Articles

Interviews

Uplift is a new, interview-style podcast from architecture and design firm NBBJ about the transformative power of design.

Podcasts

Uplift is an interview-style podcast from NBBJ focused on harnessing the transformative power of design to foster community, support health and create a resilient environment. 

Slideshows

Diversity and Inclusion

Welcoming. Representative. Buildings are for everyone, and by designing inclusive environments we pave the way for meaningful change.

Connection creates meaning. Through hospitable, energizing environments, we design places where people can live their best lives together.

Engaged Communities

Connection creates meaning. Through hospitable, energizing environments, we design places where people can live their best lives together. 

We all want to leave the planet better. As creators of the built environment, we do our part through an unwavering commitment to reduce carbon through our work and actions.

Environmental Stewardship

We all want to leave the planet better. As creators of the built environment, we do our part through an unwavering commitment to reduce carbon through our work and actions. 

Health is more than the absence of disease. It’s an overarching sense of wellness, something that can be designed into every project—from offices to hospitals.

Healthy Living

Health is more than the absence of disease. It’s an overarching sense of wellness, something that can be designed into every project—from offices to hospitals. 

Financial uncertainty. Pivoting programs. These factors can impact a project at every turn. But through construction innovation, projects can be delivered faster and cheaper.

Process and Delivery

Financial uncertainty. Pivoting programs. These factors impact a project at every turn. But through design and construction innovation, projects can be delivered faster and cheaper. 

Aging properties don't have to become liabilities. Renewal and repositioning transforms outdated spaces into valuable assets—delivering results fast and cost-effectively.

Renewal and Repositioning

Commercial Development

Corporate Office

Education

Experience Design

Healthcare

Science

Sports

Urban Environments

In the Fast-Paced World of Finance, Design Can Make the Difference Between Burnout and Breakthroughs

The Front Door Effect: Why Entry Design Matters in Pediatric Healing

Rising Temperatures Hurt the Planet and Your Brain. These Neuroscience-Based Designs Keep Both Cool.

Space to Grow: Tackling Aging Infrastructure, Capacity Strains and Financial Pressures in Healthcare Design

This Alaska Native Health System Outperforms Urban Hospitals. 
Here's How.

When It Comes to Age, Most Hospitals Are in Their Twenties. With a Universal Platform, They Can Become Centenarians.

Is Embracing Impermanence the Key to a Longer Life? If You’re an Office Building, It Just Might Be.

Seismic Upgrades Required? How Your Renovation Can "Shake Up" Infrastructure and Experience

A "Smart Watch" for the Office: Workplace Design that Facilitates Flow

The Future Lab: What a Global Survey of Scientists Says About Tomorrow's Research Buildings

From Employer-Provided Homes to Destigmatizing Affordable Housing, Three Unexpected Ways to Solve the Housing Crisis

Amenities Make Today’s Workplace: How an Amenity Strategy Can Attract the Workforce You Need

Flexibility Within a Framework: A New Approach to Standardization in Healthcare Design

Orchids, Dandelions, Tulips: When It Comes to the Workplace, Which Flower Are You?

The Next Gen Master Plan: How More Adaptable Planning Can Drive Success in a Rapidly Changing Market

Beyond Dramatic Imagery: How AI Reduces Costs, Improves Performance and Streamlines Building Design

Uplift Podcast: The Future Hospital is Flexible. How UW’s CEO Plans for Change.

The Overlooked Workplace: NBBJ and UW Research Spotlights Need to Focus on Healthcare Workforce

Innovations in Sustainability Radically Transform Buildings. Here’s How.

Is Your Retail Space Vacant? Here Are Five Unexpected Ways to Fill It.

Haste Makes Waste: The Sustainable Practice of ‘Do It Once, Do It Right’ in Corporate Workplaces

The Delight Factor: A New Metric That Quantifies the Competitive Strength of Your Workplace

Uplift Podcast: Tomorrow’s Hospital Tech is Here Today. How It Disrupts Every Aspect of Healthcare—Even Design.

Why the Next Frontier of Healthcare Design Innovation is Emotional Mapping

Uplift Podcast: Are You Prepared? Design Strategies to Mitigate the Next Pandemic

What Makes a Workplace Irresistible? Three Design Strategies to Attract and Elevate Talent

Zoning Separation Anxiety: Lessons for Downtowns Returning to Vitality

Look Both Ways: No Longer a Fortress, the Lab of the Future Will Expand Shared Innovation

Uplift Podcast: Mental Illness Impacts Us All. Can Buildings Do More to Support Healing?

