CannonDesign projects named Fast Company World-Changing Ideas
May 3, 2022
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The annual list honors brave new designs, creative works that drive change, and breakthrough initiatives that pursue innovation for good.
Fast Company recognized both D'Youville University's Health Professions Hub (Education category) and 201 Ellicott (Art and Design category) for the profound ways they help, advance and beautify the communities they serve.
"This is a wonderful moment for both of these dynamic projects. They each involved extensive stakeholder engagement, critical needs relative to public health, culturally rich communities and opportunities for real impact. To take on projects with the level of complexity, meaning and nuance and deliver beautiful solutions that are now affecting real positive change, we could not be more proud."
The full World-Changing Ideas list is published online. Other honorees include Nike, Duolingo, Black Artist Collective, Lego, among others. Below is deeper information on both of the award-winning projects.
D’Youville University, Health Professions Hub
Uniting our deep education experience with our expertise helping entrepreneurial organizations from commercial and innovation sectors, we helped D’Youville create what it called a “moonshot project.”
The project confronts multiple challenges in the Buffalo region all at once. Foremost, the city’s West Side community, rich with immigrants and refugees, is woefully underserved and faces complex issues around limited access to care and prevalent poverty and food insecurity. Concurrently, the region anticipates a critical shortage of healthcare professionals in excess of 10,000 by 2024.
"When I called the Hub a moonshot years before it was ever constructed, I was referring to the impact the project could have on the people, communities and students this project serves. There was an opportunity to change lives, break chronic cycles, bring hope to new places. Now that the Hub is open and active, it’s catalyzing all of those wonderful impacts. This recognition from Fast Company is an incredible testament to those impacts. I hope it inspires others to take on similar moonshots in their communities.”
All at once, the building improves community access to healthcare services, introduces educational opportunities focused on curbing chronic illness, prepares a new workforce to seize in-demand healthcare jobs, and supports a living-wage ecosystem for Buffalo’s West Side residents.
201 Ellicott
A truly transformative project built in partnership with Ciminelli Real Estate in downtown Buffalo on the eastern edge of its urban core, 201 Ellicott replaces a former parking lot with dynamic mixed-use affordable housing and Braymiller Market, a fresh food grocery. Purposely designed as a “mobility hub,” the space encourages people to walk, bike, take public transit, carshare or any other form of eco-friendly transportation.
The trifecta of a mobility hub, fresh food market and affordable housing are each needed assets in the City of Buffalo. The design integrates these resources into the community and should echo positive impacts immediately and for future generations.
Both of these award-winning projects also involved close collaboration with the respective clients and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Public Art program. This collaboration enabled the teams to infuse stunning public art from renowned artists into their design solutions. 201 features a vibrant mural from Josef Kristofoletti while the Hub offers an equally beautiful mural from Maya Hayuk. Others involved in the public arts initiative at the Hub include Stitch Buffalo and Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik.
