Inform Magazine

A multi-story building downtown. — Originally built in 1904 as the Hotel Richmond, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Barbara Johns Office Building was rehabilitated and adapted by Commonwealth Architects to LEED-NC Gold standards. Photo: Glenn Suttenfield

05/03/23

How viable is sustainability for downtowns and design budgets?

“We’re getting closer,” says Lee Shadbolt, AIA, “and the threshold is lower to get over now to send a message that sustainability is viable.”

Mogantarat plate calculation of Astrolabe by Jacopo188 CC BY-SA 3.0.

04/26/23

Design, Featured, Member Voice

Design Dialogue: New calculator compares carbon savings for existing and new building

Architecture 2030’s CARE Tool estimates the operational and embodied carbon emissions of a project in two scenarios: reusing it and upgrading it or replacing it with new construction.

Heirloom Farm Studio, designed by Bushman Dreyfus Architects, is a poplar-clad studio outside Charlottesville that lives in the popular imagination, as well as at the center one of architecture’s most fundamental theories about shelter. Virginia Hamrick Photography

03/23/23

Architecture, Residential Design

Contexts Collide at Heirloom Farm Studio to Create a Familiar Form

Heirloom Farm Studio, designed by Bushman Dreyfus Architects is a poplar-clad studio and an expression of colliding contexts.

At Hanbury, we believe that the greatest creative evolution is born from unrelenting experimentation. Orange Juice is an internal collective formed to let its designers explore their passions and interests that extend beyond architecture’s conventions.

03/09/23

Design, Member Voice, People

Freshly Squeezed: Hanbury Serves Up Its New Creative Collective, Orange Juice

At Hanbury, we believe that the greatest creative evolution is born from unrelenting experimentation.

Erica Cochran Hameen in an impromptu session with undergraduate and graduate students at Carnegie Mellon talk about some of the design challenges facing architects — Erica Cochran Hameen in an impromptu session with undergraduate and graduate students at Carnegie Mellon talking about some of the design challenges facing architects on both the technical side and what she calls the “holistic” side of sustainability. Photo courtesy Erica Cochran Hameen.

03/07/23

Opinion, People

Perspectives on Justice: Erica Cochran Hameen on today’s students becoming tomorrow’s architects

“I see a generation of students who are thinking that way—about regions outside their own and regions beyond their experience,” says Hameen.

An oblique view of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC. — The FBI’s current headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building has been deemed unusable by GSA (and called far worse by others), owing to tens of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance and what many say is a poor design for workers. Image: Public Domain

02/28/23

Featured, News

FBI’s New HQ Presents Opportunities for Equity, Architects

The FBI hopes to build a more sustainable HQ that will encourage racial equity in its next community—architects take note.

02/22/23

Sketches

Sketches: Grandin Village Shops

Architect Kevin Deck’s line & wash sketch of the historic Grandin Village, done on location in Roanoke, Va.

Celebrating Two Decades of Innovation at Virginia Tech’s Center for Design Research

What’s so radical about transparency?

Page + Miller Hull’s gambit for Niger

Q+A: Alex Shifflett on her first decade of practice

Ted Flato: Exploring smarter, better, easier, cheaper at Design Forum XVI

Op-Ed: CODE Charlottesville improves an unloved corner of Halprin’s masterpiece