Transforming a space from a two-story Art Deco building into a 21st Century learning facility was the challenge assigned to architecture firm Chaulk Studio. Fortunately, designing thoughtful, innovative and socially-impactful projects is what Chaulk specialises in.

The idea behind Collision Lab at Cornell Tech is simple— get the best and brightest in the space and let their minds “collide” to create tech solutions, start-up companies, new products and so much more.

When BP decided to re-brand the US ‘Lower 48’ section of their corporation, they named it BPX Energy. They then decided to move the headquarters from Houston, TX to Denver, CO to grow their onshore oil and gas business in the Rocky Mountains.

You could call this a marriage of the minds. John Stephens is the Vice President of Marketing for Shaw Contract. Shannan Billings is the Senior Director of Global Sourcing for Shaw Industries, the parent company to Shaw Contract. He’s a former history major. She can’t get through a meeting without using the word “molecule” more than a dozen times. They share a belief system, an employer and their home. Is this a house united? Here’s what happens when they sit down to talk.

Second chances abound in the work of emerging artist Juli Bolaños-Durman.

I’m an optimist, by nature, so I’ve had to befriend failure over the course of my career—seeing it as instructive for the next big thing, rather than a referendum on my leadership or the capacity of change in design. I experienced this most acutely when I co-created “The 1%” pro bono design program with my colleagues at Public Architecture in the mid-aughts.

More than 60 trans-disciplinary projects including two large-scale, site-specific installations. Five curators. A six-person advisory board. A 240-page book. And countless hours of investigation, meditation, experimentation and scholarship. Those are just a few ingredients in the heady stew of “Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial,” the sixth instalment of the museum’s signature exhibition.

City governments are increasingly recognised as leaders on environmental issues. But one important tool they use to promote sustainability—procurement—sometimes flies under the radar.

In the jungle of the Congo Basin, in a part of the Democratic Republic of Congo that is six hours by motorcycle from the nearest airstrip, the Ilima Primary School serves as a learning and community centre that enables and encourages integration with local wildlife. Opened in 2015, the school was designed and built by the architecture firm MASS Design Group, in collaboration with the African Wildlife Foundation.

We have to reevaluate the idea that this land is here for our consumption.

In the world of design, sustainability can take many forms. It can involve a renewable material. It can mandate buildings that respect the geography of a place. It can come from architecture that favours local materials and building types. Or it can encompass all of the above, as the work of the three design professionals profiled here illustrates so eloquently.

Today, the design industry is complex. Key ingredients used to be attention to detail, market analysis and strong technical knowledge. However, ethics and building consensus increasingly surface as more important design skills.

That starting point of elusive, natural beauty is the inspiration behind the new custom collection Mist.

Living in a time of increasing choices and possibilities made answering this question even more important. Our brand refresh was born out of a need to have an answer to this question. We know that purpose-driven companies have 4X the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of companies in the S&P 500 Consumer Sector. Generating a vision that connects us all enables us to better connect with our clients, and it empowers them to choose Shaw Contract.

On the front of the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) international conference, a group of Disney fans and the curious gathered at Disneyland. After all, when your conference is held near one of the most magical places on earth, you must take the opportunity to connect to your childlike self and get inspired by a brand you grew up with. A few of us may have walked in as sceptics to the magic, but we all left as believers.

We’re thrilled to announce that our HQ in Cartersville, Georgia, the Shaw Create Centre, has been awarded top honours in the Workplace category in Fast Company’s 2019 Innovation by Design Awards, the only competition to honour creative work at the intersection of design, business, and innovation.

Dating back to the eighth century, dyeing technique consisted of taking fabrics that are bound, stitched, folded, twisted, compressed or clamped then dipping them into a colour bath. The results were not just distinctive in pattern but in depth of colour, too. The Shaw Contract design team took inspiration from this ancient textile dyeing method when conceptualising new colours to update our best-selling Dye Lab collection.

With the recent launch of Joy Squared, Shaw Contract is adding an LVT product to our portfolio in a square tile format. We thought we would take a moment to explain what LVT is and how it differs from a more traditional vinyl offering, VCT.

For this year’s Design Awards, we pulled together an elite group of judges from all around the globe. For us, the Design Awards are a celebration of the creative vision architects and designers bring to the world. They highlight the truly innovative and inspiring work being done by the design community.

Meet Joy Squared, an American-made LVT collection of 24” x 24” (61 cm x 61 cm) tiles inspired by the spontaneous and joyous moments of our youth.

Experimenting with colour is what the Dye Lab carpet tile collection is all about. For years, Dye Lab has brought a lush intimacy into the spaces we work, rest and converge. Now, we’re expanding its reach with exciting new colours.

This year’s summer event at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. promises to be airy, fun and nostalgic. The Lawn 2019 Summer Block Party installation at the National Building Museum was designed by LAB at Rockwell Group and features interactive elements, games, community activities in summertime surroundings in one of D.C.’s most prominent institutions.

If you’re like us, you’re both recovering from and reliving the magic of NeoCon after a week of amazing design and fabulous events. We’re back at the Create Centre reflecting on the show and all of the people we met.

This year’s HD Expo marked another year of knowledge-share and connectivity within the hospitality design industry. Take a look below at some highlights from the show.

This year’s design award program saw over 700 submissions from around the world. To select winners, we gathered ten designers to evaluate and select their favourite designs. The process took two days, and each submission category was evaluated by a group of judges, with Shaw Contract designers and marketing leaders facilitating dialogue. Together, the teams selected 36 category winners and 6 final winners, to be announced soon.

On this day and all days, we’re making an effort to consume less and produce less waste. One of the best ways we can do that is to use less plastic - a cause that we’re actively tackling through product development.

Around this time last year, we were preparing to introduce our collaboration with Stockholm-based design studio Form Us With Love at NeoCon. This year, we’re thrilled to share the Inside Shapes Design Tool with you. It’s a digital toolkit that empowers designers to create a floorscape using the Inside Shapes collection.

The impact of colour in our inhabited spaces has a profound, subliminal effect on how we process and interact with the world, others and ourselves. As students of design, we understand that the colours we choose for a designed space are emblematic of a mood, a culture or an intended outcome. How does this shade of grey make our patients feel when they’re in a healing environment? Which shade of blue brings luxurious calm to a hospitality environment?

In its 14 years, the Shaw Contract Design Awards Program has given nearly $150,000USD to non-profit and charitable organisations around the world. Each year, the final winners and People’s Choice Award winner select a charity of their choice to donate $2000 USD as part of their prize winnings. This allows designers the opportunity to make an impact beyond the built environment.

This year’s Shaw Contract Design Award Final and People’s Choice winners have shown us how designers are reacting to evolving needs in the built environment. The very nature of an awards program begs the question, what actually defines good design? How do judges of a competition like this decide on standout talent and ingenuity? We asked two of our Final judges, Karen Daroff of Daroff Design and Sophie Safrin of Hot Black to weigh in on their definition of good design, observed trends and the future of design.

Anyone who follows us on social media or who had the chance to visit our booth at NeoCon this year will have been as excited as we are by the launch of Inside Shapes, the new creative toolkit designed to take carpet tile from being a surface covering to an interactive design tool.