Circular

Happy Holidays from Everyone at Circular!

Foundations of Automotive Retail Design The automotive industry is currently navigating a profound evolution, with a widespread transition to electric vehicles heralding a historic departure from the century-old internal combustion engine. This pivotal moment coincides with a reevaluation of the traditional dealership model, a longstanding cornerstone in the automotive retail sector. In parallel, consumers are undergoing a shift in their perception of "luxury," increasingly prioritizing sustainability in their lifestyle choices. Despite these seismic changes, the foundational principles of automotive retail design remain integral, and this article will delve into the continued importance of crafting an appealing storefront and a meticulously designed showroom layout. These elements play a pivotal role in conveying a brand's identity, values, and the core essence of its product offerings. Read more about this here: https://lnkd.in/epcHUBiw

Staying Warm and Cozy this Winter with a Passive House The weather has been very unpredictable this season. New York City has seen temperatures as high as 60°F one day, followed by a low of 26°F the next. This variation puts a lot of strain on typical heating systems, not to mention upending your wardrobe strategy. A typical residential furnace is great at blasting away when the temperature drops, unfortunately it uses a tremendous amount of energy in the process. With leaky windows and little to no insulation in most walls, your resulting indoor air will be very dry, stale and irritating. The way conventional thermostats work is to orchestrate a constant cycle of over- and then under-heating, which leads to rooms that are never quite at the right temperature. The furnace alternates between blasting heat and sitting idle as it strives to keep your home warm, and you’re forced to repeatedly put on and take off your sweater. That’s one of the reasons we’re huge advocates for Passive House technology. What is a Passive House? A Passive House maintains a consistent, even temperature for maximum efficiency and comfort by combining airtight, well-insulated walls with constant fresh air ventilation and energy recovery. What sets this approach apart from conventional buildings is the system is designed to maintain a steady balance between all components, rather than aggressively heating or cooling to make up for the failures of typical inefficient construction. The air quality it extremely high since fresh air is constantly being circulated into the house, but it is pre-warmed using the energy from the exhaust ventilation, resulting in a greatly reduced need for additional heating. The Benefits of a Passive House 1. Consistent indoor temperature, from top to bottom. With a Passive House your home maintains a consistent air temperature on all floors, whether it’s 40°F or 14°F outside. Using an airtight, well-insulated roof and walls, the house remains warm using a minimum of energy. And unlike a conventional house, the heating system is quiet and predictable, meaning your heating bills stay consistently low. 2. Warm surfaces = A happy home. Successfully keeping the inside air isolated from exterior temperatures is the secret to good insulation. In order to do this, conventional home construction uses 4” thick, batt insulation made of fiberglass. This is better than nothing, but we always support more sustainable material options, which is why we frequently use cellulose insulation in our Passive House projects. Cellulose insulation is made from 85% recycled paper. It’s low thermal conductivity and spray application makes it an ideal resource for sustainably insulating your home. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e5uY5Ua3

We are proud to announce that our Corona 3K Center was awarded a 2024 Brooklyn AIA Design Award! Our senior project manager Alex Truica received the award on behalf of Circular! Thank you again to our public partner: NYC School Construction Authority (SCA). And our amazing project team which included experts from DM Engineers PLLC, Melanie Freundlich Lighting Design, Thomas Gasbarro, PE, SE, Ashnu International, Inc., & STV.

Passive House & LEED: Why compromise when you can have the best of both worlds? If your company is planning a LEED building or renovation project, learn how incorporating Passive House design can help you maximize sustainability, energy efficiency and worker comfort. The two systems both aim to create Green Buildings which are better for the environment and the people that occupy them, but they go about it in different ways. By meeting the requirements of both systems, you can ensure that your building is truly efficient and delivering the energy savings promised. So what are the two systems and their respective benefits and limitations? What is LEED? According to the US Green Building Council, LEED is a rating system that promotes “healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings.” What is Passive House? Passive House is a set of design standards that strictly limit the amount of energy a building can use based on its size, while ensuring high levels of ventilation and fresh air. Learn more about both rating systems and their respective benefits here! https://lnkd.in/eE_N9eX6

