Mastering the "Language" of Digital Natives to Design Future Work Space

Image © Gensler

I recently took my 8-year-old daughter to a project tour and watched her touch a wallcovering to see if it would change or ripple and then walk up to a LCD monitor, touch it, and be disappointed that it didn’t do more. Observing the space through her eyes, made me wonder, what will be relevant to her when she enters the workforce? How will she, and her generation, interact with space and how will space interact with them? This generation of Digital Natives thinks differently; they look beyond the surface and embrace the possibilities of both real and virtual spaces.

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Towards an Appropriate Local Response: Learning from our Global Clients

The Legacy West development in Plano, Texas. Image © Gensler

Before joining Gensler I worked for a number of years almost exclusively for foreign clients on projects far from my home city of Dallas. Many of the projects were situated in China and the Middle East, in which there was clearly stated preference for something grand, iconic, or monumental in scale. Their buildings had to make a dramatic sculptural statement along the street or on the landscape giving little consideration to the immediate context. If the overall form wasn’t a major concern, then often the client’s interest turned to recreating a particular architectural style. It wasn’t unusual for clients to insist on appropriating the traditional architectural styles of Europe, even if their countries of origin had little to no European cultural influence. By catering to their wishes I developed a capability to employ all kinds of architectural vocabularies, ranging from the classical to the contemporary. Before drawing a single line or extruding a model, it became a habit to carefully browse the works of Modernist masters, the Chicago School and Art Deco landmarks of the past as well as studying Bannister-Fletcher’s 1600-page volume of A History of Architecture.

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Communities with Heart: Celebrating Fifty Years of Design with Fifty Acts of Kindness

Mikaela Couch © Gensler

Last year, Gensler surpassed $1 billion in revenue. We now employ over 5,000 people across 46 offices and serve over 2,300 active clients. The figures are astounding, and a source of pride, demonstrating that our vast global presence helps us serve our clients more extensively and efficiently.

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Delivering Creativity on a Global Scale

The Shanghai Tower. The 2nd Tallest Building in the World and A New Icon for China. Image © Blackstone

Design innovation. Global talent and knowledge. Helping our clients achieve their goals and being their trusted advisors. These are the things Gensler strives to accomplish each and every day. Our firm revolves around a shared commitment to design excellence and a culture of entrepreneurial self-sustaining leadership, and our talented professionals all over the globe constantly leveraging the power of design to create a better, more livable world.

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Architecture's New Realities in a Virtual World

The Virtual Reality revolution we were promised in the early 1990s is happening now. Image © Gensler

If you're old enough to remember when Tadao Ando won the Pritzker and grunge upended pop music, then you likely remember when Virtual Reality (VR) was the future-tech just around the corner. Films, television shows, and literature promised we would soon be experiencing digital spaces through three-dimensional headsets. We would play video games, navigate file systems, and visualize things impossible in the "real world." Unfortunately, that promise was never fulfilled, and VR was relegated to the graveyard of undelivered technology promises, mocked as “vaporware.”

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