 Like that okay Okay, so let me repeat. Let's get this thing started before the fire marshal shows up blah blah blah blah, okay, so um I just wanted to kind of remind you that after the presentation there will be a little bit of time for questions And answers and then of course we will Migrate not only to the snacks and then of course to see the great kind of exhibit that has been put together by pay yet So I wanted to I have got some I just wanted to I had some prepared words that I wanted to say about Some of the things that are kind of going on in the show and I just wanted to try to contextualize a little bit why I think Having this work of pay at here at Roger Williams is so important for for us As kind of academics and the students yourselves because I think that this kind of will provide for a different opportunity Of of how to think about architecture So I was thinking that and I'll try to make this as brief as possible That anybody who knows me Knows that I have been thinking a lot about utopias and visionary architecture and While I don't want to claim that this Work that we are about to see seeks to be utopic in any way The operations and concerns that we will kind of be presented with with They point towards a utopic Sensibility and by that I mean that it is utopia thought of not as a noun But as an adjective as a way of connecting to the world so To arrive at the works intent the work of pay at the work that we will see and hear about tonight to the intent which is of course outside of the Particularities of architecture planning landscape and construction We have to look beyond the technical the organizational and the programmatic because as we know those those things represent a total surrender to instrumentality which ultimately leads to the closure of thought and possibilities So we have to look beyond that Because what the intent is the intent of the work is To be centered on the user and this is the most important thing I think about the work of pay it The user is the student the user is the hospital patient the user is the researcher the academic or perhaps the medical practitioner and Through a consciousness of the possibilities enabled by design and by the design of the environment The negotiations with the client and the so-called value engineers the architecture of pay at Enables the user to shift or to move from their existing futures to new possible futures This is how I would define the work of pay at this is how I would define the utopian Condition of this work it enables or enacts possible futures This labor has been present since the firm's foundation in 1932 under the banner banner of scientific management as a tool to reinvent healthcare facilities and the firm's current leaders and associates including Leon Drachman Have continued this trajectory and while I should tell you that Leon Drachman is a Uruguayan architect who received his B arc from from the Technia Technion Israel Institute of Technology and his MAUD From the Graduate School of Design and has been at pay at since 1998. I will not Because that would mean that I would need to introduce all of pay at principles and people who allow For possible futures to exist and I think that Leon will tell you that and that the firm is the recipient of the 2019 AI a architecture firm award and the 2019 Hollison Parker Award for the most beautiful building in Boston Please join me in welcoming Leon Drachman and thanking him and the firm of pay at and all of the principles and associates For the opportunity to see this work and to have this beautiful Exhibition kind of around us to kind of like inspire us, so please help me welcome him Good evening We said a Bunch of things that I I was planning on saying but I'm not gonna say them anymore First of all, it's great to be here. Thank you for having us I've been here a few times for Studio reviews and which was excellent. We have Roger Williams graduates working with us at pay it We've had a few over the years and a few of them are here Jake and Garrett Karen is not here We're also close with the Gary Gary Graham who's a former pay it employee Actually, he likes to tell those stories a few decades ago and we're collaborating I'm very happy to be collaborating with Gary and his firm on some projects now So we have some links important links to this institution So I'm here today, but it could be any of the a number of leaders of the firm could be given this talk and I volunteered because I thought it was an interesting exercise to try to kind of frame the work of an enormous firm and put it into an hour's worth of time and I'm not going to kind of do a kind of a Exhaustive survey of the firm's work But I'm going to pick a couple of themes and and try to kind of play with them a little bit to show you Along the way some of our work and explain to you a little bit how we work and the title of the talk is Fairly simple. These are all very very basic words and I think That is actually very important We deal with very complex problems The profession deals with complex problems, but in particular the work that we do at pay it Deal with programs that are technically demanding and challenging. They are expensive. They are long. They are large It's a lot of work And and the more I believe the more we we get Sophisticated about them the more we learn about new tools and techniques and materials and complexity of programs and get fancy with software and with Innovation the more I think these are the the terms that keep coming back and Hopefully define really our work so Again the the the first three words are very very simple the fourth one performance is something that in itself is evolving We're investing quite a bit in that kind of concept and the concept is more than just that Technical performance of the buildings. It's really a Kind of a humanistic enterprise at the end of the day the one that we're embarking on so That's kind of the essence. I'm not going to go through those in particular But please keep those in mind as you see the work and you hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about So first I'm going to give you a 87 years of history in 10 minutes and I'm going to give you a very very brief introduction to who we are before we jump in and and show you some of the work The angle is a little challenging here So we're located in Boston. We are all together under one roof and that is very important to us We have an integrated practice and what that means is we believe that The conventional architectural design and planning and landscape and interiors They're all one thing and we do it all and we do it all in an integrated fashion as simple as that We do focus on science and healthcare and most of our work is on those fields You probably saw if you didn't please do so over the next few days the exhibit It goes through that work and you'll understand a little bit more about the fusion of design and performance and what we mean by that I think it's it's kind of a theme that has been