Future Fest 2024: How HDR Is Designing Meaningful Architecture for a New Era

How HDR Is Designing Meaningful Architecture for a New Era

With 5 Practice Leaders from HDR

How have hospitals, academic campuses, laboratories, transit centers and more evolved to look and function differently today from centuries’ past? What forces are behind these paradigm-shifting transformations? As time-honored institutions become enriched with technology, designed for equity and oriented towards sustainability, a commitment to human-centered design paired with business sensibility emerges as the future of architecture.

From a furniture showroom-turned-biomanufacturing laboratory in Los Angeles to reimagined health and science campuses in Detroit and rural Canada better serving their communities, HDR’s Global Design Director, Brian Kowalchuk, FAIA, will lead an enlightening discussion on how good design shapes technically complex spaces to catalyze positive change for a better world.

During this talk, you’ll:

• Gain a better understanding of how a large architecture practice is built, grown, scaled and sustained to adapt to and influence an ever-changing world.
• Discover how global perspective, local context, shared values and collaborative culture cultivate a best-of-both-worlds atelier studio experience with the benefits of enterprise access.
• Glimpse of the design process and ideation strategy that informs the 2024 Architizer A+Award-winning CNL New Builds as well as Henry Ford Health’s campus expansion, Cedars-Sinai Biomanufacturing Center and other technically complex and reimagined building typologies.

We'll also be getting hyped up for Season 13 of Architizer's A+Awards program, which launches this October — register now to make sure your firm is a part of it this year!

About the Panel

Brian Kowalchuk is HDR’s global design director based in Princeton and New York City. With 40 years’ experience, he has elevated HDR’s commitment to design excellence and culture, and pays special attention to the humanistic, organizational and business issues of design to creatively balance the rational with the intuitive.

Lois Wellwood is HDR’s global interiors director based in Chicago. With 25 years’ experience, she has led integrated, global design teams at SOM, Google, NBBJ and directed the delivery of complex, precedent setting projects. She collaborates across continents, leveraging her award-winning expertise into every facet of HDR’s integrated design practice.

Donald Chong is HDR’s design principal based in Toronto, Canada. With 30 years’ experience, he is known for his inventiveness and investment in placemaking, having led the design of the A+ award-winning Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ New Builds in Chalk River. Through his academic and studio leadership, he has established a legacy in Toronto’s architecture culture.

Adeline Morin is HDR’s associate design principal based in Los Angeles. With 18 years’ experience, she brings a global perspective informed by time with Morphosis and Foster + Partners to HDR’s education and science projects, including the furniture showroom-turned-laboratory for Cedars-Sinai in the iconic Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood..

About Paul Keskeys

Paul Keskeys is Editor in Chief at Architizer. An architect-trained editor, writer and content creator, Paul graduated from UCL and the University of Edinburgh, gaining an MArch in Architectural Design with distinction. Paul has spoken about the art of architecture and storytelling at many national industry events, including AIANY, NeoCon, KBIS, the Future NOW Symposium, the Young Architect Conference and NYCxDesign. As well as hundreds of editorial publications on Architizer, Paul has also had features published in Architectural Digest, PIN—UP Magazine, Archinect, Aesthetica Magazine and PUBLIC Journal.