Rethink, Restore, and Repurpose: A New Design for K-State’s Historic Seaton Hall Complex

Walking through BNIM, there is an unmistakable presence — chipboard models with columns of Corinthian order, original blueprints (yes, the blue kind), and LED monitors lit with laser scans of buildings detailed enough to show the exact split-face depth of 1870s limestone blocks. These unique interactions between old and new fuel BNIM’s passion for renovations and adaptive reuse projects.

Sixteen: How Narrative Gave a Second Life to this Abandoned Neighborhood

Sixteen is a provocation that uses fictional narrative to guide the design process. As it applies to architecture, narrative prioritizes the human experience. It can be utilized and applied to the built environment in many different forms — but always in an experiential and emotional dimension that justifies an idea, spatial sequence, and form. It transcends daylight studies, space planning, and other data-driven findings — and transforms quantified space into place.

Virtual Reality in Practice: Q&A with Brandon Wlosinski, BNIM Manager of Virtual Design and Construction

Visualization tools have long been used to communicate spatial properties and bring them to life for stakeholders. Now, with the onset of virtual reality (VR), anyone donning goggles or Google Cardboard can become deeply immersed in an architectural experience. This participation removes boundaries by creating a direct connection to the design and intent — and can even create a dialogue between communities. It’s a radical disruption of the feedback loop and iterative design process.

Designing for Resilience: Thunder Valley Regenerative Plan | Q&A with Lead Planner Christina Hoxie

The Thunder Valley Regenerative Community Master Plan is a visionary community design collaboration between local Pine Ridge Indian Reservation community members, the Oglala Lakota 501©(3) nonprofit organization Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (CDC), and architecture firms BNIM and Pyatt Studio, with essential support from KLJ Engineering and Studio NYL. This project is Lakota culture materialized in a built environment — an entire eco-friendly, climate-adaptable community built from the ground up with local culture and values in mind.

Material Matters: How Microbes, Mushrooms, and Moss Could Redefine the Future Materials Library

If you are like me, you have gone down the grocery aisle with a list of trigger words in your head. Benzoate, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated, starch, monosodium glutamate, artificial flavor, sorbate, and just about anything else you can’t pronounce is likely to make you think twice about that bag of chips, box of cereal, or jar of pickles. The world of construction is likewise a minefield riddled with hazardous materials and processes — asbestos, formaldehyde, halogenated compounds, mercury, polyvinyl chloride, and so on.

Building Positive: A Four-in-One Prototype — The Water Story

Take a look at the city around you. Now imagine a different city, or even the lack of city. Replace the galleries and retail spaces and parking lots with a woodland/prairie ecotone — grasses creating the neighborhood floor instead of concrete, trees punctuating the skyline and providing shelter instead of buildings. This is many a city pre-development — a mosaic of grass and trees; the landscape of the 1880s. What if we could return, even if in spirit, to recreate some of what was lost as urban systems replaced natural systems?

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