evolving over the last few years and we really believe in that So these are the I believe it's 87 years on a timeline Really Tom Payette really founded the firm that as we know it today 55 years ago in 1974 And There was a there has been a leadership kind of intergenerational transition that has been going on for 25 years or so and that's how we're run. We'll have Right now 15 principles Leading the firm and the firm of 170 people Widely recognized and we're very proud. This is not why we do what we do But it's it's important reinforcement that we get by winning some of those important awards Including the one Luis mentioned the firm award this year We do believe in a few key things and other firms can say this too, but we actually Live it every day The kind of collaborative nature of our work. It's again the complexity calls for it We can't do anything with small teams. We need a lot of voices Diversity is a is a key generator of our work and thinking and One of the themes that actually is developing Constantly developing in the firm is this notion of Architecture that Even when it when you look at it it looks Very very diverse There's no single style we come from a tradition of kind of fairly orthodox modernism From the work that Tom in particular led in the in the 70s and 80s But really the buildings look like what they have to look like to do what they need to do We don't follow a style or a single design Leader when it comes to form for example And and read the sensitivity to the environment understood as the widest possible sense is is is what what traditionally this firm has actually been about and And it turns out that we've been doing evidence-based design and practice and sustainability Decades before those terms even existed We Despite that we actually formalize that effort and invested in what we call the engine which is a group of building scientists That are embedded in our practice inform pretty much everything we do And and it's kind of an incredible force that permeates all our work and That includes Direct assistance to our clients to our own teams to the profession in general We also embark on original research actual research that we sponsor Often ourselves sometimes with outside funds and and that is kind of a decentralized effort and a large portion of the staff participates in that research and It's it's been kind of a very important force that again informs the work in a very direct way As that has been going on The results it's not only more design awards, but actually is a performance Transformation of the buildings with design and this is this is Not unique to our firm, but we are kind of leading the leading this effort and I think the impact on our work has been more pronounced than than what you see in the industry in general and We we take this actually very very seriously the the Amount of energy that our buildings consume for example is one of the measures, but you could see that it's a dramatic Dramatic change Along with that Park is here somewhere. There you are We have Also invested quite a bit in fabrication and this is beyond just testing things with models which we've done forever and we still do in love but actually a Launch kind of a fabrication lab a space that is dedicated to this with real instrumentation and with training and know-how With hardware and software that that actually is embedded in our practice And you can see an image of what that space looks like that is that is brought back To to the studio and embedded into our projects and beyond that is also used to collaborate and engage with the builders themselves and kind of Accomplish that the ideas of the design In a hands-on way and and that takes a lot of work and It takes people who like to build and break things and that's part of our work Landscape is has always been fundamental to what we do and It's embedded in most of our work We do landscape design kind of in house Sometimes we we get help from outside architects landscape architects as well and Just a in the two images in the top and Gary you probably recognize those that's in maybe 35 or 40 years ago in in the Aga Khan University in In Pakistan that while the design was going on They were already nursing that the vegetation that then when the building opened was so essential to the design itself So that tells you pretty much how we how we see landscape So who's pay it? That's pay it Where do we come from? all over the place The yellow dots actually are the location of the work the blue dots are people where they come from originally I Actually own three of those dots myself That was my contribution And it's a very diverse Diverse community and that's pretty essential and that includes where we were actually trained and educated and and It's pretty amazing that the variety of schools that our staff comes from And some schools obviously provide more people but There's a tremendous amount of variety in the source of the talent that we have in the firm Including three stellar people from this university currently in our staff Believe again diversity, but longevity is very important too and we're we're thankful that people stick around and that's That makes a big difference People engage in their communities and and and and give back Denise wanted to make sure that I have a YDC slide here, and I think thank you. That was a great idea This is a program. We're very proud of and and not because we did it. This is a grassroots organization within the firm that organizes events and and kind of really welcomes new staff to the firm And they take care of kind of The cultural aspect of the firm is very much nurtured by by this group career development is very important knowledge sharing Social events and so on and it's an incredible resource That actually is now being emulated by other firms and we're very happy about that So a couple just one minute about my own trajectory at pay it I over the weekend. I kind of mapped some some of the projects I worked on and and how that happened and actually, I Found it fascinating to see What what do I what do I learn about this and and there's a couple of things that I wanted to share two things I wanted to share with you one is How long these projects really take we do again big difficult projects and Some of them are more than one building but the concept the conception of a project can take a decade So this is really a profession for patient people for sure The other thing is what you see there in the light blue dash. That's a planning phase and This is very common in what we do There's a lot of planning and master planning that goes on before you start designing Which is the middle blue and the dark blue is the construction and some projects go to constructions others don't In fact, the red dots there are openings of buildings So you can see that there's there's repeat kind of institutions where several buildings happen But you can see that over 20 years At least in my case There's only a handful of of large buildings that