• Featured,  Relish

    For the joy of baking

    By definition, baking is the preparation, process, or activity of cooking through the use of heat. From bread and cakes to pastries and cookies, baked goods in all of its iterations across the globe often linger in the minds of those who have savored them, where creativity and heat transform simple ingredients into something more. It is often an art…

  • Creative Endeavors,  Featured

    Energy strategies

    At its 7th Annual Michigan Energy Summit, the Michigan Battle of the Buildings program announced 2020’s award winning sustainable organizations and businesses. The awards and recognition program highlights energy-use reduction and efficient practices across Michigan’s commercial, industrial, and multi-family buildings each year. Since the start of pandemic, especially, commercial building owners and managers have needed to adapt with significant changes…

  • Featured,  Form

    Linking the lakefront

    In 2003, the office of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley initiated an international design competition called “Bridging the Drive,” which aimed to draw major architects for a ground-breaking structural project that would improve pedestrian access to Lake Michigan across Chicago’s South Lakeshore Drive and within its South Side neighborhoods.  After nearly 16 years, the final product, brought to life…

  • Creative Endeavors,  Featured

    Healthful interiors

    The International Interior Design Association’s eighth annual IIDA Healthcare Design Awards continue to honor and celebrate the originality and excellence of current designs shaping interior healthcare spaces around the world.  Beside those based in the southern and eastern United States, this year’s winning firms and projects—announced in late September—also bring the Great Lakes region into the spotlight.  “With this annual…

  • Creative Endeavors

    Detroit Month of Design

    In 2015, Detroit was designated the first—and only—UNESCO City of Design in the United States. Since then, Design Core Detroit, the driving organization behind its designation, has been consistently developing efforts to nurture an even more vibrant and inclusive national and global design capital. Last year, the organization launched its Detroit City of Design Action Plan, which aims to position…

  • Creative Endeavors,  Featured

    Solutions in upcycle

    For six years, the annual Wege Prize competition has explored and developed one specific design concept: to redesign the way economies work. Each year, the Wege Prize holds an international design competition featuring collegiate teams from around the world, of which, each aim to create ways of converting linear economic models into circular, regenerative ones. Teams create different approaches to…

  • Design Spotlight

    Commerce Design: Detroit

    The inaugural competition announces 10 winning projects in a celebration of design and highlight of innovation in business across the city’s neighborhoods. Text: R.J. Weick   Design Core Detroit, a non-profit organization championing design-driven businesses, and AIA Detroit officially announced the 10 winning projects of the inaugural Commerce Design: Detroit competition during a special ceremony held Oct. 25, 2018 at…