Expert Insights

So, You're Going On A School Tour

The planning process for new school facilities takes months, even years which usually includes a school tour or two (or three!) of newly constructed or renovated school buildings. These tours can easily overload the senses...so, what should one be looking for during a school tour?

Project Team Chemistry: 3 Ways to Get it Right from the Beginning

Getting team chemistry right from the beginning is key to ensure a smooth process throughout a project. Here are the top three team chemistry catalysts believed to be impactful for an AEC project team.

Top Takeaways from Lean In Design Forum - Innovation & Collaboration

Sparking Inspiration: Insights from 2019 Lean In Design conference. How we can carve out time to cultivate innovative ideas, collaboration and results?

How Can Schools Solve for Full-Day Kindergarten? Break Out Your Klotski Puzzles!

With full-day kindergarten becoming the new norm, how are schools able to accommodate the additional students? Here are five cost effective ways to change your school without completing new construction or a major renovation.

Designing for Diversity: Creating Inclusive Workplace Environments

How can we be different together and design workplace environments to support those differences?

In the Spotlight: Benefits of the On-Stage/Off-Stage Model of Care

Recently, we have seen more and more of our clients transitioning from a traditional, linear model of care to an on-stage/off-stage approach which better separates patient from caregiver spaces.

Embarking on the Leadership Adventure

Moving from individual contributor to leader of a group can challenge our sense of self, but also open us up to new ways of bringing value to our teams and our organizations.

Key Considerations for Behavioral Health Inpatient Unit Design

When I started working with SSM Health on projects for the St. Mary’s Madison campus, the hospital was just wrapping up a new, 28-bed Behavioral Health inpatient unit.

The Facility Impact in Creating a Provider of Choice by Elevating Patient and Staff Experiences

Healthcare design can affect both your patients' and your staff's experiences. By focusing on creating environments that can positively affect the experience, healthcare systems can better attract, retain and engage with their communities.

Quality Design: Be Bold, Human and Smart

Quality design begins with a bold premise. “I want a place where Picasso would like to paint.” This statement exemplifies the attitude of today’s CEO’s who recognize the significance of a well-designed work environment.

RACI to the Rescue: Improving Team-Based Decision Making

One of the most valuable things about using the RACI Matrix is that it provides groups with a platform to have honest discussion and come to agreement about each person’s role or roles on a project.

Memory Boxes As Community Building Tools

More than a display, memory boxes can serve as personalized, helpful tools within Senior Living environments for residents to remember themselves and learn about others, while also functioning as a wayfinding aid.

Want to Save Money on Your Next Project? Let’s Focus on Energy!

Investing in an energy efficient building creates a more comfortable space, positively impacting occupant satisfaction, performance and ultimately costs. Focus on Energy's Design Assistance Program will allow you to do just that.

Elevate Your People’s Potential Through an Engaged Workplace

Companies with higher levels of employee engagement equate to higher profitability, higher productivity, lower absenteeism and lower turnover. What if the work environment could be the differentiating factor in elevating your people’s potential?

A Millennial and a Baby Boomer Walk Into A Bar...: How Mixed-Use Developments are Increasingly Becoming Intergenerational

While most basic needs generally stay the same, demographics, preferences and lifestyles do not. More and more, we are seeing two different generations--Millennials and Baby Boomers--gravitating towards similar lifestyles.

Mock Trial: How Experimenting with Visual Mock-Up Tools Can Enhance Senior Living Design

Everyone learns a little bit differently. In order to design a senior living community that truly meets the needs of its residents and staff, it's important to not only hear different voices but allow them to experience the design in different ways.

The Battle for Talent: Workplace Wellness Is the Gamechanger

With the US labor force projecting low unemployment rates, it is crucial that organizations invest in attracting + retaining the best talent. What if wellness in the workplace was the gamechanger to setting your company apart for prospective talent?

What’s in the Way of a Highly Effective Workplace?

Companies crave talent that makes a difference – enhancing culture and thinking smarter to achieve innovation. The workplace is a complex ecosystem and very often stress is a symptom of an ineffective workplace and by tuning into the conditions that impact individual and team success, we can identify necessary changes to align place with worker needs.

Increasing Human Connection Through Architecture

"Hey Siri, can architecture effect human interactions?" As today's workforce becomes increasingly digitally connected, it seems that people are longing more and more for true human connection. Through intentional design, we can help foster communication and collaboration, while still meeting the needs of people desiring their individual space.