actually get built and And they are very precious. They are There are incredible opportunities and we look at them that way and I think you all should as well Thankfully, there's a bunch that are coming up hopefully and in the near future So Those are my 10 minutes about pay it I'll be happy to answer questions about that towards the end if you have any other specific there's two things I wanted to do now is to talk a little bit about two of the main areas of Attention of the firm one is campus We do a lot of work for academic institutions Science buildings more than anything else and they happen typically on a campus So we are very much interested in that as a kind of a microcosm of the world really So we're not discussed two or three projects there To see some projects that actually have been able to transform campus with very precise means And then we'll talk about health care and I'll discuss kind of nature as a healing force of design and we'll see a couple of examples of that then at the end we'll do a little kind of diversion into a into a Kind of a mini program at the end so Converging the efforts of architects that do buildings and landscape architects and planners We do believe and it's some kind of an optimistic view of building on a campus and it buildings do transform them and and We don't do it the institutions do it. They hire us to help them, but there is a It's a fascinating process to see it's a kind of a control environment Versus the city when you build in a city there's forces that are Really out of anybody's control on campus Architecture is kind of controlled and the planning is tighter and it's more precise and and we think that's why it's a kind of a very interesting experiment So we're gonna look at a couple of a couple of examples not of kind of in certain buildings in a campus, but actually of Extending the realm and the reach of campuses and I have three examples for that the first one is the building at Northeastern University the Interdisciplinary science and engineering building that opened a year or two ago Winner of the most prestigious awards in the region and in the country really And and what that building is really is the first of a pair of buildings You can see that's the building that is built the what we call Isaac And this is the the second half of that long-term project and that brought that second half is actually under design now and I believe Construction documents will be issued soon So we really conceived of that as a pair and what this is actually trying to do is Extend the campus and cross the train tracks and establish kind of a new mini sub campus on the other side to kind of reorient really the institution completely and create a kind of a Front door a smaller front door on on the neighborhood side So that's the train tracks and this is a sub campus and for for for that to happen then the buildings have to be spectacular the spaces for people have to be spectacular and the landscape has to be spectacular and The the first building turned out to be spectacular. That's a good thing And the landscape is almost is only half done because the second building will complete it but The landscape have to be as good or better as as any piece of landscape on main campus To really hold its own and create kind of a worthy sub campus The interior of the buildings become destination themselves. This one is the first the Isaac one which It has it turns out to be one of the best places on the entire campus and people go to it When they have an hour a free hour between classes just because they enjoy being in there the other half of this problem was how to get to it and and there's a Pedestrian bridge that was part of the plan that opened a few months ago And it's it's a very Incredible piece of architecture in itself It's a it's a structural Kind of tour the force and it's a kind of an experience to cross the tracks And it's it's a it's a nice It's not only a very easy way to go from point a to point b But it's an experience in itself and it's designed in a way that the experience going from Main campus to the sub campus Feels this way where there's an opening and glass and you can see where you're going But the experience going back is completely different just by the way that the material is organized and And and the details the lighting of the the combination or the integration of structure with design with finishes With the ergonomics of people walking on the bridge. Those are all Part of the same problem. It's a beautiful experience We're working on Penn State University on their main campus, which we see here on a similar problem the College of engineering Hired us to do a master plan last year To see how they can grow on the core campus But also how they can colonize that other place across this state Highway really it's a very busy street And the only way safely to go across there is through this building that exists kind of bridges across But you go to the other side and there's it's it's a bad array of buildings It's not a very good space right now so what the institution wanted to do and we helped them to conceive was a Kind of a again a spectacular Place on the other side of the highway to become a destination to create a strong character and Landscape can do a lot, but the buildings are the greatest opportunity to make this happen So the master plan concluded in an idea like this, which was you come from the bridge Arrive and these are the three build the three new buildings West one West two and West three Create a new quadrangle here and a new landing plaza and between the two create this kind of amazing place Then we were actually hired to design both buildings and that's what we're doing now So next time we come here for the next lecture. We'll show you what the building looks like but the idea is then to take advantage of the pair of buildings by jointly creating something unique and Landscape-wise that could have happened with kind of a series of open spaces and the buildings facing them or Organizing the buildings in a way that creates kind of a pedestrian promenade and a very well-defined quad and That's what we're testing. You see the tools of our of our analysis and The final idea is to actually use the frontage of these two buildings to together Create something unique and kind of amplify their impact And that's that's what we're kind of trying to do And this is the kind of a current view of what how the buildings are shaping up and how we're working hard on Those buildings to actually together Conspired to create that opportunity The third example is is a project that is actually dear to me because I spent over a decade working on this is at Hershey Medical Center is the teaching hospital and Medical school of Penn State University on Hershey, Pennsylvania and we were called to add to build the two clinical buildings and parking garage in other components and And This is this is the the quad looks the campus looked like that This was all built in the late 