6.23.08 | The seminars at NeoCon give us a pop look at things we really ought to know, but nevertheless persistently elude either fluent familiarity or comfortable expertise. So sign up we do and in we go. The air conditioning is good and acoustics work well as long as speakers use the mikes properly and you don't sit too close to the doors. There seats are often too close together, but this too has the value of tacitly reminding us to renew our vows of weight loss.

4.21.08 | There are generally two significant ways in which building design can impact occupants. The first area is the science of building performance; this describes the process of maximizing variables that influence occupants' perception of comfort such as acoustics, lighting, daylighting, temperature, and indoor air quality. Other variables that affect the perception of comfort in a more peripheral way include human factors and ergonomics

4.21.08 | During NeoCon 07, an alarm was sounded for the interior design profession. The warning was loud and clear: a serious decline in the pool of interior design educators was and is putting our profession in jeopardy. We realized we need to do something fast to continue fostering future generations of interior designers with the ever increasingly complex skill set demanded by our clients. The original Call to Action Dialogue at NeoCon 07 to address the declining pool of interior design educators, sponsored by Kimball Office, was well attended by interior design educators and practitioners. It became clear that the problem has many challenging and disparate components.

4.14.08 | As Modern architecture ages to a point where preservation is necessary, the methods and technology used in this preservation have to be carefully considered to maintain the design integrity of the building. Theodore H.M. Prudon’s (PhD, FAIA) Preservation Of Modern Architecture (published by Wiley) provides useful guidance, with many case studies, for the professional architect interested in a broad background in preservation as a field as well as specific material and technology issues in preservation.

3.17.08 | We are advised that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Through such maxims, we are led to believe that individual aesthetic tastes are random and unpredictable, subject to the winds of fashion! Design school spits us out into professional practice, and no one has told us otherwise.

3.17.08 | Haworth has partnered with Johnson Controls, a global leader in automotive experience, building efficiency and power solutions, to launch a research project called OXYGENZ - a global survey of Generation Y (18-25 year-olds) to understand their preferences for their future workplace.

3.3.08 | To some, “BIFMA” is just a funny way to spell boring, but this year’s Annual Leadership Conference (our first) in St. Petersburg, FL, was anything but. Not only were the presentations at this annual retreat of executives of the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association fit for an audience of designers, facilities managers (or just about anyone else), but, indeed, designers were there to make some of the presentations, and Michael Alin, Executive Director of ASID, was there to represent his organization, as were Mark Strauss, Publisher of Interior Design magazine, and John Rouse, Publisher of Contract. We definitely need much more of this cross-pollination and collaboration, but it is a start.

3.3.08 | The interaction of design and human behavior is of fundamental importance. In the words of Winston Churchill: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Substitute “environments” for “buildings” and we have a thoroughly modern conception of what we are about in creating the built environment. The relationship between humans and their environment, however, is anything but simple, and certainly not as linear or sequential as the quotation may suggest.