American Apparel: Park Slope Brooklyn, NY , USA • 2006 Adaptive reuse of an historic movie theater creates a neighborhood scene maker. The polychromic fluorescent tubes glowing from the underside of the marquee only begin to hint at the colorful past of Brooklyn’s former Flatbush Pavilion Cinema. The bold geometric light installation and new backlit graphic panels tease passersby to enter and see how the new American Apparel store has successfully rescued a dilapidated eyesore and transformed it back into a neighborhood landmark. Originally opened as the Bunny Theater in 1912, the old movie house had passed through many incarnations, including a porn theater called The Plaza, before finally being shuttered in 2004. The site was identified during Circular’s architectural branding research as a location with great potential for client American Apparel’s retail rollout. Circular’s designs translate the company’s socially conscious unbranded aesthetic into a distinct retail experience, which is uniquely adapted to each neighborhood. This strategy includes the adaptive reuse of run-down iconic local buildings with strong historic ties to the community. After the theater’s close, local residents began surreptitiously changing the letters on the marquee to create various poetic phrases. Since the store has opened, the trend has continued with American Apparel’s encouragement. Circular’s update of the marquee, with an array of colorful lights in a graphic pattern, has brightened the street and put an American Apparel twist on an historic signage typology. Stepping inside, the old lobby space feels modest in scale, with new clothing styles hung on simple aluminum speed-rail racks and wall standards lit with surface mounted T5 fluorescents. The floor was redone in glossy blue epoxy. The old tin ceiling was carefully restored and repainted. A transitional portal featuring smoked mirrors, glossy black epoxy flooring and more colored fluorescent tubes leads the visitor into the main hall of the old theater. Circular proposed that the large open room, a rare find in New York, be conceived of as a flexible retail and music/event space. The old projection booth overhead has been converted into a sound studio for Viva Radio, which broadcasts live over the internet. The clothing racks are on castors, which roll away easily over the new sustainable bamboo flooring. A stage now replaces the screen, holding temporary fabric fitting rooms which can be quickly dismantled to allow for bands, DJ’s or other performers. Upon opening, the The New York Times reported, "although part of a chain... it seems to fit aesthetically and ideologically with the neighborhood." DESIGN TEAM Jordan Parnass, Dana Jaasund, Darrick Borowski, Randy Plemel CONTRACTORS General Contractor: SUPREME GENERAL CONTRACTING CORP. PHOTOGRAPHER Frank Oudeman SUPPLIERS Fixtures: Hollaender Manufacturing Company

How We Used Dance Notation to Develop a Conceptual Model for DSPAC For the Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center project, Circular used photography and graphic analysis to create a conceptual diagram that informed our design process throughout the project. As a dancer progresses from one dance pose into another, they create displacement in the air volume around them. The initial velocity of the dancer, their acceleration and the time utilized for changes in dance poses creates a unique signature that can be expressed as a notational trail. We studied these movements, based on various dance poses, to understand the three-dimensional field of displacements created by a typical dance routine. Dwana Smallwood herself participated in this study and her dance moves were captured using a stroboscopic photograph method which we used as the basis for our studies. Learn more about the project here! https://lnkd.in/eVQYxkNH

O2 Blueroom at The O2 Dublin Dublin, Ireland The O2 Blueroom mixes ethereal translucent spheres suspended above a bar whose history has been embedded into its surfaces. Housed in a converted industrial space, The O2 Blueroom mixes ethereal translucent spheres suspended above a bar whose history has been embedded into its surfaces. Aged wood furniture populates the bar space, while a raw-metal infrastructure supports the spheres above. The O2 Blueroom is a fun, active, exclusive environment where O2 customers can meet up before a show, relax in the floating transparent bubbles, dance to pre-show house DJs and enjoy specialty drinks without the typical queue found outside in the arena. DESIGN TEAM Jordan Parnass, Darrick Borowski, Sean Karns, Tony Moon, Danny Orenstein, Jeroen Geuens, Malin Schaedel CONTRACTORS PJ Walls, Janus Interiors Consulting, Architen Landrell, Mercury MEP CONSULTANTS Momentum Structural Engineers, HOH Consultants Mechanical and Electrical Engineers, Architen Landrell Lighting Consultants, DLPKS PHOTOGRAPHER David Churchill 🇪🇺

Whether you're eating turkey, baked mac and cheese, or takeout chinese, I hope everyone has a wonderful dining experience this Thanksgiving. Taking this opportunity to share a drawing from one of my favorite architectural thinkers, Sarah Wigglesworth, whose work about the everyday usage of space is a charming and enlightening perspective that I'd struggle to summarize in a single post. Luckily there's a PDF available here: https://lnkd.in/erYzCQXp

Oscar Bond Salon New York, NY, USA A new concept hair salon with connectivity and social networking at its core. The design for the Oscar Bond Salon presents a new concept for the salon. An extended aluminum runway brings visitors down into the space, arriving at a centralized waiting area. This lounge is the nexus of the space, a raised platform with broadband net connections and video monitors. Taking the broad sense of the term "salon," the project proposes a space for complex interaction among patrons, stylists, and via the Internet, anybody who wants to participate. The salon is completely networked for Internet and closed circuit video signals. An associated web site was designed to interlock with the salon's physical space. Through web cams and custom server software, the site enables communication between the salon and the rest of the web. The cutting station mirrors and the video circuiting allow for the transmission and reflection of images throughout the salon space, and out to the internet at large. The mirrors and reception desk are suspended from the salon ceiling. The lighting for the salon is site-specific, and was custom made by Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture and Mesh, based on a system developed by Eric Liftin. The interior envelope is defined by walls of two-tone rip-stop parachute nylon, backlit at regular intervals by circular fixtures. Oscar Bond Salon won the Best Retail Project for the Interior Design Interiors Award in 2000. Related News Articles Oscar Bond Salon featured in Mega Elecciones "Design: Tips and Tricks" Project Designer Jordan Parnass Contractors Abra Construction. Consultants Collaboration with MESH Architectures / Eric Liftin. Photographer Michael Moran