Future-Proofing Automotive Labs for EVs and Emerging Technology
Automotive lab safety starts with visible controls, accessible shutoffs, and a room that reinforces safe habits every day.
Making Safety Part of the Learning Environment
Automotive lab safety starts with visible controls, accessible shutoffs, and a room that reinforces safe habits every day.
Designing Automotive Labs Around How Instructors Teach
A strong automotive lab supports the way instructors actually teach, with space for demonstrations, clear sightlines, better acoustics, and room to move between coaching and hands-on learning.
Why Automotive Labs Aren’t Commercial Shops
College automotive labs should support clear sightlines, safe movement, flexible instruction, hands-on practice, and effective demonstrations that build student confidence.
Designing Around the Patient: What Neurological Care Facilities Can Learn from the Fixel Institute
What can neurological care facilities learn from the Norman Fixel Institute? This article explores how patient-centered design, interdisciplinary care, research integration, and adaptable planning can shape better environments for people living with Parkinson’s, ALS, Alzheimer’s, movement disorders, and other neurological conditions.
Transparency Is a Discipline, Not a Tone
Six RFIs in one day, all on the same issue, usually means something in the project needs a closer look. That happened early in construction on the Norman Hall Rehabilitation, at University of Florida when a series of questions came in about partition dimensions. Each RFI pointed to the same place in the drawings, and answering them individually would have kept everyone busy without necessarily solving the underlying issue. Instead of simply responding one by one, Walker Architects project manager stepped back and asked the construction manager a more useful question: What does the framer actually need to keep moving?
The Power of Early Facilities Involvement in Strategic Decisions
Facilities teams are often brought in late on major capital decisions, even though they will operate, maintain, and troubleshoot the building for 30 to 50 years. When facilities input arrives late, projects inherit avoidable risk: hard-to-reach equipment, maintenance conflicts, circulation bottlenecks, and decisions built on assumptions instead of operational truth. Early facilities involvement is a people-first move that protects the project, reducing risk before it turns into rework, cost, or operational headaches.
Mission-Driven Design Creates More Sustainable Outcomes
Sustainability in higher education is often framed in technical terms — energy performance, efficient systems, or certifications. These matter. But the most enduring form of sustainability comes from something deeper: mission alignment. When a building reflects an institution’s core purpose, it remains relevant longer, adapts more gracefully, and delivers greater value over time.
Envelope Renewal: Putting Occupants First for Performance, Comfort, and Safety
The building envelope protects people and assets, supports energy efficiency, and shapes performance on every level. Because it plays such a central role, maintaining and renewing the envelope is one of the most important long-term investments a facility can make.
Bridging the Deferred Maintenance Gap with Agile Design
Facilities leaders face aging buildings, growing backlogs, and tight budgets. Agile Design prioritizes the most impactful fixes, combines scopes to reduce disruption, and turns deferred maintenance into a strategic roadmap.