We're proud to share that our Boston office has been named a Best & Brightest Company in the Boston Metro Area! The Best and Brightest Companies to Work For competition identifies and honors organizations that display a commitment to excellence in their human resource practices and employee enrichment. Organizations are assessed on communication, work-life balance, employee education, diversity, recognition, retention and more.

We're proud to share that our San Francisco office has been named a Best & Brightest Company in the Bay Area! The Best and Brightest Companies to Work For competition identifies and honors organizations that display a commitment to excellence in their human resource practices and employee enrichment. Organizations are assessed on communication, work-life balance, employee education, diversity, recognition, retention and more.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation recently shared news of Wacker Chemical Corporation establishing its North American Innovation Center & Regional Headquarters in Pittsfield Charter Township. Designed by HED, this facility will house Wacker's North American headquarters and R&D operations and is expected to create 70 high-paying, high-skilled jobs.

"WACKER’s expansion in Michigan means well-paying jobs for Michigan residents and underscores the strength of the state’s advanced manufacturing industry and talented workforce,” said MEDC Chief Business Development Officer and Executive Vice President Josh Hundt. “This new Innovation Center & Regional Headquarters continues to build on Michigan’s R&D leadership and sends yet another strong signal that Michigan’s economic recovery is well underway. We’re pleased that Michigan was chosen over competing sites in other states for this new headquarters facility, and we look forward to working with WACKER as they continue to grow and add jobs in Michigan.”

The new Innovation Center & Regional Headquarters will serve as a leading-edge location for advanced R&D activities and enhanced employee collaboration, allowing the company to tap into the local pool of highly-qualified personnel who have scientific backgrounds in various disciplines and also supporting WACKER’s long-term growth plans in the state. The building capacity of more than 300 employees will include those who will relocate from WACKER’s current regional headquarters in the city of Adrian as well as up to 70 new jobs to be added in the next five years. WACKER will continue production of elastomers, silicone fluids and silicone emulsions at its existing Adrian operations, with approximately two-thirds of the current employees remaining there.

This is WACKER’s second expansion in Michigan in recent years. In 2017, the company established a Silicones R&D Center in Ann Arbor. The new headquarters project is expected to create 70 highly paid jobs and generate a total private investment of $51 million, resulting in a $1 million Michigan Business Development Program grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund. Michigan was chosen for the North American Innovation Center & Regional Headquarters over competing sites in Tennessee and Ohio. The project aligns with MEDC’s strategic focus of attracting, retaining and supporting a business in the focus industries of advanced manufacturing and engineering, design and development, while fostering high-wage skills growth. In addition, WACKER has a robust on-the-job training program, with both internal and external opportunities for advancement. The company is also actively engaged with schools and universities, and has supported a successful internship program to provide hands-on opportunities to students.

“We are excited to move forward with our Innovation Center and Regional Headquarters to be located within Michigan,” said WACKER President & CEO David Wilhoit. “Our new facility will enable future growth in the state and serve as an important anchor for our operations across North America. This area is one of the nation’s leading communities for R&D. We look forward to networking with, and recruiting from, this highly educated and skilled talent base.”

You can read the full story, or other stories about Wacker's recently shared news using the links below.

We're pleased to share that the UC Davis Latitude Dining Commons is the cover feature of the fall issue of School Construction News! You can read the full feature by clicking the PDF download button below or using the link to SCN's website at the bottom of this page.

"While the current pandemic has hamstrung the full-fledged use of the facility, it’s hard to picture a more dynamic dining facility than one unveiled earlier this year in the Golden State.

Designed by HED and built by Otto Construction, the venue is the new, 500-seat, 33,000-square-foot on-campus Latitude Dining Commons at UC Davis. The design is inspired by the verdant Central Valley spread between the Sierra Nevada and coastal mountains. The program includes full commercial kitchen capability and provides multiple international food platforms as well as retail grab-n-go and convenience options.

