I Hear Design: the i+s podcast

ICYMI: Why Interior Architects Belong at the Start of the Project

When should interior architects join a project team? According to this article, the answer is simple: at the very beginning.
In this In Case You Missed It episode of I Hear Design, we revisit an interiors+sources feature exploring why interior architects should be involved from the earliest planning stages rather than after key architectural decisions have already been made. The article examines how early collaboration improves space planning, user experience, coordination among project teams, and long-term project value while helping avoid costly redesigns later in the process. It also challenges the misconception that interior architecture is primarily about finishes, highlighting its strategic role in shaping the built environment from day one.
Whether you're an architect, interior designer, or design professional working across disciplines, this episode offers a timely reminder that the best projects are often the result of integrated thinking from the very start.
 
 

Foundations of Community (Pt. 3): How Worship Design Builds Faith, Belonging, and Community with Joshua Zinder

In the third and final installment of the Foundations of Community series, I Hear Design host Robert Nieminen speaks with Joshua Zinder, managing partner of JZA+D and co-founder of Landau | Zinder Architecture, about the evolving role of worship spaces in contemporary community life.
Zinder shares how growing up in a Percival Goodman-designed synagogue helped shape both his faith and his path into architecture, and explains why worship facilities today must do far more than provide a sanctuary for weekly services. As congregations face changing attendance patterns, aging buildings, accessibility needs, financial pressures, and new expectations for education and community engagement, architects are being asked to help faith communities rethink how their facilities can support both spiritual connection and long-term resilience.
The conversation explores how design can create awe and transcendence without cathedral-sized budgets, what may be lost (and gained) when worship environments are driven primarily by technology and production, and how sacred spaces can balance ritual, storytelling, flexibility and practical use. Zinder also discusses universal accessibility as a matter of dignity and belonging, strategies for right-sizing older facilities, and the emerging role of faith-based redevelopment, including mixed-use projects that may incorporate housing, healthcare, retail, or other community-serving uses.
For architects, designers and anyone interested in the relationship between faith, place, and community, this episode considers how worship spaces can continue to inspire connection to the divine while also serving the very real needs of the people who gather there.
Connect with Our Guest:
Joshua Zinder Architecture + Design (JZA+D)
Website: https://joshuazinder.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jzad.architecture/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/joshua-zinder-architecture-design
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jzad.architecture/
 
Landau | Zinder Architecture (LZ)
Website: https://www.landauzinder.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/landauzinder/

Product Talk: America 250—Heritage, Craftsmanship, and the Next Generation of American Design

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, Product Talk explores the enduring impact of American manufacturing on commercial design. Lauren Brant sits down with Joseph Namyst of Davis Furniture and Casey Baxter of HBF + HBF Textiles to discuss craftsmanship, domestic manufacturing, sustainability, and the partnerships shaping the future of American-made furniture and textiles. Discover how heritage and innovation continue to define lasting design.

ICYMI: Unilever’s Hoboken HQ Becomes a Hands-On Innovation Campus

In this In Case You Missed It episode of I Hear Design, we revisit a recent interiors+sources article on Unilever’s newly reimagined North American headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Designed by Perkins&Will, the 111,000-square-foot workplace consolidates Unilever’s former 350,000-square-foot suburban headquarters into a more compact urban campus built for discovery, testing, collaboration, and brand experience. Rather than functioning as a traditional corporate office, the new HQ is organized around Unilever’s product development process—Discover, Define, Test, and Deliver—with spaces that support everything from hands-on experimentation to consumer feedback and storytelling.
Listeners will hear how features such as a professional-grade kitchen, full-service salon, retail lab, company store, modular partitions, mobile furnishings, and flexible work zones help Unilever teams experience products the way consumers do. The episode also explores the project’s broader workplace implications, including how urban location, right-sizing, reuse, and adaptable design can help companies rethink the role of the office in a hybrid era.
Tune in for a closer look at how workplace design can become a platform for innovation, sustainability, employee engagement, and brand connection.

