Inspiration
RetailGreen: Presentation and Debate
The International Council of Shopping Center’s (ICSC’s) annual “RetailGreen” Conference was recently held in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s the only green conference that exists primarily to serve the retail development industry. In planning meetings for the event, my colleagues and I on the Program Committee spent a lot of time conjuring up panel presentations and roundtable discussions on the sustainability topics most relevant to ICSC members…
L.L. Bean Openings
L.L. Bean had a busy fall opening three new stores, and at Arrowstreet we helped them develop some new store models along the way. King of Prussia Mall, just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was L.L. Bean’s first venture into a smaller (16,000 SF) in-line store, and opened on September 30th. On October 20th, they followed with a more typical stand-alone store (22,000 SF) in Westchester’s Ridge Hill in Yonkers, New York; L.L. Bean & Arrowstreet modified previous layouts to make this floor plan much more flexible for their various seasonal displays. Their last opening at Paramus Park Mall was a bit of a combination of the two models – a mall store with both a mall entrance and exterior face; the store (15,000 SF) opened on November 18th…
Arrowstreet Design Forums
Each month, AST holds an in-house Design Forum where we get together as a firm and discuss relevant design related topics. The forums provide a great outlet for critiquing current and completed AST projects as well as discussing general topics important to the design community…
Dwiggins Marionettes at the BPL
Earlier this year, our graphic design studio was awarded the comprehensive wayfinding project for the Copley Square branch of the Boston Public Library. It’s a terrific project and really an amazing place to wander and explore. In our orientation to the two historic buildings and our subsequent site visits (for programming and analysis), we discovered quite a few unusual spaces. One of these spaces is home to the Dwiggins Collection…
Campus Hospitality
Where do you stay when you need a place to spend the night and you are near a school or university? Arrowstreet has just completed construction on two such projects and is in the midst of design for another. The University of Massachusetts in Lowell and Harvard University are giving new thoughts to the potential market for guests who wish to stay on-campus, and they are undertaking designs which transform their offerings. Another related example is our recent work for Phillips Academy Andover at the Andover Inn…
Yulia Brodskaya’s Papergraphics
In my constant search for new forms of inspiration, I recently came across the artist Yulia Brodskaya who creates innovative papergraphics using thin strips of paper to make intricate, mesmerizing illustrations—a process also known as quilling….
Women’s Lunch Place Re-Opens
What a great way to start the week. For the past nine months, many of us at Arrowstreet have been working very closely with the folks at the Women’s Lunch Place to renovate their current space, thereby improving the quality and comfort of guests’ visits…
A Taste of Summer: Limoncello
This past winter I worked on a mixed use retail project, Il Mandarin, located in Sant’Agata li Battiati, on Sicily in Italy. The currently vacant site for the project was once used as an orchard, and still has hints of its past: lemon trees and the remains of a stone aqueduct. The project location motivated me to create something that captured the charm and character of this place, inspiring me to experiment with making my own limoncello…
NAIOP Tour of Flex-Lab Sells Out in One Email
As a follow up to my previous post on Universal Flex Labs: A New Approach to Lab Space, the NAIOP site tour was a big hit; so much so that the organization suspended their event marketing after a single email. Attendees had a lot of questions about Arrowstreet’s Flex Lab design for Biomed’s 325 Vassar Street…