The building picks up on the agricultural roots of the region and the shed/barn vernacular, providing students a place to eat, meet, study, and lounge. And the space represents the food and farming culture of the region and the institution itself.

The building includes a two-level area that includes front of house public functions (dining, serving, queuing, and retail), and a one-level mass that includes all back of house functions. The double-height dining space includes a mezzanine level to the south that faces a view garden. The project will also include a loading dock for deliveries, outdoor seating opportunities, circulation, site improvements, and bicycle parking. The HED development team’s integrated approach combines the University of California Davis’ minimum requirements with its own innovations to achieve LEED Gold certification.

Otto and HED saw the budget as a shared design challenge and took equal responsibility for that. Otto and HED proved to be a cultural fit, and the team members connected around an ethos of transparency, honesty, and authenticity. And they had fun with the Farm to Fork theme: Agendas for client meetings had a menu theme (including a bill for the budget meeting).

The design is inspired by the Central Valley spread between the coastal mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Within the sun-drenched agricultural heart of the state and the nation, a simple and functional design vernacular has developed. Structure is exposed, roofs are pitched, and materials and details are straightforward and functional.

The new building is sited between Tercero residential buildings to the south across Tercero Drive, future science buildings across Bioletti Way, and connects a major campus street, Hutchison to the North. In the future a new campus pedestrian path will connect the project site to the eastern reaches of the campus. The project is therefore both a focus for the residences and the sciences as well as a gateway building for the entire campus.

The landscape is contoured to allow multiple pathways to link the bounding sidewalk with dining and retail entrances. A continuous band of active public terraces shares views with pedestrians and cyclists along Bioletti Way. Tables and chairs, benches and generous steps encourage students to hang out, wait for friends or eat a bite purchased at the Retail facility as they study under the trees. Bike parking is located at the south and north ends of the site so that conflicts between bikes and pedestrians are minimized.

A light metal clad folded roof floats up above large glass walls and extends out to shade entrances and terraces or folds down into cement plaster clad walls to at once embody lightness on the one hand and connect to the ground on the other. While this roof form is redolent of a barn roof, its fluid shape and expressed movement is intended to create a strong presence befitting an important campus student center.

The double-height dining space is divided by a mezzanine level into a south area that faces a view garden and future site of a new residence building, and a dining area that faces east to Bioletti Way and its activities. The mezzanine connects second level exterior terraces at the east and south facades which in turn shade terrace area and the main dining entrance below. From the mezzanine one has views to the retail so that the collective energy of both spaces is shared. Painted steel stairs between the first and second levels stand free in the space creating a “see and be seen” dynamic that adds to the public theater of this important student hub."

In a recent piece from Seniors Housing Business, Housing Sector Leader Drew Roskos explores the future impacts of COVID-19 on senior housing - what should we hold onto, and how will we adapt?

"Now in month six of our country’s full-scale reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all embracing today’s heightened awareness of public health across the board, especially in our field of senior living.

As of this writing, roughly one-third of COVID-19 cases reported have been in senior living communities. As research continues to teach us more about the spread of the virus who is at the greatest risk, we are also likely all growing in our realization of how this pandemic experience will impact the creation of the senior living facilities of the future.

Our national housing team at HED is working to layer pandemic-related design thinking in with the accumulated design understanding of best design practices. While certainly our healthcare design colleagues, and many of us working in the housing sector, have already considered traditional germ and disease flow for years, we know this pandemic will increase the expectations of occupants, developers and building visitors for decades to come — as it should.

What has not changed, though, is our insistence on keeping quality of life and resident happiness as the priority for design success. For both residents and staff, a community is only successful if it serves the needs of the occupants. So, when it comes to both quality of life and health, these groups will always warrant the most important consideration.