60s all together as one project very interesting kind of a modernist Kind of a design in a box type of type of project with a very strong character on the crescent on the on on the front of this of this The complex and in the quest and then in the 1970s a small addition was introduced here on the east side and That actually is the front door of the hospital of the entire complex when we when we came in so There was a master plan Commission before before our work by H ok and that's what they had recommended placing the buildings this way Which means a couple of buildings creating a kind of an entry court basically which Essentially means there's an introverted way of entering you enter this narrow place There's a court and then you're in and that allowed for all the square footage that they needed so what we wanted to do is is rethink that and reverse it and completely change the equation and Actually open up do actually a very similar move, but completely opposite So what that resulted in is a series of projects that again took about a decade that Leaves that they they kind of leave the crescent where it is as an old artifact That is very important for the identity of the place But creates kind of a completely new identity on the front side And that is connected to the way you circulate you enter and exit the place the front door is unmistakable And the new buildings are very proudly Framing that place so again a way of getting a couple of buildings and making the most out of them But by combining their impact on on the campus So it's a tremendous amount of scope over the years Here's a view of the first building the cancer Institute the main entry lobby and the children's hospital So this is what you see when you come in it's like an airport style kind of drop-off sequence It's difficult to miss and when after you park and you come back this is the view from the other side so very different But unified components Creating this kind of powerful set So seen from space it looks something like this This is kind of the area of impact an area equal to the rest of the of the campus And and that's that's the result basically handling something that we try to do a lot is is managing complexity with clarity This is not a simple project, but it's a clear result and in a medical institution You can imagine how important clarity is as opposed to Chaos and and confusion Now the notion embedded in this design is also the concept of the garden hospital pieces are not only Surrounded by gardens, but there's space in between every building There's porosity in the plan and there's gardens on roofs between buildings outside of buildings and inside of the buildings so that is a Concept that actually we will talk about a little more in a minute, but It's it's essential to the to to the character of these medical institutions the way the way we perceive them and gardens again are on roofs are outside and inside of the buildings and The they are transforming the way it feels to be in that place And this is not only true for patients, but for staff families and and and so on This is for example the healing garden outside of the cancer Institute the cancer center infusion area you can imagine the Significance of having such a thing so this is a Segway into the second topic, which is the concept of using embedding make nature in the planning and design of our of our buildings and in particular that's relevant for Healthcare more than anything else. So I'll show you a few examples and it's all dating back again to the tradition of the firm and this issue of a A Design that is always centered on the patient experience We're gonna look at two things one is a couple of examples of healing with nature again buildings that are embedded in in in a natural setting and Then we're gonna try to see if this scales up to to something that is enormous in scale and how to handle that so again, we come from a long tradition of of Embedding nature into patient spaces and there was a kind of an incredible series of hospital designs From these I would say late 60s with 70s and 80s That the firm led by by Tom Payette Really searching for that balance between the technical needs of the hospital and a human place a place for people to kind of Heal And in a kind of a very worthy environment And a lot of that had to do with this looking for the shape of getting these patient wings The maximum amount of natural light and sun and air and views and sky and We had the opportunity of the the last few years to actually test this in a couple of small Rising hospitals basically two three-story buildings and one of them were working with Gary right now, but I Wanted to show them to you so you can see the how they actually following in this tradition of actually searching for how Buildings shape themselves to work with the landscape. The first one is of a spinal cord injury center for the VA 100 hundred patient rooms and clinical spaces For people that are bound to wheelchairs. So what does that mean? From the outset the the goal was really to work on movement and independence so these patients can actually Access the entire site not dependent elevators to move from from floor to floor So the patient wings are actually embedded into the nature the same traditional way that that the firm has been searching for decades and there's at the addition of Kind of courtyards inside of those wings to always give natural light to everybody in this in this building But importantly the point was to have a two-story building that actually Connects to the outdoors and and the way to do that was to actually form and shape the topography of the site a very flat side force a topography that comes to meet the patient as opposed to force the patient to go and search for it and The movement of the patient seamlessly horizontally from whatever they are in the building Was would be able to actually cover the entire site Just that one concept kind of gateformed to an architecture that is low It had to be two stories. We couldn't do it in one. We would have done it in one But it's all about the nature reaching out and touching everybody in this institution And here's a view of that patient unit with the courtyard inside and getting all the patient rooms to face out But all the staff and circulation to face into that courtyard so everybody gets to participate and then fill the the site with gardens terraces courtyards and Beyond that design a landscape that is accessible to the patients for planting for enjoying for sitting. It's almost a ergonomic conception of landscape to be available To patients that are bound to a wheelchair So the entire landscape design is based on that one concept We're still waiting for this building to move into construction and it's been a few years and we're patiently waiting another example is a Psychiatry psychiatry and behavioral health hospital For an institution in New England that were not a liberty to disclose we are working with Gary and his firm on on this one a