Back To The Future: The Value of Historic Schools in 21st Century Learning

Often the temptation with schools (or really any building) is to believe that newer is better. But I don't buy that. Sometimes the best answer for a school system and community is to preserve and protect what they already have. Although historic preservation isn't the right solution for everyone, it's worth not writing off.

Charting the Course: How to Make Your Next Project the Best Project

Success can be, and often is, measured in many ways. Success for me covers the spectrum from having fun, to creating learning spaces that students don’t want to leave. Set expectations will chart the course and get you started down the path to a successful project.

Time for a new lab! Now what?...

Deciding to expand, renovate or build a new lab is an exciting, big opportunity – it’s also a lot of work and something that many scientists have never done. Who should they call first? What can they do to facilitate the best process to guide the expansion and protect themselves from making mistakes?

Healthcare Trends to Act On in 2019

This November, as the weather started to turn toward winter, EUA invited The Advisory Board to give their “State of the Union” presentation to our healthcare clients, as well as our entire group of healthcare design professionals.

Why I Choose Distributed Leadership

Senior Project Manager Abie Khatchadourian explores the differences between a traditional, top down leadership approach and distributed leadership.

The Battle for Talent: Top 5 Gen Z Factors That Drive the Workplace

With the understanding that generational traits and values differ, and given that Gen Z is the first generation to grow up in a wireless world, how will Gen Z’s life experiences swing the pendulum of workplace design?

The Right Mix: Design Considerations for Emergent Care Settings

Perhaps it’s the millennial in me, but after relocating to the Midwest, it took me over two years and four visits to urgent care before I finally selected a Primary Care Physician (PCP). As a new patient, urgent care became my point of care for its ease of access and affordability, and I’m not alone in this choice.

More Than Just an Internship: How a Design Experience Reinforced a Firm-wide Culture

This summer, the interns at Eppstein Uhen Architects participated in a design charrette that generated creativity, helped the group bond, and illuminated what it means to work at a supportive and enthusiastic firm.

Move Over Ikea: The Rise of Minimalist Scandinavian Design

While at NeoCon this year, I noticed a deepening appreciation and more widespread popularity for the minimalist inspired Scandinavian design, and with that, hand crafted materials. People are increasingly gravitating towards not just the visual simplicity, but the purity of the process often associated with these elements.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know: The Actual Cost of New S&T Spaces

Each project has a unique set of circumstances that are important to consider before beginning a design. Being aware of the right type of project for you (i.e. renovation versus new build), your construction variables, and the total estimated cost of your project will save you a lot of time, money and headache down the road.

Fixer Upper: University Science Building Edition

As an architect, sometimes we get to create buildings from scratch and sometimes we've given opportunities to get creative with existing spaces. Either way--challenge accepted!

How Design Can Foster Trust in Clinician and Patient Interactions

Today's patients want transparency and comfort from their providers. With so many options in healthcare, what are you doing to create positive outcomes for your patients and health system?

Living Lean: How I Applied Lean to My Morning Routine

Getting out of the house in the morning on time with everything you need for your day is a challenge everyone can relate to. After working with Lean in healthcare facility design for eight years, I asked myself if it was possible to apply those same principles to my personal life. The answer is “yes you can!”

Why I Love the WELL Building Rating System – It Builds Healthy Habits

It is exciting to sit down with an owner and brainstorm all the ways we can make the building design more sustainable or support the well-being of the occupants, but the challenge is how to do it in a meaningful way that supports real change that leads to healthy habits.

Patients Are Disrupting Healthcare

At a recent Healthcare Facilities conference, I attended a presentation by Sean Keathley and Gina Bleedorn from Adrenaline Agency on Digital Disruption in the Healthcare industry. They were captivating speakers and I found the topic to be fascinating. In today's world, disruption can be seen as a buzz word, but whatever we think, it's here.

Care Staff Shortages

We have all read the gloomy articles regarding the critical shortage of professional care staff generally and, more specifically, its impact on care staffing for the elderly. There are numerous reasons for this shortage, some of which are controllable and others which are not. The reasons for this crisis are simple to recognize but the solutions may not be.