Foundations of Community (Pt. 2): Designing Better K-12 Schools with Albert Aronov and Nelya Sachakova

In this episode of I Hear Design, Robert Nieminen continues the three-part Designing the Foundations of Community series with a look at K-12 school design and what it takes to create better learning environments for students and communities today. Joining the show are Albert Aronov, principal at RKTB Architects and head of the firm’s educational studio, and Nelya Sachakova, who leads RKTB’s new school buildings and additions team. Together, they explore how much of today’s school work, especially in dense urban settings like New York City, is less about building from scratch and more about expanding, modernizing, and rethinking existing schools.
The conversation covers what it means to design additions that feel seamlessly integrated with existing buildings while campuses remain fully operational, how accessibility can reshape the experience and dignity of a school, and why public schools must often function as both educational environments and civic infrastructure. Albert and Nelya also discuss art integration, indoor air quality, sustainability, and the challenge of delivering durable, inspiring public schools that are accountable to taxpayers and built to last for generations.

How Armstrong Flooring® Kaleido™ Color Lab Is Expanding Creative Possibilities in Commercial Flooring with Oxana Dallas

In this special sponsored bonus episode of the I Hear Design podcast, host Robert Nieminen speaks with Oxana Dallas, principal designer of commercial at AHF Products, about how Armstrong Flooring®’s Kaleido™ Color Lab is reimagining the flooring specification process as a more creative, flexible, and digitally driven design experience.
Rather than treating flooring as a finish selected near the end of a project, Kaleido invites designers to become co-creators—experimenting with pattern, color and scale. Dallas explains how the platform gives designers a curated yet highly adaptable system for developing custom LVT visuals that align with a project’s brand identity, emotional tone, and performance needs.
Listeners will learn how Prism™, Mosaic™, and Mirage™ patterns draw on biophilic principles without literally mimicking nature, instead translating qualities such as rhythm, complexity, order, and visual tactility into modular flooring designs. Dallas also discusses how Kaleido’s floor-to-wall capability expands the role of LVT beyond the floor, opening new possibilities for wayfinding, feature walls, patient rooms, hospitality spaces, workplace environments, and other commercial interiors.
The conversation also explores how customization, speed, and sustainability can work together. With more than 500 combinations of pattern, color, and scale—as well as stocked neutral options—Kaleido is designed to help specifiers move quickly without sacrificing creativity or client confidence. Dallas highlights the platform’s made-to-order model, domestic manufacturing, accessible minimum order quantities of only 2,500 sf,  EPDs, and long-term performance attributes as part of a broader shift toward more intentional, durable, and project-specific commercial flooring solutions.
For designers, architects, and specifiers looking for ways to bring more personality, purpose, and performance into commercial interiors, this episode offers insight into how digital visualization, biophilic design thinking, and resilient flooring technology are converging to create more expressive surface design systems.

ICYMI: Performance-Based Fire Modeling: Unlocking Design Freedom While Meeting Egress and Life Safety Codes

In this In Case You Missed It episode of the I Hear Design podcast, we revisit an interiors+sources article exploring how performance-based fire modeling can help architects and designers resolve one of the most difficult tensions in adaptive reuse and renovation work: preserving design intent while meeting life safety and egress requirements.
The article explains how prescriptive code requirements can sometimes force costly or disruptive design changes, from added exit stairs and wider corridors to reconfigured layouts that compromise the original concept. Performance-based fire and egress modeling offers another path by using data, simulations, and expert analysis to demonstrate that a building can meet or exceed the intent of life safety codes—even when it does not follow every prescriptive requirement exactly.
Listeners will learn how tools such as computational fluid dynamics, fire dynamics simulation, and egress modeling help evaluate Available Safe Egress Time and Required Safe Egress Time, as well as why early collaboration with fire protection engineers and authorities having jurisdiction is critical. The episode also highlights where performance-based design can unlock flexibility for historic buildings, warehouse conversions, office-to-clinic transformations and other complex projects where code compliance and creative vision can appear to be at odds.
Tune in to hear how fire modeling can become more than a technical workaround; it can be a design enabler that supports safety, flexibility, and more successful project outcomes.