large beautiful wooded site and That was identified as the the location for a 260 bed fairly short short-term stay for against psychiatry and and behavioral health and The building is again very complex, but the general idea Ended up being the same get really the patient rooms To be as low as close to the ground and as open to the nature as possible But beyond that to really look at everything else on that site and make sure that everybody gets an amazing clarity about the landscape and to participate in the beautiful natural setting and One of the devices to do that beyond what happens to the patients is to really create this Open loop of circulation where more or less everybody that has to go from any point to any other point in the building would actually walk along that Vector and and what that is is really a piece of the forest that we're going to preserve and maintain right in the middle so to have an efficient way of circulating across the entire facility but always Oriented to that spot so you could see that the buildings are kind of meandering through the topography But right in the middle of the site is that patch of Original forest untouched right in the middle of the project So the entire circulation is has a common point of reference right there in the middle And towards the end that circulation would end in a very special place where you get the view of the outside forest And that's actually a picture of that particular spot on the site Now contrary to this the patients are not in that common space, but they are Along the edges and what they do get is a kind of a more of a controlled and private space Not inside but outside of this complex So basically the privacy and public nature of the space is reversed so we're Excited about where this project is going and the question is okay. That's very nice It's it's all one story to story very connected very physically available Can this scale up so we tested that in Something that we don't do too often which is participating design competitions. We decided to try it and we We won a couple of them Actually, we picked two and we won the two of them and I think it's Kind of a new thing for this generation pay it to deal with projects in China projects of this particular scale but the the test was can we actually embed embed nature and Based the design of a campus on that one concept even for something that is 2,500 beds five million square feet This amazing incredible scale This one this was the scheme that kind of won the competition it had It was adjacent to and kind of a park that was in the form of a hill of a mountain and This was the winning scheme kind of a low podium for diagnostics and treatment and all the technical areas and two patient Wings in the form of these two dragons that hover and float above it was as simple as that And and the concept is it's this simple. There's a mountain park and overlapping with the site and the concept was It's one site so the hospital will be in that in that mountain park So can we force that it's not easy because there's a lot of Stuff that goes in a hospital and around the hospital So so landscape has to constantly be considered fighting against the natural tendency of paving everything and just putting buildings on them and driving around So this is the concept of the the two dragons Framing that central space in that central space is directly related to the mountain And this is where the plan is today. That's the mountain And it's like a little flow of lava coming down the center To create this amazing space a multi-story space in between in between the two halves of the hospital But also permeate every single place a possible roofs courtyards parks gardens Inside above and surrounding the site and really really force Landscape to take over as much as possible Now we still need it 2,500 rooms here and how do you do that? So this is a very peculiar way of doing it and and it's actually working fairly well Where patient rooms are only oriented To the east south and north mostly to the east And never to the west and and and you could see here the circulation for the staff spaces is that Darker purple and and that created this very dynamic way of organizing this long building That is divided into two halves, but each piece is divided into units around the circulation as well the windows became an important consideration and We use the windows as a concept to mediate between the enormous scale of the complex of the building and the intimate scale of the patient so Including kind of Screening the Sun when you don't want it and maximizing views Introducing natural ventilation to reduce kind of the reliance on on mechanical and on mechanical ventilation and air conditioning and We created even if there's about 900 windows Each one becomes a mini world a shelter a place of intimacy for the patients Now became such a generative place for the whole plan That we want to actually test it and get it right even though this is in China We built the actual false scale mock-up here And Park and his team helped Actually get this done in the fab lab. This is these are the drawings This is us trying to assemble this thing in in in the office and here's the team in China at a factory Trying to test the first prototype. So this is actually it's actually happening very exciting and landscape here is based not only on Providing green for everyone, but also to perform a function Shading cooling managing wind and mostly managing water What a runoff is a big issue here and and there's plenty of precedent in that region of China Where it's beautiful ways of terracing the landscape and and and you can see here a section right through the center of that of That plan and an array of gardens roof terraces parks and and and courtyards So this is the vision for the project and this is the project under construction. So this is very exciting Two years ago, I think we attempted this a second time and we won a competition again to design a 500 bed hospital in the south of China a very very different climate and We won that competition and and it's it's almost under construction right now So we're partnering with a Chinese firm for the production of construction documents So the Highland of Henshin is it is you could see is right across from Macau This is the Pearl River Delta in the south of China and this valley used to be kind of all rice patties and it's been Dried up to a certain extent they're keeping what they call a sponge city, which is a series of canals But they're kind of planning this as a new portion of town for I think 250,000 people And what you see there is the medical campus and and we are designing the main hospital in there And this is the concept model for from the competition and The idea that we had here is to have the general hospital, which is really what the competition was about Turn it's back to the city street and its front to a kind of heart a green Core a heart in the middle of the of the site Engage in the water canal that