing with each other, but there seems to be unanimity on one important issue: Before architects embark on integrated-project-delivery (IPD) projects, they should have their contracts closely scrutinized by legal and insurance professionals. IPD proponents believe collaboration instead of competition within the design/construction team results in better, faster, less-expensive projects. But risk-averse, adversarial relationships are so habitual in the U.S. construction industry that legal structures, insurance policies, and much else needs to change to accommodate these new ideas.
Two architects talk candidly about how they turned their business around even before the recession. In 2007, Marvin Meltzer, AIA (far right), a partner in an extremely successful New York City multifamily housing practice, began going through the sort of business transition that no one should ever face. David Mandl, his business partner and principal of their firm, Meltzer/Mandl Architects, for over a decade, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. When an engineering firm interested in buying the business began going over the books, Meltzer and David Carpenter, AIA (near right), who had been helping to run the business in Mandl’s
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