Foundations of Community (Pt. 1): Affordable Multifamily Housing with Peter Bafitis and Alex Brito

Affordable multifamily housing is one of the most urgent design and development challenges in the U.S., but the reasons it remains so difficult to build go far beyond simple supply and demand. In this episode of I Hear Design, Robert Nieminen speaks with Peter Bafitis, managing principal at RKTB Architects, and Alex Brito, principal and leader of the firm’s affordable housing studio, about the forces shaping the housing crisis today—from approvals, zoning, financing, and public-private partnerships to construction costs, sustainability mandates, and the realities of building in New York City.
The conversation also explores a larger idea: affordable housing as community infrastructure, not just real estate. Peter and Alex discuss why good affordable housing should be designed with the same care and dignity as market-rate housing, how durability and timelessness matter in projects meant to serve neighborhoods for decades, where office-to-residential conversions genuinely make sense, and why smaller “missing middle” projects may be just as important as large-scale developments in addressing the shortage. This episode is the first in the two-part series Designing the Foundations of Community.

Product Talk | What Will Define Chicago Design Week 2026 with BIFMA's Steve Kooy and Anthony Serge

Today’s commercial products are being asked to do more than ever before. Joined by Steve Kooy and Anthony Serge from BIFMA, Lauren Brant explores how wellness, modularity, emotional performance, and experiential lighting are shaping Chicago Design Week 2026.
Key Moments in This Episode
1:12 — Why Chicago Design Week 2026 feels differentLauren Brant introduces the major themes shaping this year’s NeoCon and Fulton Market Design Days, including wellness, adaptability, emotional comfort, and long-term product performance.
4:38 — Products are being asked to do moreThe conversation explores how manufacturers are positioning products as strategic tools that support flexibility, acoustics, maintenance, sustainability, and human experience—not just aesthetics.
8:57 — Emotional comfort and experiential workplacesLauren highlights product launches from brands like Designtex, Brentano, Allsteel, and HBF that reflect a growing focus on tactility, softness, and creating spaces people actively want to inhabit.
13:41 — BIFMA on what feels different heading into 2026Steve Kooy and Anthony Serge from BIFMA discuss how conversations around workplace products, wellness, and performance are evolving across the industry.
20:06 — Why modularity is no longer optionalLauren examines how adaptability has shifted from a premium feature to a baseline expectation across seating, acoustics, outdoor furniture, work pods, and specification technology.
24:18 — Long-term adaptability and lifecycle thinkingThe discussion looks at products from Silen, Emuamericas, DEDON, Turf Design, and Configura that prioritize reconfiguration, longevity, and collaborative workflows.
30:27 — Lighting takes center stage at NeoConLauren explores the debut of Illuminate at NeoCon and why lighting is increasingly being discussed as part of materiality, wellness, circadian health, and emotional experience.
34:44 — How lighting shapes perception and wellbeingThe episode dives into experiential lighting installations and how lighting design influences texture, finish perception, mood, and spatial psychology.
39:51 — From ergonomics to movementThe conversation shifts toward workplace wellness and movement-focused seating, including KI’s Cognetic Technology platform and the idea of designing environments that work with the body instead of against it.
44:32 — The future of specification and human-centered designLauren, Steve, and Anthony reflect on how commercial interiors are becoming increasingly outcome-oriented, with designers prioritizing adaptability, transparency, wellness, and emotional experience.
48:11 — Final takeaways for NeoCon and Fulton Market attendeesThe episode closes with advice for designers and specifiers on how to critically evaluate products, showrooms, and innovations during Chicago Design Week 2026.

ICYMI: The Business Case for Immersive Experiences in Commercial Interiors

Immersive experiences are no longer limited to entertainment venues, museums, or high-profile attractions. In commercial interiors, designers are increasingly using experience-driven strategies to create stronger brand identity, deeper engagement, and more memorable places.
In this In Case You Missed It episode of the I Hear Design podcast, we revisit “The Business Case for Immersive Experiences in Commercial Interiors” by Valerie Dennis Craven. The article explores how immersive design is moving from novelty to business strategy, showing how companies are blending physical environments, digital technology, storytelling, materials, and sensory design to connect with employees, visitors, and clients.
Listeners will hear examples from corporate interiors, including AllianceBernstein’s Dreamwall by Gensler, and learn why successful immersive environments require more than screens or spectacle. The episode also examines how authenticity, brand alignment, user experience, accessibility, budget, and long-term maintenance all play a role in determining whether an immersive interior feels meaningful—or merely distracting.
Tune in to learn what designers should consider before concepting an immersive experience, why “Day 2” planning matters, and how commercial spaces can deliver value by creating moments people remember, engage with, and return to.