will cut across the middle and creating a campus in Kind of collaborating with a future design of five specialty hospitals Which we also competed for and also one and we're also designing right now So we we actually get to really look at the entire block the timing is Not completely concurrent, but it's it's nice to be able to do both at the same time and the concept of the massing here is Really a tower in the front of a low-scale and a big patient tower in the back against the background of the gardens and Close by and the mountains far away kind of creating a new horizon a new silhouette for For this hospital and create a very unique identity This is how the hospital is put together again a podium of five stories that becomes a low tower here for Research and administration and the patient tower hovering on top so this again is the canal that was had to be located in this location and This is a canal that we shaped goes across But kind of bridging on both sides of that canal is this central green heart that is so essential in some multi-story landscape place but it's also Used to manage the water runoffs and and control the winds and and and using vegetation and mass to create a microclimate that is appropriate for maximizing its use in a very hot and rainy region region like we showed before and in the psychiatric hospital the Low portion of the plan is a very massive floor plate But all the circulation is on the inside and it's on the outside wall on the inside of the block and again That creates this common reference central garden for all to see as they move from point A to point B creating kind of a point of reference and helping with wayfinding which is a very difficult challenge for people in large medical hospitals medical centers of any kind again multiple multiple levels and degrees of Intimacy and publicness for all these open spaces beautiful gardens all over the place And gardens happen at different levels. So the ground main floor Connecting all the complex, but also the drop-off downstairs on the roof upstairs. So you could see that Again nature is an invading force that takes over everything that that it can and that's That's kind of an obsessive way of designing and introducing nature It's the only way to really get to this kind of point. So can we scale up? We think we can and and One of them is under construction. The other one is going to take a little longer, but We'll be back to report the results So I think I have another 10-minute piece. I'm gonna go quickly through it What I've showed so far Is really Kind of the core of what we do science building on campuses Hospitals and medical centers. So that gives you an idea of some of the values we apply We could have taken any other theme and discuss those with you but I thought I would do a kind of a different take on some of the architecture that goes into our buildings and I'm looking at super windows, which means buildings that actually have a The need To have a large wall that is all made out of glass Why do you do that? How do you do that? What what does it do to the to the performance and to the to the Quality of the space to the quality of the campus or whatever the building is located And so it's a quick discussion on four examples But actually that those windows are actually very good examples of the integrated approach that we use for design and more and more they include Incredibly complex technical studies and analysis that go along with the more conventional architectural forces So we're gonna look at these four windows and you could see why I call them super windows They are entire sides of buildings for the most part Each one of these have different reasons for existing and and different solutions to different problems So again, they could be designed by four different architectural firms. They don't have an aesthetic theme. They have a kind of a more of an Common approach to a resolution to a very complicated multifaceted problem So the first one is not far from here is in Westford In Massachusetts called close to full river and it's a it's kind of a not a typical building that we design It's for a company. It's for a medical device company and it's kind of an office building and The location of the building is what Kind of cold for this window and it's it's really on the on Right in facing this incredible pond So one entire face of this building the building is located as you see there in blue is located along the shore and That entire faces window and that was the single Kind of again and a clear party for the building. So let me go to this one first This is why the window is there. This is how these Offices work. It's an open office There's nothing complicated about the idea. In fact, the only complication here is to make it happen With a kind of an obsessive focus So these are the open offices facing the south facing the the pond and you can see some of the other closed rooms and offices facing the highway So the notion here was to Treat that wall as with as much clarity and transparency as possible again pretty straightforward so in order to do that first the structure was actually independently placed separated from the wall and To avoid the chunkiness of a four-story curtain wall the wall was actually hung from the roof So there's there's a structure being right there that wall is completely hung from the roof and that helps Kind of lighting it would make in the components a lot lighter And then that requires just a few details to introduce lateral force and wind resistance to this wall with as few Structural members as possible and the result is a very clean Wall even in the oblique you get a lot of Clarity you can see the structural members and the wall hanging from the roof and the result is absolutely clear And again, it's an obsessive Clarity of purpose that leads to it second example is George Washington University Washington DC School of Public Health And again what this is doing is creating kind of more of a Less of a single plane of window, but a very a very rich Wall to the city and why is that there? That is there because this is the location of the building. This is the campus. That's Pennsylvania Avenue Washington Circle. That's the site so it's the Northwest corner, but it's the it's the first thing that that people see of this campus is the kind of the the advertisement is Kind of spearhead of the campus on the city So this is the location so there's kind of side streets, but there's the front street and this line Kind of of the circle and returning back to the street became an important line so what the building the way the building is organized is all about that one Orientation so the classrooms and enclosed Auditoria and so on are actually detached from that window and what actually is touching the window It's either open space or is these terraces for informal? gathering and informal Study areas or group Connections between students and students and faculty so Essentially what you have on this pink line