What we need to hold on to

Senior living communities that are in dense areas with a strong connection — both physically and programmatically — to the larger, public community will continue to be the most successful and the healthiest environments for older adults. Social connectivity, and its impact on mental and physical health, will continue to be a top priority of this population group, both during the remainder of this pandemic event and long after. It’s an aspect that we can’t lose sight of on the heels of this experience.

We need to continue to actively solve for those needs while also incorporating healthy design responses to today’s research around this virus and other communicable diseases. Our mandate will be to find a balance between helping families be comforted by this new level of care without feeling constricted by it.

Well before we knew of COVID-19, senior living communities would change their operations or increase physical distancing as a result of busy flu seasons, pneumonia outbreaks or otherwise. Programming and scheduled activities changed to account for these concerns, and staff members wore masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment (PPE) in order to do their part in containing these germs.

But with a heightened consumer awareness of these kinds of health challenges now, we can all expect a more careful eye on the facility itself and its role in disease spread, especially when potential residents are considering their options.

Additionally, the seniors housing industry was creatively moving to utilize more external resources in fulfilling the care of their patients. From telehealth visits to video-based activity engagement, these systemic changes were already helping to reduce the outside visits from excess people.

As this shift toward external care providers, and a reduction in onsite staff continues much more on the road ahead, it is my hope that we see a balance on our facilities’ accommodation of family and visits with loved ones, and less on providers.

How will we adapt?

To start, the first adaptation we need to make is to the design process itself.

From the onset of a facility’s design effort, we need to be prepared to also design what we are calling a “health management overlay.” This overlay should be crafted with operational leaders to ensure the feasibility of specific ideas in the event of another public health crisis, or even smaller-scale crises that we will now want to be better prepared for.

Operators must consider everything from the spatial needs of telehealth appointments to where the extra chairs are stored when social distancing; and from the creation of processing spaces to identifying places for the additional location of permanent hand washing stations. This new overlay opportunity will allow a facility to be designed with a typical health condition in mind, while preparing for these kinds of frightening atypical events as well.

When it comes to more permanent physical design changes for future facilities, there are a few that will need to be implemented without a doubt.

One of those is a greater focus on HVAC design — considering adding zones and increasing air filtration as a result of this pandemic. While mechanical systems have moved toward more efficient choices in an effort to reduce energy consumption, these new lenses of filtration effectiveness and isolation compartmentalization will take a more center-stage role in the years ahead as well.

We are also confident that outdoor spaces will be significantly re-examined in the years ahead. From the simple mathematical need to increase social distance, to a pent-up desire to be outdoors after initial quarantines evolved, we are now excited to focus on the most effective design of outdoor space for a larger variety of lifestyle needs for our seniors.

While the importance of active spaces and walking paths remain for the physical health of our seniors, we are now also eager to increase the crafting of intimate spaces where people can passively watch outdoor activities from a safe distance or gather in small groups to connect amidst the fresh outdoor air.

Another noticeable area where we all saw an immediate opportunity was technology. Those facilities that were more technology-enabled had more options when it came time to change their typical operations. From walking into and out of rooms without needing to touch switches, to hosting virtual family hangouts, technology proved to be the greatest gap creator between the haves and the have-nots. We see this continuing to drive the conversation as we create new communities moving forward.

And in the area of access control, independent living or active adult communities might see an uptick in multiple entrances, creating ways for facilities to lock down individual halls or break resident groups down into smaller groups or neighborhoods. This idea, though, will certainly not shift in the memory care or skilled nursing, where security and safety of resident arrival and departure will continue to take priority.

No need for overreaction

The most important point on the mind of our team, as we actively work on the design of new senior living facilities, is to not “react” our way into new problems.

While pandemic woes will certainly weigh heavy on the minds of operators and families for many years to come, we know there are many dimensions to health. The opportunity to learn from this unique viral experience is most certainly great, and it is an important opportunity to seize. We are excited to apply today’s senior living lessons to our design process.

As always, though, we must all be careful to make long-term decisions for our buildings based on a holistic set of industry knowledge, not just around unique experiences or isolated information garnered from our journeys along the way."

