Inspiration
Touring Italy’s Tile Manufacturers
This Fall, Arrowstreet interiors had the unique opportunity to join Tony Butlin of Division 9 Collaborative on a tour of tile manufacturers in Sassuolo, Italy. The Italian province is an industrial hub and home to hundreds of tile manufacturing showrooms and factories, including Valmori, Lea Ceramiche, 41 Zero 42, Ceramiche Piemme, Target, 14Ora, Provenza and Iris. Not only was the…
The Future of Architecture with AIANH and AIAVT
There is nothing like fall in New England so it was a pleasure to present my thoughts about the future of the profession and ways that architects can create new value in their work to AIA New Hampshire and AIA Vermont at their annual ARCHtoberfest event. Held annually in a local brewery, this year’s site was the Harpoon Brewery in…
Arrowstreet Walking Tour: East Boston
We traveled across Boston Harbor via water taxi last week for the first of our summer walking tours. East Boston is becoming one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city, and underutilized land on the waterfront is being made accessible to the public at a number of new developments. Our tour weaved through the neighborhood, stopping at three new mixed-use…
Walking East Boston with ULI
This week a few of us attended a ULI walking tour of East Boston’s waterfront development. We enjoyed a water taxi ride over, and visited residential projects at various stages of development — one plans to lease by August, while another recently completed permitting. Each development has a retail component and public access to the water, including new water taxi…
Visiting Taliesin West and Cosanti
I had the opportunity to visit Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio, and Cosanti, the studio of Paolo Soleri, while I was in Arizona at the Sustainable Design Leaders Summit. Soleri was an apprentice of Wright’s at Taliesin. While Wright and Soleri had contrasting ideas of what architecture should be, and the two sites I visited were aesthetically very different,…
ACE Mentoring’s Final Presentations
Last night I served as a panelist at the Ace Mentoring Program’s final presentations. ACE Mentoring is a non-profit, volunteer based mentor organization that pairs high school students interested in architecture, construction, and engineering with professionals in the industry. The final presentations offer an opportunity for the students to present their semester’s work to a panel of industry professionals. It…
Excited About ACE
ACE Mentoring is a non-profit, volunteer based mentor organization that pairs high school students interested in architecture, construction, and engineering (ACE) with professionals in the industry. For the last six-years I’ve served as a mentor, assisting with the program’s mission to engage, excite, and enlighten high school students to pursue careers in architecture, engineering, and construction. The students tackle a…
Food and Real Estate
Last week I was lucky enough to attend the ULI Food and Real Estate Forum in New Orleans. It rained the whole time, making it hard to sneak out of the hotel for late night beignets, but the dialogue made up for the inclement weather. The group discussions covered a wide range of topics about the role of food in our…
Sustainable Design Leaders Winter Summit
Last week I attended the Sustainable Design Leaders Winter Summit. This event, facilitated by BuildingGreen, is an opportunity for sustainable design leaders from architecture firms across the country to discuss sustainability within practice and across the industry. Unlike a typical conference, the summit is a completely interactive and content is derived from what the participants want to discuss and learn….
Off the Grid with Tesla’s Powerwall
Every year, BuildingGreen names the ten best green building products “transforming the design and construction industry” and helping to solve environmental problems. One product we are particularly excited about is Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack Onsite Energy Storage. As we work towards designing more energy efficient multi-family housing, the use of alternative fuel sources (such as solar panels) becomes more effective….