Most Likely to Succeed

EUA's Learning Environments studio hosted a viewing of the film "Most Likely to Succeed." EUA's Bob Morris, a school planner, shares his thoughts on the film's messaging.

Are You Teaching + Learning in a Space or Place?

How the physical learning environment supports improved outcomes for students and staff. Bob Vajgrt discusses how educational spaces should be designed to directly support the teaching and learning happening in the space.

Laboratory Safety Showers: Drain or No Drain?

During most laboratory design projects, there eventually will be a discussion about drains at the safety shower locations. While some local plumbing codes, campus or company facility guidelines may require installation of “emergency drains,” read the language carefully and consider a conversation with the AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) early in the design process.

Workplace Design that Maximizes Your Real Estate Investment

An office is just an office, right? But what if it’s not? What if it can be more? What if you could actually make your real estate work for you? Turns out, you can.

The Tipping Point: Will Talent Stay or Will They Go

I think it’s safe to say that it’s every company’s goal to attract and retain the best and the brightest. But with so much fierce competition for talent and the length of time people are staying at jobs decreasing, how do companies set themselves apart and give their employees incentive to stay?

Taking Ego Out of Design

What makes a successful architectural project? Before getting into specifics, like what materials should be used, or even what the project should look like, it’s critical to first look at the bigger picture of what we want to be true in the end. Here’s the catch—it’s not the same answer for everybody.

A Caregiver's Perspective on Long-Term Care Settings

Understanding how older adults live, sleep, eat, socialize and receive care are not only critical aspects to the design of long term care environments, but they are the foundation to an excellent community for the aging.

Identify and Rectify

Those of us connected to architecture or the science world tend to be left-brained problem solvers. We were the kids (and adults) who loved to put together puzzles and solve riddles. We enjoy the challenge of identifying what’s wrong and how to fix it. Following a recent accident that resulted in a long series of trips to the Chiropractor, I realized that our fields of expertise–medical care and lab planning–are actually very similar.

A Brand Worth Believing In

In our social media saturated culture, the number of followers a brand or company has is crucial. But the real question is, is it worth following? Worth believing in?

Workplace Design: Any Way You Want It

We’ve all heard that being healthy comes from the inside out. I’ve found that this mantra applies not just to the human body, but the corporate workplace as well. In order to better serve our clients, we as employees need to be in a good mindset ourselves.

“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change”: Revitalizing Your Senior Living Community–A Step-by-Step Guide

Revitalizing your community’s environment, keeping ahead of trends and making sure you communicate improvements to your client base will provide benefits for your market competitiveness, residents and staff.

Responding to Change: Understanding the Challenges in Outpatient Facility Expansion

Today’s healthcare organizations exist in a rapidly changing landscape. Patient consumerism, demographic shifts, healthcare reform, and private payers are all putting tremendous pressure on organizations to evolve in order to survive.

Outside the Curriculum: The Effect Environment Has on Learning

Do you think that a room can affect a student’s grades? Let me put it this way, do you think that the quality of the learning environment effects learning? If you answered “yes,” you are not alone.

Use it or Lose it

As I tour existing schools everyone asks for classroom space but then I ask them if those cabinets full of holiday decorations are a necessity. Do they need 42 chairs in the room if there are only 23 students?

The Lean Perspective on The Four Keys to Engaging Staff and Patients

As healthcare providers strive to strike the balance between operational efficiencies and maintaining a high-level of patient-centered care, Lean design strategies can play an important role in healthcare facility design.

Experience your building design before you break ground

Picture this: a client meets with the design firm they have entrusted to create their new headquarters. They’ve spent countless hours and resources to ensure employees will have a space that is comfortable, inviting and integrates into their overall brand.

Households for Senior Care - Installment Three

The design of households has evolved into several differing approaches regarding layout of resident rooms and their relationship with social/community spaces, support spaces and services.

Households for Senior Care - Installment Two

Every designer who has worked in the long-term care or assisted living arena has an opinion on the correct number of residents a senior care household should have.

Households for Senior Care-Installment One

Evolutionary steps in the creation of household models of care. Learn more about the history behind senior living care environments.

Walk the Line: Balancing Patient-Centered Design with Staff Satisfaction and Productivity

The other day I realized that Johnny’s struggles are analogous to the challenges we face as designers and healthcare administrators when undertaking “patient-centered” healthcare projects.