As featured in the Santa Monica Daily Press, the $133 million new academic structure at Santa Monica High School, known as the Discovery Building, was designed to be a flexible and adaptable building that can remain on the cutting edge of educational needs. While the architecture team did not initially anticipate that pandemic proofing a classroom would become one of those needs, designers at HED and Moore Ruble Yudell have recently reimagined how the building can accommodate socially distant, outdoor, and hybrid education models.

The building is on schedule to open in Aug. 2021 and will bring 38 new classrooms, an upgraded pool, a rooftop hydroponic garden, high-tech lab facilities, and several wide and open-air common spaces to Samohi’s North Campus. It’s the result of collaboration between architects from HED and Moore Ruble Yudell and builders from McCarthy Building Companies who began construction in April 2019. Although it is currently unclear what learning will look like in the fall 2021 semester, the building’s design is prepared for COVID-19 learning adaptations.

“We have been able to demonstrate, within the context of the pandemic, that the new building can flex to accommodate social distancing and linear circulation to enhance safety. Classes can spread apart by taking advantage of the connections between classrooms and the commons areas adjacent through folding glass doors. There are also multiple terraces with casual seating and even rooftop classrooms that can become opportunities for outdoor learning,” said John Dale, Principal at HED.

The building is designed with a flexible, open-column grid, raised floors, and non load bearing walls, which means the layout can be resigned over time. Several of the classrooms will have outdoor terraces and connections to common areas, which can be opened up to assist with social distancing and increase air circulation.

“The Discovery Building was designed with change in mind. When first conceived, we thought of change in terms of changing pedagogical needs, meaning learning spaces can be easily reconfigured and clustered to provide varied instructional opportunities. That also means the building has built-in ‘slack’ – the ability of classes to spread outside their normal confines into shared ‘common’ areas throughout the building,” said Hale.

Each classroom will also be equipped with at least two projection sources, which could be used to accommodate students joining class via Zoom. Designers have also developed a floor plan that places seats six feet apart and has circulation arrows so people move across the building in the same direction and do not cross paths.

You can read the full feature from the Santa Monica Daily Press using the link below.

HED is pleased to welcome Daniel Ringler to the firm as Associate Principal, Sector Leadership in the San Diego office, bringing over twenty-seven years of experience in the delivery of complex repositioning and adaptive reuse projects as well as a variety of corporate, hospitality and retail interiors projects. In this role, Daniel will lead integrated architectural and engineering design teams to develop and execute effective strategies for quality project execution, primarily in the corporate and commercial sectors.

Prior to joining HED, Daniel acted as Managing Director at LPA, where he led multidiscipline teams to create design solutions to the benefit of investors, developers, building owners, brokers and tenants.

Daniel’s industry knowledge and focus on client needs will be integral to HED’s effectiveness toward its mission: Advancing Your World, through the Positive Impact of design, our teams create exceptional solutions for our clients, the community, and the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be particularly difficult to contain in senior living facilities, where many staff and residents are often concentrated in large buildings.

Between the high population density, frequently traveled common areas, and shared communal surfaces in dining halls, the traditional design of senior living buildings has proven to contribute to the disease’s spread. After the pandemic is over, could more facilities turn to the neighborhood planning model?

"How COVID-19 Could Bring a Resurgence of the “Neighborhood” Planning Model" by HED's Drew Roskos was recently published in iAdvance Senior Care Magazine to address this exact issue. You can read an excert of that piece here, or use the link below to view it on iAdvance Senior Care's website.


The Benefits of the Neighborhood Planning Model

The neighborhood model offers many advantages. Rather than have all residents use the same communal areas like dining halls, a neighborhood model features a smaller dining room and living room in each smaller “neighborhood.” Many of these facilities feature homelike living spaces like individual apartments or suites, further allowing for resident privacy.

