Editorial

There’s money to be made in reconstruction. Based on our annual Giants 300 survey, we estimate that the top 300 AEC firms generate about 20-30% of annual revenues from reconstruction, and for design firms that specialize in historic preservation and adaptive reuse, that percentage can quickly go north of 50% of total revenues. If your firm is doing less than the industry average, you may be missing a great opportunity.

A reconstructed building is the ultimate green building. It is generally the case that “saving” an existing building is the most sustainable thing you can do, for obvious reasons. Whether it’s a renovation that simply extends an existing use, or one that takes an existing building and transforms it to another use, much of the embodied energy in that building is staying put.

Furthermore, reconstruction offers the opportunity to take an energy hog and make it much more efficient. Just doing the basics—sealing the envelope, insulating, upgrading lighting and lighting controls, etc.—should yield a 20% improvement in energy efficiency. Stretch a little and 30% energy savings should not be unreasonable. That’s good for the building, the occupants, and the owner—and it’s the right thing to do.

Reconstruction can turn ordinary buildings into great buildings. Look at how the Building Team for the Mid-Ohio Foodbank took an old mattress factory and turned it into a LEED Gold facility that helps provide 55,000 meals a day to the hungry and involves 10,000 volunteers a year. Owen Hall at Michigan State University and the new Cell and Genome Sciences Building at UConn are additional examples of how the ordinary can be transformed into the extraordinary.

Reconstruction challenges your imagination. The Building Team for Duke University could have taken the easy road and junked Duke’s old coal-burning power plant. Instead, they came up with a creative way to use new technology to convert the plant to 70% natural gas power generation, while enhancing the early 20th-century structure. Look how the Building Team converted Memorial Field House—essentially a big barn—into modern classroom and student space at the University of Toledo. These kinds of jobs take real imagination.

Reconstruction can bring communities together. People like to preserve and enhance the things that are important to them. The people of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, cared about the monument to their Civil War veterans, and they went out and raised $2 million to restore it to perfection. Ditto for the people of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., who fought to turn a broken-down school building into a thriving multi-purpose community center. Tap into that wellspring of community involvement. It will yield projects whose rewards go far beyond the bottom-line considerations.

Reconstruction work is fun. Building a fancy high-rise on a greenfield site in some exotic part of the world must surely have its pleasures, but digging into the bowels of an older building also has its mysteries—and surprises. Who knows what lurks behind that gypsum board? Matching your wits against the original designers and contractors is the ultimate chess match.

Across the country, multifamily rents have skyrocketed. Year-over-year rents are up by double digits in nine of the top 30 markets, while national YoY rent growth is up 6.3%. Emerging from the pandemic, a perfect storm of migration, enhanced government stimulus and a hot housing market, among other factors, has enabled this extremely strong growth.

AEC firm actions in light of Covid opening

AEC Business Innovation | Jul 11, 2021

Staffing, office changes at SCB, SmithGroup, RKTB, Ryan Cos., Jacobsen, Boldt, and Adolfson & Peterson

AEC firms take strategic action as construction picks up steam with Covid openings.

STEM High School Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) HorizonTV, LPA Architects

K-12 Schools | Jul 9, 2021

LPA Architects' STEM high school post-occupancy evaluation

LPA Architects conducted a post-occupancy evaluation, or POE, of the eSTEM Academy, a new high school specializing in health/medical and design/engineering Career Technical Education, in Eastvale, Calif. The POE helped LPA, the Riverside County Office of Education, and the Corona-Norco Unified School District gain a better understanding of which design innovations—such as movable walls, flex furniture, collaborative spaces, indoor-outdoor activity areas, and a student union—enhanced the education program, and how well students and teachers used these innovations.

Interior designer Creative License International fashioned this community room for P83, a 250-unit rental community in Peoria, Ariz. 2021 Multifamily Amenities study

Multifamily Housing | Jul 7, 2021

Make sure to get your multifamily amenities mix right

One of the hardest decisions multifamily developers and their design teams have to make is what mix of amenities they’re going to put into each project. A lot of squiggly factors go into that decision: the type of community, the geographic market, local recreation preferences, climate/weather conditions, physical parameters, and of course the budget. The permutations are mind-boggling.

Industrial Facilities | Jul 2, 2021

A new approach to cold storage buildings

Cameron Trefry and Kate Lyle of Ware Malcomb talk about their firm's cold storage building prototype that is serving a market that is rapidly expanding across the supply chain.