UC San Diego Health’s Jacobs Medical Center is a visionary healthcare building that functions as three hospitals – housing centers for women’s and infants, cancer care and specialty surgery – in one 10-story building. The building has been widely recognized for its patient-focused design, with media coverage from CNN, Architect’s Newspaper and Dezeen while winning both a Fast Company World Changing Idea award and the AIA National Healthcare Design Award in 2017. While these accomplishments celebrate the design and key features of the medical center, we wanted to call special attention to specific spaces in the hospital focused on cancer care. In Jacobs, floors four through six are home to…

With the arrival of fall’s changing colors and cooler temps across the U.S., we thought it would be good to look back at one of our favorite days of summer 2018: the AIA Day of Service on June 23. With the National AIA Conference in Manhattan this year, AIA New York leveraged the final day of the expo to encourage visiting and N.Y.-based architects to give back to diverse communities in need and our team was proud to take part. A few highlights from that great day: Widespread Impact–Volunteers worked on various service projects for non-profit organizations across the city, from Sunset Park to Chelsea, Harlem to Washington Heights, to…

In July, CannonDesign collaborated with Construction Management Partners (CMP), diversity consultant for the BJC HealthCare Diversity & Inclusion Program, to host a Shadow Day for several local high school students from various districts in St. Louis, including the Hazelwood and Fort Zumwalt School Districts. The objective was to provide students who had interest in studying architecture and engineering, and offer an upfront glance inside a professional AEC office environment. CannonDesign is a BJC HealthCare Toolbox Architect.   This was the first Shadow Day of its kind under a collaboration between Cannon and CMP as part of the BJC program; CannonDesign is a BJC HealthCare Toolbox Architect. In 2013, BJC HealthCare adopted…

In 2006, CannonDesign saw a rare opportunity for its St. Louis office in one of the city’s signature buildings: a vacant steam-heat power plant built in 1928 as part of the city’s post-World’s Fair economic re-development efforts. Ten years later, after a major redesign and adaptive re-use process that gutted its interior and created a new-meets-old design concept, the Power House is still generating positive energy for its occupants — our St. Louis headquarters — its neighborhood, and its city. We celebrate its first decade with a look back at its history and impact. When built, the Power House powered a dozen downtown city buildings, including City Hall, the Kiel Opera House, and…

John Jennings’ life is busy. As a project manager for our Boston team, he spends his days guiding important efforts like Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Yale University’s Sterling Chemistry Lab Renovation and renovating residence halls at Boston College while also writing thought leadership for local publications. In the evenings, on weekends, and 24-7-365 really, he’s a devoted husband and father – always trying to carve out time to help his community. “Even as life has become more wonderfully busy with new job responsibilities and children, it’s important to me and my family that we stay connected with the community and give back,” Jennings explains. “I realized that in order to manage…

The Archeworks Chicago Studio mission and manifesto is an inspiring one. “We believe good design serves the greater good,” it reads. “It can enhance the quality of life for all, not just the privileged few – yet too many members of our communities are not participating in the design process or being exposed to professional opportunities in design. Archeworks Chicago Studio, a design education program for Chicago’s high school students, aims to change that reality. We will teach, mentor and inspire students on the role of design in improving peoples’ lives.” Archeworks shift toward addressing diversity in design is a seminal moment for the design education lab. Archeworks has spent…

Across every market, be it healthcare, education or business, people are understanding design in much more sophisticated ways. Fueled by growing consumerism and shifting generational preferences, people expect better experiences at the hospital, in a college student union and/or in the workplace. They expect immersive experiences that make their lives more enjoyable. Responding to these shifting expectations, building owners and design teams working in other markets now regularly embrace leading ideas from the world of hospitality and infuse them into their projects. Borrowing these ideas allow organizations to push new boundaries, achieve competitive differentiation, and/or bolster recruitment and retention. Why Hospitality Design? The hospitality market has long been delivering valuable…

Marisa Nemcik, AIA NCARB, an architect in our Boston office, and Tim Walser, an architect in our Chicago office, recently won a sponsorship to attend the 2018 AIA Conference on Architecture, held this year in New York City under the banner theme: “Blueprint for Better Cities.” They share their findings here: As the two lucky applicants selected, we were flown from our Boston and Chicago offices to New York for the AIA conference, a four-day event that had us walking the High Line, lunching with CannonDesign executive design director David Polzin and CEO Brad Lukanic, dodging Manhattan traffic and, of course, enjoying the myriad seminars and learning sessions offered. We…

The world of human resources and talent management is seeing exciting change – it was a consistent theme at CNBC’s inaugural Talent@Work event earlier this week. Part of CNBC’s new @Work series focused on making sense of the dramatic change occurring in the world of work, Talent@Work brought together HR leaders to focus on the workforce of tomorrow and how companies can best attract the brightest talent to fuel their business. It was an enlightening discussion powered by inspiring thought leaders, and CNBC deserves praise for the high quality of the event. I was thrilled to see the passion and analytical rigor as fellow leaders shared their experiences, journeys and…

Every day, millions of breastfeeding mothers head to work knowing they will need to express milk in dark conference rooms, converted closets and other makeshift spaces not appropriately designed for privacy, personalization of sanitization. These same women will also have to visibly pack and carry their equipment each time they need to pump and store the resulting milk in small refrigerators under their desks or in communal areas. To be direct, these women deserve better. Our team has conceptually developed a better solution called Sona that confronts traditional, segregated and clinically driven spaces typically devoted to new mothers for expressing milk. Taking into account the often taboo nature of “pumping”…