Workbook: Mountain Chic for the New Belgium Ranger Station

Scout Regalia's design for Snowmass Village's New Belgium Ranger Station features a contemporary take on mountain design. Photography by Laure Joliet/Courtesy Scout Regalia.For Benjamin Luddy and Makoto Mizutani, the New Belgium Ranger Station (a restaurant and bar with a warm, contemporary take on its namesake just next to the lifts and gondola in Snowmass Village, Colorado) represents a return to their roots. You see, the pair received master’s degrees at SCI-Arc and have been practicing together since 2006 at their multi-faceted, LA–based design studio, Scout Regalia. There, they have been designing furniture, home products and graphic identities. With the Ranger Station, they’ve completed their first built architectural project.

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Education: Public Interest Design Portland

Sergio Palleroni heads up the new Center for Public Interest Design, part of Portland State University's School of Architecture. Image courtesy Portland State University. These days, Portland, Oregon, is synonymous with progressive leadership on a host of topics, with issues relating to land use and the environment up there on the list. With the new Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University’s School of Architecture, add another. The center, funded by an anonymous $1.5 million gift and the first of its kind in the United States, will be dedicated to studying and harnessing the power of design to effect social, economic and environmental change to disadvantaged communities locally and globally.

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Case Study: Lee Brennan on Healthcare Innovation

The linear accelerator at he Doug + Nancy Barnhart Cancer Center at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center overlooks a garden, one of many innovative, patient-focused design decisions Lee Brennan and Cuningham Group incorporated into the facility's design. Image courtesy Cuningham Group. It seems like the simplest of ideas—improve the hospital experience for patients (and by extension their caregivers and loved ones) and create a constellation of favorable circumstances that can promote healing and reduce the stress and anxiety levels of all comers. As a brief look at modern medicine reveals, the reality has been very different. In his work at Cuingham Group’s healthcare studio, principal Lee Brennan has been thinking long and hard about just how to improve those experiences and, by extension, potentially improve outcomes.

A case in point is Brennan and his team’s recent work on The Doug + Nancy Barnhart Cancer Center at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center in San Diego, where, Brennan says, “every measure was taken to improve the patient experience from the moment of arrival.” To do this, Brennan and his team created a patient advisory group to provide feedback on what they liked—and disliked—about the existing facility. As they designed, they incorporated that feedback. The result is a state-of-the-art facility that keeps the human factor in sight.

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Showroom: How We Sit Now

Just launched at Neoncon, Stylex's Share offers an innovative option for modular lounge seating for the office. Image courtesy Stylex. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen a transformation in the way we work. Telecommuting has become increasingly common, and offices themselves are evolving from cubicle farms into something more complex and flexible, as a means of fostering a communal atmosphere. At FORM, we’ve been noting these developments—in particular how architects and designers are responding to their clients’ changing work needs.

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Building Your Business: Rich Pedine Talks Social Media

www.marciaprentice.com/courtesy Rich Pedine Public RelationsFor our new installment of Building Your Business, we're talking social media. These days, it's pretty much a given that firms will incorporate social media into their overall pr and marketing strategy. But how do you go about it? What makes for a good approach? How do you roll it out? How do you measure success? To get you thinking (or to help you take your existing plans to the next level), we reached out to Los Angeles–based public relations professional Rich Pedine.

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