These facilities tend to feel more like homes. The design encourages residents to engage in smaller groups, but by visiting other “neighborhoods,” residents can still interact with many different people. This type of residency can also encourage physical activity in residents.

This model also offers distinct advantages when it comes to controlling disease transmission. Drew Roskos, AIA with HED, notes that facility owners and operators considering the neighborhood model have been focusing not only on resident social activity levels, but also on disease prevention and containment and models that allow a business to run more safely and effectively.

“I believe that the neighborhood model allows residents to “quaran-team” – maintaining contact with a small group while separated from others – to allow for safe social participation and that the increase in interest for this model is justified, especially as we develop a long term view of the issue and as we look at how this will work for other levels of care with higher acuity,” says Roskos.

Roskos also explains that the neighborhood model offers construction benefits, too. It’s versatile in that it can be implemented with modular construction. That’s a particular benefit in rural or suburban areas, where generous site sizes make modular construction deliveries simpler. “The development of a network of smaller communities can be a useful solution to staffing issues in these less dense areas,” notes Roskos.

The neighborhood model is also practical in urban areas, where smaller communities using the model can help residents to engage with community resources. “For example, small stand-along communities can occupy smaller parcels of land or can be a part of a mixed-use development,” says Roskos.

Neighborhood models offer residents and owner/operators plenty of benefits. According to Roskos, this model helps to build a sense of ownership in residents. Facilities can quickly implement this style, and the separate buildings of a neighborhood model can be built specifically for certain types of care or certain types of residents.

Roskos recently finished construction on the Illinois Veteran’s Home, a skilled nursing facility that will provide care to 200 veterans. This facility is a prime example of how the neighborhood model can be used to provide certain types of care. “It’s a supportive method to address the unique characteristics of the aging veteran community,” notes Roskos.


Overcoming Barriers to the Neighborhood Model

This model isn’t without its challenges, though. Roskos explains that neighborhood model facilities have higher construction costs. Because residents are spread out, staff, including food services, are under greater demands. Equipment may need to be duplicated throughout the different buildings.

“The neighborhood model places a large focus on a high ratio of staff to residents,” Roskos advises. He recommends that a facility interested in exploring this model confirm its staffing numbers before moving forward. A facility might consider a hub and spoke model across a region to leverage staff coverage and to help offset higher construction costs.

As an alternative, facilities might explore mixed use developments. “In mixed use urban developments, the smaller community can fit within the larger development and though financing can be complicated, it can provide a way to share the burden of developing new construction in an urban setting,” explains Roskos. This can be an ideal solution for denser settings.

The neighborhood model has been criticized for not increasing positive interaction and socialization between seniors. “I disagree with that,” says Roskos. “Neighborhoods have the potential for significant bonds and relationships, but a downside is it also has opportunity for conflict.”


Looking to the Future

Embracing the neighborhood model offers a facility distinct advantages when it comes to disease control, and the current pandemic is evidence of how important it is to design facilities with this in mind. With other benefits like creating a more homelike environment and the potential for fast implementation, it’s easy to see how this model could become a popular option for the future of senior care facilities.

HED is excited to share that the Lathrop housing project has been named an ENR Midwest Best Project of 2020 in the Residential / Hospitality category!

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) assembled teams of well-regarded architects to design much-needed housing for low-income families throughout Chicago. Almost a century later, one such development, Julia C. Lathrop Homes, is undergoing a comprehensive transformation.

For decades, the city of Chicago sought to redevelop the Julia C. Lathrop Homes, a 1938 Public Works Administration housing development that’s now on the National Register of Historic Places. With 32 buildings on 35 acres, the public housing development owned by the Chicago Housing Authority had fallen into disrepair by the early 2000s, and as the factories once around it were replaced by a shopping district, the Chicago River that its landscape abutted became an asset and not a polluted shipping canal. Many of the buildings were uninhabitable because of years of deferred maintenance. When Related Midwest and its partners Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp. and Heartland Alliance Housing won the RFP in 2010, a new approach was necessary.