this curvy Zone here is facing the Washington Circle so what you see is really not so much Blank and block rooms like this one that doesn't want a lot of windows But what you see is activity and vibrancy and that was a simple idea, but it's a very complex problem You can see some of those rooms separated and the small-scale intimate space that that gap creates between the window and those and there's Perhaps a hundred different conditions that are created by the the kind of Informal geometry of this approach and here's a model showing kind of the the almost casual nature of that to kind of Display this incredible vibrancy and dynamic life of the building towards that super important orientation in the city You can see during construction you could start to get an idea of What is going on here? This is going to be something really really different and You could not understand the shape of the window by just looking at this because of the complexity But the window is in fact a fairly regular nine segments that provide that curve and At the end of the day it creates a uniform, but incredible incredibly rich Piece of information about what's going on inside in Ireland a few years ago we designed the three buildings on a campus one of them was a Humanities humanities Richard the research building and the building was to be an extension and attached to the main Central library the library and the science center that you see here an incredible piece of mid-century modern architecture really fairly cold environment but but An amazing kind of intervention on on a green piece of land That's the main library And this is one of the one of the front doors of the university the campus the formal door is here But there's only a couple of other ways of entering so this small addition. It's about eighty thousand seventy thousand square feet Was to provide space for research and other miscellaneous activities and it was to provide also to be connected Physically connected to the main library So this is the kind of what the building is trying to do and again fairly straightforward Enhance the campus and promote collaboration. Those are the two that I I think are kind of commonplace in these kinds of buildings, but but they're as complex Issues as you can have The result was this building in dark blue and a kind of a shared Atrium in between them and reorienting the door so the door to the entire complex will be from that side But a wall here facing west unfortunately Was kind of to create this new piece of campus So this is the ground floor where you can see that common space and a new entrance into the existing library and The idea was to create a new entrance there, but a kind of a fabulous much needed activity outdoor activity space or Gathering space for the campus in a in a very difficult place and that note of intensity is what the campus needed and that was created by a Couple of things one was that nexus in itself separating the new building from the old with all its activity and its Common entrance and it became kind of a very important event space for the campus, but also outside Creating the these steps and and in the afternoon. There's a lot of Sun, which is a very valuable commodity in Ireland But back to the window These are the reading rooms. This is a section without its wall. So the design had to provide this Incredible window, but it was facing west so The reading rooms were aligned along the face and The window was actually Had to fight the environmental conditions and Had to do it in an efficient way that would perform very well and you can see here on the right The reading rooms and two floors and the two-story wall. It's a simple two-story wall and the solution was a basically a Series of units and a cavity of two double glazed pieces of Conventional glass assembled in a custom aluminum system ventilated So to create a vented cavity and with automated and integrated shades inside By treating the glass now you have Eight phases of glass to deal with We were able to reduce the heat gain and to maintain a very good level of insulation of isolation there and The glare was dealt with with this integral system of shades That is automated and you can see that even the windows the inside layer is actually operable So you can go in and maintain clean and work with the shades So the window had to be there even though the location was challenging That is the same kind of issue that we encountered in Amherst College The new science center that opened Months ago, I would say less than a year ago Again a Fantastic display of fantastic activity in an incredible building and a small campus that Very much needed a building like this The building is actually enclosing now a very nice open area But it's oriented this way where the the the main face of the building towards the campus was facing West And you can see here the open space that it frames and the vibrancy and Energy that comes from that building towards the campus during the day and day and night So here's a diagram of the building where in orange here You see the common area that links the entire complex three pavilions in front and and the main blocks of the program in the back But there's a lot of work that this one piece of the building has to do on the level on level one you have what's called the living room and Levels two and three is just the same window that keeps going all the way up again a single-minded Purposeful design of a glass wall so here's a view of That wall and what it looks like inside Becoming again the main living room for the entire campus really and that is Combined with a with a beautiful space right outside of it To create this combination of inside and out for year-round Kind of generation of a magnet for the entire campus So again here there's a small canopy there, but the rest of the glass Like we saw in the first example I showed Two things happen here one is again. It's hung from the structure on the roof So again to lighten up the entire system in this case though the columns are not three feet away But all the way back even behind the balconies to really create this unencumbered space Getting the columns out of the way and still this entire wall had to be hung from it. So here's a gigantic cantilever that does that and You could see that all that was done to again get the clutter out of the wall and the wall indeed is a Piece of jewelry almost minimum minimum sections and in the very high performance and One of the things that is interesting here is that by hanging the the wall from the roof You were able to do very small horizontals Therefore creating the opportunity for the air to flow along the glass without being interrupted by the monions that typically are six or eight inches Blocking the flow of air and in combination with the shades that come down when they have to come down and To control the issue of glare creates actually and helps a flow of air that actually Becomes a convecting force to cool the space combined with a radiant