The Regenerative Lab. A Building That Evolves with the Speed of Research

On the Road: Rethinking Freeways—and the Spaces Alongside Them

Uplift Podcast: Think Net-Zero and Electric Hospitals Are Impossible? Think Again.

Introducing Season 2 of Uplift, NBBJ’s Podcast About the Transformative Power of Design

The Night Shift is Bad for Providers’ Health: Circadian Lighting May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered.

A New Lease on Life: How Renewing Academic Labs Enhances Value and Amplifies Discovery

From Telehealth to AI, How Technology is Influencing Healthcare Design

Midlife Metamorphosis: Four Ways to Transform Old Buildings into Modern Assets

Uplift Podcast: A Complicated Equation. Managing Project Costs in the Face of Financial Uncertainty

A Greener Future for the Tropics: How to Design Buildings that Can Take the Heat

Uplift Podcast: Closing the Gap. Addressing Health Inequity through Design

Look Both Ways Roundtable: Why Prioritizing Efficiency Doesn’t Have to Mean Compromising Beauty

Why a Future of Soundscapes in Offices Could Make Us More Creative and Productive

Should a Workplace Have a Soundtrack?

Uplift Podcast: To Take Care of Us, We Must Take Care of Them. Design to Support the Healthcare Workforce.

The 40% Office: How to Optimize Your Workplace for Today’s Behaviors and Business Needs

Diverse Teams Drive Better Projects. Here’s How to Get the Most from an Integrated Partnership.

Uplift Podcast: From Floods to Pandemics, How to Design Resilience Not Just for Disasters, But Every Day

As Costs and Demand for Care Soars, Here Are Four Ways to Reduce Financial Risk in Healthcare Design Projects

NAIOP Magazine: How to Reinvent Aging Office Buildings for a New Era

Uplift Podcast: Design for Cancer Breakthroughs—Game Changers that 'Give Patients Their Lives Back'

Uplift Podcast: How to Design Now for the Behavioral Health Crisis

Introducing Uplift: A Podcast about the Transformative Power of Design

Harvard Business Review: How LinkedIn Redesigned Its HQ for Hybrid Work

Home Away from Home: How Comfort and Choice in Hospital Settings Helps Patients Heal

Intrusive No More: How Hospital Security Can Contribute to a Beautiful, Welcoming Environment

From Liability to Asset: How Aging Building Stock Can Compete with New Developments

Building Rapport: How Relationships and Integrated Teams Drive Project Success

Harvard Business Review: It’s Time to Design Hospitals That Take Care of Caregivers

Why the Auto Industry is Key to Designing Healthier, More Comfortable Buildings

Four Ideas to Improve Hospital Work Environments to Help Combat America's Nursing Crisis

Four Strategies to Balance Equity, Ecology and New Development When Designing and Planning for Waterfront Revitalization

Urban Waterfronts Should Be Designed to Protect Our Communities

In our latest collaboration with the University of Washington, we explore three design solutions to encourage creativity at home and in the office.

How Space Impacts Creativity in the Hybrid Workplace

From Insight to Action: Three Ways Design Computation Empowers Better Decision-Making

Three Strategies to Create an Efficient Hybrid Design Environment

What Happens When a Big Room Goes Virtual?

Strategies to Reduce Embodied Carbon in the Built Environment

Through Their Eyes: How Research-Based Computer Simulations Create Empathetic Buildings

How Can We Harness AI to Design a More Healthy Sustainable and Equitable Future

Four Ways Designing with Natural Ecology—Rather Than Against It—Can Mitigate Climate Change to Create Beautiful, Just Cities

Our Coastal Cities Are Under Threat

Postpandemic Workplace Ideas Inspired by Prepandemic Trends

Harvard Business Review: Design An Office People Want to Come Back To

The Workplace Should Be Organic: Six Ways to Create a Strong Connection to Nature in Any Workplace

The Community as Co-Creator: Why Community Engagement is Crucial to an Inclusive Design Process

Humanizing Skyscrapers: Rethinking Tall Buildings for Human Interaction

NBBJ Fellow Dr. John Medina outlines five neuroscience-based design strategies to support healthcare workers and their patients.

Hope, Healing and Healthcare

Getting to Zero: Rethinking Carbon in the Built Environment

Look Both Ways: A Virtual Roundtable Exploring Well-Being Trends for the Healthcare Workplace

From Fortress to Front Door: How High-Rises Can Attract Tech Tenants In a Highly Competitive Market

Faster and More Efficient: How the Pandemic Has Sparked Project Delivery Innovation

Going Up: Why Vertical Hospitals Might Be the Next Frontier in Healthcare Design

Furniture that is comfortable and safe can be hard to find for people in distress. So on a recent behavioral health project, we met with patients and then designed our own.

