This is a good idea (taken from a recent FT article by Edwin Heathcote):

The hotel lobby is already understood as a kind of public space, the corporate lobby should belong to that same world, a place open to the functions of the city, porous and welcoming. It is no accident that the vast lobbying industry has that name, lobbies are where encounters occur.

Sometimes we do this. Maybe there's a coffee shop or some other activations in your lobby. But more often than not, a "good" corporate lobby is about grandeur and security, which means that they do very little to animate the street.

In the above article, Edwin reminds us that before the invention of the modern office building, the entire city functioned as a kind of dispersed workplace. Places like coffee shops and pubs were, of course, central to this.

While this is still partially the case today -- people continue to like coffee and beer -- it is interesting to think about what more we could be asking of our office lobbies. And I do think it is more.

Real estate, as they say, is a local business. Every market has its local nuances. For example, once of the first things that Studio Gang asked us when we started working together was, "does Toronto do PT?" What they were referring to was post-tensioned concrete and our answer was, "not really." There are certainly examples of localized applications within buildings (such as for a specific transfer slab) and there are examples of buildings that have used it throughout (see Pier 27 Tower below -- it's how they managed to get such deep balconies). But for the most part, it's not widely used and it's certainly not as common as it is in markets such as New York. This subtle difference has an impact on how you design, which is why Studio Gang asked it from the outset.

Despite some of these local differences, there is a criticism out there that we have descended upon a kind of bland global design sensibility. No matter where you're building, every building now looks the same, which, at the end of the day, was kind of the point of the International Style of architecture. One design approach applied universally. This recent article by Edwin Heathcote takes things even further by saying that our interiors have also been sterilized to look more or less the same as a result of "digital aesthetic seepage." The article is called, "The curse of the Airbnb aesthetic."

One the one hand, there is something inevitable about this outcome. We -- including our supply chains -- have become more interconnected than ever. And because of the high cost of labor, the way we build today is centered around as much factory automation as possible. Minimize what needs to be done on site. And given that I would expect more, rather than less, automation going forward, one has to assume that this trend is destined to continue. At the same time, local places matter and one of the reasons why so many of us love to travel is that we want to see places that are different than our own. I for one don't want that to change.

Door handles are a funny thing these days. They are one of if not our most common point of contact with the built environment, and yet in the best of times they go largely unnoticed. And in today's world they have flipped to become a source of anxiety. Do I really need to touch this door handle or can I maybe use my foot or elbow? Some have responded by wearing gloves. But sometimes door handles offer up clues -- such as a worn finish -- as to where they are most commonly touched. But then one is faced with yet another difficult dilemma: do you handle the pristine part or remain committed to the worn out part since everybody else is probably thinking what you're thinking and searching for the unadulterated section of the handle? Who knew that opening a simple door could elicit such complexity.

But we shouldn't be too critical of the mighty door handle. Edwin Heathcote recently published this short history of door handles and it's a good reminder of the design intent that has gone into them over the years and how they also came to embody our broader views about architecture. One of my favorites, of course, is the original Bauhaus door handle designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer c. 1922. (Pictured above, it's currently housed on the fifth floor of the MoMA in New York.) Its lever starts out square and machine-like, but then transforms into a cylinder, exactly where you're supposed to grip it with your hand. It is ultra minimal, but it tells you exactly what to do. It also helps us with our dilemma. Worn or not worn, the cylinder is obviously where it should be handled.

Image: MoMA