As we prepared to enter this new year, I found myself wondering if uncertainty would be identified as an unrelenting theme of 2025. But I should have known better, and I cleared my head upon listening to the “I Hear Design” podcast that explored Gensler’s annual Design Forecast just before New Year’s Eve. You can check out the full audio on our podcast page; we’ve also included an article that hits the highlights in this issue.
As chief content director Robert Nieminen learned during his conversation with Gensler co-CEOs Jordan Goldstein and Elizabeth Brink, a sense of optimism is aflame at all levels, from the client to the architect to the interior designer. Brink attributes this continued optimism to a “shift toward people really wanting to activate their environment.”
Similar sentiments are echoed throughout the pages of this issue of i+s; they’re just expressed in different ways. For example, ASID’s Lindsey Koren describes the society’s 2025 Trends Outlook as “offering insights into how consumers and designers alike are redefining their spaces to align with deeper personal and societal values”. And interior designer Caleb Anderson discusses how the Drake/Anderson approach will continue to evolve , driven by a passion “to meet this moment in the world to do work that is as beautiful as it has always been, but with a deeper meaning and purpose”.
So, how do these ideas of activation and harmonizing environments with our values come to fruition in this issue? Take adaptive reuse, for example. One of the key points in Gensler’s discussion was the opportunity to reimagine spaces, sometimes even local districts, to a new purpose, and we’ve got plenty of that for you.
HGA and Bonetti Kozerski Architecture are just two firms demonstrating the possibilities for rebirth when a building’s bones are still in good condition. For The Refinery at Domino in Brooklyn, Dominic Kozerski explained, the vision for the transformation of a former sugar refinery plant to a mixed-use commercial development was to maintain brickwork wherever possible and juxtapose that with the newer steel supports and modern finishes, showing the old and new not only coexisting but playing off one another. Meanwhile, over in the nation’s capital, design firm HGA turned the second floor of a historic department store building into its new regional office. The space celebrates the role that designers play in revitalization efforts while providing an efficient and harmonious environment in which they can not only create but showcase their vision to clients.
Pinnacle Lighting designer Jennifer Newman and engineer Bhavik Tejwani explore a different angle of adaptive reuse—the challenges that undocumented structural quirks and older building systems can pose in modernizing a historic building for a whole new purpose. Using the conversion of the University of Southern California’s United University Church as a case study, they pull back the curtain on the infrastructure needs that demanded creative solutions in order to fully optimize the space into a new School for Dramatic Arts without destroying its unique architectural details and historic value.
It occurs to me that much of the content in this issue is driven by positive themes of passion, meaning, collective well-being, and the continuous pursuit of connection. These may at first appear as lofty ideals, but if you read more closely you’ll see that they make for a motivated design workforce dedicated to delivering a positive business impact as well.