strategies and and a very sophisticated way of Of moving the air in and out of the space and then fitting it again to for recovering energy so again a concept of a Glass the aluminum or this the structure of the curtain wall the shades and glare control all in the service of this single-minded idea of opening up this window and and using whatever techniques and tools we need to Appeal to or develop to get to that place so again That was just kind of a window into our practice a little bit and I thought that this issue of the Technical challenges presented by design are Are worth it when that the idea is in service of the program and the people and the client so I I Think that concludes what I wanted to share with you today. I think this is a new model by the way People seem to be enjoying that So thank you, I'm Available for any questions you might have about things I showed or things that I didn't show Yes You mentioned The research projects are pre-varyed in their scope Many of them have to do with Very particular technical challenges And others are more general so for example There has been a research study on the the use of Unprogrammed informal space in buildings So it's very non-technical, but actually can become fairly complex Which is actually a very important issue in planning buildings where clients are Generating and crafting a program a space program for a building So Whenever you have space that is not directly assigned to a to a particular program What is the value of that and and how is that used and you have a lot of examples in this very building of Circulation space that actually is essential to the interaction between people We had research projects Related to ventilation in health care for example natural ventilation in health care in other words something that has Traditionally been the essence of health care design, which is get fresh air into our buildings for I don't know 500 years or so that got dropped completely in the 20th century and and that was a very Directed research program trying to find the value and the possibilities and opportunities For natural ventilation in patient spaces in hospitals Which relates very much to the second third of the top today The last one I'm going to mention is the glazing tool Which is a piece of software and application really that allows people to actually input a tremendous amount of variables on a design problem and get feedback on on the impact of the glass on on Human comfort so with different geometry at different different parameters You can actually play up and down those parameters and understand the comfort factor of people that are close to that system And that has been widely used across the world. We we actually published these research Projects into either reports or or widely available make him available online So those those are three that that I can mention to you So the the fab lab really what it is is a model shop of big things and complicated things so they have toys that we Can't really have in our model shop in and in our floor. So it's a remote space that we lease for that so that's kind of the General picture the way we are using that is evolving And the intent is really to use that resource to inform technical design decisions To go through iteration and understanding of design with a hands-on Approach as opposed to a software or just kind of a modeling type of Approach to actually build the thing and understand how pieces go together and how it performs and what it looks like on real size Very often those are questions that come up early in design somebody on the team might think Here's something we can do here, but I don't know if it's possible. I've never seen it, but Sounds like a good idea and the client might say I don't know I Don't trust that that's a good idea yet because I have never seen it So in that case we might actually go to to to the fab lab and actually build the thing and figure it out and collaborate with Builders and suppliers and hardware stores around the area build Find a way of assembling building designing the piece and Learning from it. So first we learn from it once we think that the assembly or the piece is worthy We take it to the client and we say here look it actually works and this is how it works And this is what we learn. So by the time we are actually designing and documenting it for construction we already been through an iterative process of figuring out how it works whether it works and Beyond that I think There's projects that we do in the fab lab where we actually Help the builders To implement the design that we documented in in our plans. So I Think on this pedestrian bridge on northeastern the kind of the cordon steel bridge that you saw there We actually Assisted the the contractors Execute pieces of that because the details were so Particular and tricky that fair to say park There's It's also a tool for communication We have one more question You all hear the question excellent question by the way This is what I can tell you there is a cultural Gap in between you know, these are very different countries and Certainly our team didn't have a lot of experience working in China. So there's a lot of issues that we encounter that require a lot of Negotiation in the dialogue That particular issue of embedding nature has never been a problem I would say that I can't I'm not an expert in China just for working on two projects So I can't tell you if this is a Chinese issue It's more of the owners the clients of these two particular three really particular projects Have been very enthusiastic about the idea I Think they were actually expecting that to tell you the truth Looking at other projects that I see other American firms are Designing in China from what you see which is what they want to show you You don't always see this Kind of in such a kind of a committed way But I can't tell you that there's that would have been a lot easier to convince an American client of any of those things So I don't think that was an issue at all. In fact I think The client again was kind of Expecting us to push on that front and they were very very receptive If they were not receptive they they wouldn't actually build it. They would just not build it and but they they they are So, yeah It sure did So we have It's interesting because I'm certainly not an expert But we do have folks in our team that actually know a lot more yeah in the team here and and There there haven't been like a formal Feng Shui review of the project, but It comes so natural to them to look at the world that way that actually Many of the comments that they have About the design turns out Are kind of compatible or aligned with Feng Shui issues. So that that is very helpful. We we had to Learn very quickly a lot of the basic concepts And again, some some folks at pay it have a lot of background in that and that was very helpful But the answer is absolutely yes So we have the greatest addition that everybody should see I think there are some