When Craft Meets Comfort

In partnership with the University of Washington, we research strategies to overcome a common barrier to productivity: noise.

A Quiet Building Is a Healthy Building

NBBJ Developed the First Open Core Hospital Design. Twenty Years Later, Here's What We've Learned.

Are Zoom Towns the Future of Cities?

Five Strategies to Support Rest in the Office

How Can Rest Build Creativity, Focus and Wellness at Work

Because disruption to the circadian system is linked to chronic disease, it’s critical to rethink lighting levels in buildings.

A Healthy Building Starts with Light

Three Ways to Guide Hospital Visitors Seeking Care

How to Rethink Wayfinding to Increase Infection Control and Decrease Patient Stress

Clear Eyes for Climate Change Action

Influencing Action: The Power of Perspective

How Covid-19 exposes the dangerous trap of the work-life pendulum and grants an opportunity to reset the workplace.

Binary Thinking and Other Misconceptions About Work

The Pandemic Boosted Telehealth; Here’s How Existing Spaces Can Support Virtual Visits

The inpatient room of the future must appeal to baby boomers and millennials alike. Here's how it can.

In a Virtual Age, Physical Connection Still Matters—Especially During a Hospital Stay

Amidst Rapid Change in Healthcare, One Priority Remains Constant: the Human Touch

Six Ways Technology Is Changing Healthcare Design

Three ways technological advances will shift healthcare delivery, from the traditional hospital to at home services.

Rethinking Healthcare Hubs in the Post-Covid Era

Look Both Ways: A Virtual Roundtable Exploring Trends in the Life Science Market and Workplace

The ‘No Shadow Tower’: How Tall Buildings Can Bring Daylight Back to the Public Realm

Questions to Consider and What to Do If You Don’t Have a Strategy in Place

Is Your Real Estate Strategy Prepared for What’s Next?

Nature as the City: Why It’s Time for a New Framework to Guide Development

‘What We Care About’: A Roundtable Conversation with A+U

How Social and Technological Changes Are Reshaping the Practice of Architecture

How to Reposition Commercial Buildings to Meet Demand for the Life Science Boom

Focus, Collaborate, Learn, Socialize, Rest: How Five Work Modes Can Redefine the Office

Advancements in rapidly deployable inpatient architecture are a key solution as hospitals scale up.

How Modular Construction Can Supply Beds in the Coronavirus Crisis

Applying neuroscience principles to foster comfort and improve workplace health.

Four Strategies to Reduce Stress as People Come Back to the Office

Hospital Rooms Should Stop Making People Sick: Three Strategies for Reducing Healthcare-Associated Infections

Work

Ideas

Work and Ideas

Market Sectors

Services

Expertise

NBBJ designs better buildings through applied reasearch where we harvest insights from social science, neuroscience and materials science. Learn about our research initiatives.

Applied Research

Discover NBBJ, an architecture and design firm with more than 80 years of experience where we are constantly reinventing ourselves to better serve our clients and community.

Our Story

Overview

NBBJ cultivates a practice of leaders: a collaboration among optimistic, empowered experts. Meet our staff and executives. 

People

Locations

NBBJ invests in opportunities that lead to diversity and inclusion within the design profession. Doing so is key to an equitable, just world. See how we do it.

News

Careers at NBBJ change lives transform communities, and create a healthier planet for future generations. Learn more about working at NBBJ.

Careers

Life at NBBJ

Available Positions

With an NBBJ internship you'll work on real architecture and design projects with world-changing clients. Kickstart your career today!

Internships

Have a challenge? Contact us to explore how design can help.

Contact

1 Center Plaza
Suite 800
Boston, MA, USA 02108

Featured Work

Related News

Our Other Locations

Boston Architecture Firm

Boston

615 S. College Street
9th Floor
Charlotte, NC, USA 28202

Featured Work + Ideas

Charlotte

250 South High Street  
Suite 300  
Columbus, OH, USA 43215

Columbus Architecture Firm

Columbus

London Architecture Firm

London

523 W. 6th Street
Suite 300  
Los Angeles, CA, USA 90014

Los Angeles Architecture Firm

Los Angeles

111 5th Avenue
Floors 10 and 11
New York, NY, USA 10003 

+1 (212) 989-3993

New York Architecture Firm

New York

1120 SE Madison St.
Portland, OR, USA 97204

Portland Architecture Firm

Portland

Pride Parmar Galaxy 8th Floor  
10/10 + A Sadhu Vaswani chowk Pune, MH 411001 India

Pune Architecture Firm

Pune

Ideas

We are optimists. Question askers. Curious about the world around us. These values shape our thinking and how we design the future.