Social Transparency: The Importance of Workplace Culture on Social Media

Today, prospective employees, business partners and customers can access your work culture within a few clicks. A truly inspiring work space can make people want to like, pin, snap, tweet and share your message with others.

People and Spaces Working Together in Collaboration

We all have those favorite spaces in our homes, communities, and at work. A space where a comforting feeling is created as a result of both the physical setting of the space and human factors.

I Want Innovation...That I Have Seen Before

As an architect, one of my biggest challenges is to help people think differently about the problem they want to solve. Open mindedness is essential when trying to provide innovative solutions

Putting 10 Pounds of Labs in a 5 Pound, 50 Year-Old Box

When designing new lab facilities, a floor to floor height of 16 feet is common, however, clients can’t always afford a new building. Many clients do a “facelift” to their existing laboratories and it is becoming more frequent within the higher education market.

The Savvy Consumer: Facilities that Create the Provider of Choice

Being a healthcare provider of choice is dependent upon many factors: a patient’s insurance coverage, facility location, and brand reputation, among others. Brand reputation, in turn, is the result of the training of your professional staff, the pricing structure of your services, and the way you conduct yourself as an organization.

Why Does School Capacity Matter? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Learning environments are continually evolving – the suburban, Midwestern high school from the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off highlights a high school with standard classrooms – 30 years later, high school spaces and classrooms are looking much different.

Architects See Things Differently

This is the first blog of my series in 2017 that will focus on the surging expansion of biotechnology in the upper Midwest.

Turn That Frown Upside Down: Applying an Orthodontist's Best Practices to Primary Care

After a recent visit with my daughter to an orthodontic consultation that left us very satisfied with our experience, I began thinking about how the patient experience starts long before you get to the clinic and ends after you leave

Attracting Employees in the Age of Match.com

We live in a world of instant gratification, a world where virtually everything is digital, online or at your fingertips, a world where you can sign-up for Match.com one day and be married the next.

Do We Stereotype Aging?

Why the de-emphasis on “aging”? We are moving away from stereotyping aging, age-restricted communities and the negative connotations of aging.

You Had Me at Efficiency

Okay, maybe efficiency in healthcare design isn’t as exciting as the love story between Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweiger in the movie “Jerry Maguire,” but when I talk to Healthcare Industry Leaders, any time a design solution can improve bottom line operational efficiency, it’s a win.

Improving the Client Experience through R&D

Technology and innovation play a critical role in the success of fully designing today’s buildings and spaces. At one time Building Information Modeling (BIM) was a differentiator in the AEC marketplace.

Journey Already in Progress – Welcome Aboard

Remember the quintessential family road trip? Our road trips consisted of my wife and I and our two kids piled into the minivan. Sound familiar? The family road trip always included a starting point, an end point, and plenty of drama in the middle.

Thank You Mrs. Pauly: The 1970s Makerspace Pioneer

What was your 4th grade teacher’s name? Mine was Mrs. Pauly. She was an outdoorsy lady who appreciated nature and the history of early Wisconsin pioneers and liked to take a unique approach to teaching.

Creating a Senior Living Campus Master Plan...That Works! (Part 1: Market Feasibility)

In this first discussion the focus will be the market feasibility study which can provide demographic substantiation for a campus repositioning or re-sizing.

Creating a Senior Living Campus Master Plan...That Works! (Part 2: The Built Environment)

This part of the discussion addresses how the client’s goals are translated through the built environment.

Creating a Senior Living Campus Master Plan...That Works! (Part 3: Financial Feasibility)

In part three of the discussion of a workable master planning approach, financial feasibility is addressed.

Embracing Change: Making a Difference in Student Outcomes Through Education Design

The era of square classrooms where students sit in perfectly aligned rows of desks while teachers stand and lecture at the front of the classroom has faded.

Make Space for Makerspace

Recently there has been a lot of discussion on adding makerspaces within the school districts I am working with. However, from district-to-district there is variation between what a makerspace means to each district and how it is (or will be) used.

Establishing Your Student’s Educational Foundation

I believe the foundation of life is much like a structural building foundation, as both need to be strong to succeed.

Will our students of today have the skills for the jobs of tomorrow?

I challenge us to ask ourselves can we create a better connection between future job market needs and setting students up with the skills and knowledge needed to be successful? Is there a correct balance between soft skills and technical skills?