Part of Chicago Housing Authorities’ (CHA’s) groundbreaking Plan for Transformation, which seeks to combine CHA, affordable and market rate housing into single, mixed-income developments, Lathrop continues the tradition of collaboration.

“We knew that there were a number of constituents and stakeholders that wanted to preserve almost all the buildings,” says Sarah Wick, vice president at Related Midwest, the managing partner of development partnership. “We also knew that there was a lot of momentum and energy around ensuring there was a lot of affordable housing.”

Master planning began in 2010, and the project went through deliberate phases of design with community input throughout, led by the nonprofit developers. Phase IA totals roughly 500,000 gross sq ft of site improvements such as new utilities, the preservation of trees and the Jens Jensen-designed Great Lawn. Lathrop Community Partners and the city eventually settled on a mix of income distribution of 36% public housing, 22% residents that qualify as affordable housing and 45% at market rate for the development. All the housing units were built with the same finishes and level of quality, while all the public housing units that were lost during the redevelopment were replaced with other housing the CHA has in the city.

Development partners Related Midwest, Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation and Heartland Housing—together, Lathrop Community Partners—oversaw the project. The design team included JGMA, Design Architect; HED, Executive Architect; Michael Van Valkenburgh (MVVA), Landscape Architect; and McGuire Igleski & Associates (MIA), Exterior Preservationist.

The HED team contributed its integrated design expertise and extensive housing experience to modernize the historic structures; incorporate health, wellness and sustainability strategies; redesign systems for efficiency and effectiveness; address accessibility; and provide LEED documentation for two additional structures on this site. The overall project has LEED and Green Enterprise Community certification, becoming one of the largest Green Enterprise Communities to date.

The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Foundation Fellowship (NFF) is an initiative that seeks to increase diversity within professional practice as well as provide firm mentorship and design research experience for young emerging professionals.

In this inaugural 30-student cohort, HED has had the opportunity to host two interns -- these students spend their internship researching a topic with the help of HED staff and resources. HED is proud to provide a platform for the next generation of architects and looks forward to the positive impact they will have on the industry and the world.

One of this year’s interns is Aaron DeRoux, a master's student studying architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We asked Aaron about his time at HED and the positive impact he created while being a part of our team.

What is the title/topic of your project?
-The topic is called Embodied Carbon Reduction Research-Research measurement tools and processes to measure and perform Life Cycle Assessments in relation to embodied carbon reduction design strategies.
 
What drew you to this topic/project?
-This topic was selected by the leaders in the Chicago office, but I will say that this topic falls in line with my thesis focus during graduate school. A sustainable tower in downtown Chicago that acts as an environmental oasis within a concrete jungle.
 
What type of work did this project consist of?
-The work consists of a product testing new technology such as tally and one-click LCA. These products are a great carbon emission calculator during the design process. They allow architects and designers to consider material use within their projects and its potential impact on the environment. It also generates data and charts that could be easily understood by different stakeholders.
 
What was the result/findings?
-The findings so far prove that as we continue to work in the built environment, we need to make a change that can benefit our ecosystem and minimize the effects of global warming. Currently, concrete is our most popular building material, and it is great that we can reduce the energy usage of concrete structures. Still, the embodied carbon released through the life cycle of the material from manufacturing to disassembly can be just as harmful to the environment. With this understanding, we can see that doing LCAs early allows us to make smart and sustainable design decisions.

What is the positive impact or potential positive impact of this project?
- The positive impact behind this work is that we can now generate data that can help us design for a better future. A lot of firms are taking the initiative to be apart of the architecture 2030 challenge to become carbon-neutral with their buildings. HED is a significant player in the built environment. The findings from this research will allow architects across the country to easily implement a sustainable mindset during early project phases. 

HED is proud to be an active supporter of NOMA and wishes Aaron the best in his future.