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Suman Sorg: Representing the U.S. and Staying Secure (BusinessWeek)

Suman Sorg has designed official facilities in Sri Lanka, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. She talks about building in a war zone and other challenges (link)

The daughter of a diplomat, Suman Sorg—the principal architect at the Washington-based Sorg and Associates—has been designing embassies and other facilities for the State Dept. for almost 20 years. Actually longer, if you count the U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana, which she worked on as a young architect in Harry Weese's office.

Building an embassy today is a far more complex task than when she began. How do you design a structure that represents the ideals of the U.S., yet blends in with the local architecture? How can a building provide the open, welcoming environment in which diplomacy can flourish, yet still address the security issues of our age?

This is the challenge facing all architects involved in today's embassy-building boom, a $17.5 billion design and construction effort unprecedented in U.S. history. In 2001, the State Department's Office of Foreign Buildings Operations was renamed Overseas Building Operations (OBO) and given bureau status, under the direction of Maj. Gen. Charles Williams. In the past four years alone, approximately 15 new major embassy complexes have been opened and 36 more are under construction or design.

Sorg's first project for the department, in 1989, was the renovation of the former embassy office building in Colombo, Sri Lanka. That led to the renovation of the consular section of the U.S. mission in Guangzhou, China and five apartment buildings in Paris to house U.S. diplomatic staff. Sorg's first major new construction project for the OBO was a housing complex in the new U.S. embassy compound in Kuwait, following the end of the Gulf War.

New embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan; Katmandu, Nepal; and Bridgetown, Barbados, soon followed, and she continues to work on some of the State Dept.'s most critical building efforts. Sorg spoke with BusinessWeek.com's Andrew Blum about building in a war zone and other challenges of designing embassies. An edited version of their conversation follows.

Small Hotels, Big Personalities (BusinessWeek)

Indie establishments serve up singular style (pillow menu anyone?) along with luxurious touches and 21st century amenities (link)

I once stayed at an unassuming little hotel in Paris tucked in an alleyway near the Seine. The rooms were decorated with playful mosaics, the hallways smelled of lavender, and in the mornings the manager himself served croissants and jam in the living room. I've been in enough Hampton Inns, Hyatts, and Sheratons since to pine for that place -- or, at least, a hotel with similar character.

Turns out such hotels are getting easier to find, even without a passport. On several business trips around the U.S. recently, I've discovered, via a quick online search, some gems hidden in plain sight. They are islands of individuality in a homogenized world, featuring everything from the works of local artists (Hotel Max, Seattle) and complimentary yoga classes (Hotel Vitale, San Francisco) to on-call Pilates workouts and a London-style taxi that shuttles guests to tourist attractions and business meetings (Hotel Ambrose, Santa Monica). Yet unlike many family-owned inns, they also offer 21st century amenities that business travelers want, such as Wi-Fi access (complimentary if you're lucky,) cordless phones, flat-screen TVs, and gourmet restaurants. The Hotel ICON in Houston, located in an historic bank building, features Bank Jean-Georges, created by renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

How Hospital Design Saves Lives (BusinessWeek Online)

Design changes can cut infection rates, lower physician errors, improve staff performance, and make all the difference in delivering care (link)

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine shocked the health-care industry with its landmark report, "To Err Is Human," which highlighted the staggering human and financial costs of medical error: an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 in the U.S. dead each year as a result of medical errors, more than from motor vehicle accidents or breast cancer, costing the country between $17 billion and $29 billion in health-care costs, disability, and lost income.

Yet it wasn't all fire and brimstone. The report emphasized the benefit to be had from focusing not on individual people making individual mistakes, but rather on the systems themselves. Health care, the Institute of Medicine said, had to learn from industries such as aviation, nuclear power, and construction that dramatically increased safety using "systems thinking," looking holistically at failures, rather than identifying a single weak link.

For health care, that meant replacing individual blame with collective responsibility. Improvements are already visible. In June, Dr. Donald Berwick of the Harvard School of Public Health announced that an estimated 122,300 lives had been saved in just the last 18 months, as a result of changes—ranging from improved hand-washing to establishing an organization-wide mandate for safety—recommended by the "100,000 Lives Campaign" sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Cambridge (Mass.)-based nonprofit.

DESIGN FOR LIFE.  But there is plenty more to be done and one of the most promising areas to focus on is design. "Hospitals are dangerous places because of systems, and systems are a design problem," explains Derek Parker, co-founder of the Center for Health Design, a nonprofit think-tank, and a director in San Francisco at Anshen + Allen Architects, a leading health-care design firm.

Seeing the Light (BusinessWeek Online)

RPI's Lighting Research Center is proving that light does more than help us see—from improving sleep to helping infants gain weight (link)

The residents of Schuyler Ridge Residential Health Care, a senior care facility in upstate New York, have had an easier time getting to the bathroom recently—not because of additional staffing or new medication, but thanks to "landing lights" that guide their nighttime journey. When their feet hit the ground, motion-activated LEDs illuminate the edges of the bed and doors, making their rooms look like tricked-out import cars.

According to Dr. Mariana Figueiro, program director at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center, which developed the setup, it reduces falls by enhancing the cues that feed residents' "perceptual vision"—visual information that helps us orient ourselves. Illuminating horizontal and vertical surfaces (like door frames) increases the sense of spatial orientation, improving balance.

The project is one example of the Lighting Research Center's efforts to improve patient safety. Emphasizing the connections between hard science and real-world applications, the LRC has studied the benefits of light for night-shift nurses, Alzheimer's patients, and premature babies. Night-shift nurses, for example, are less prone to error when exposed to high amounts of white light, or low amounts of blue light, because it stimulates the body's circadian system and increases alertness.

Green Wonders of the World (BusinessWeek slideshow)

Ten years ago, the large-scale green building was still a pipe dream. Most of the designs were the architectural versions of horsehair shirts, neither very comfortable nor very pretty. Using less energy meant making do with less—less heating, less cooling, and moreover, less of the symbolism and grandeur that defines great architecture. Today's green buildings, by contrast, minimize energy use, employ sustainable materials, and win architecture awards. This list of Green Wonders of the World celebrates this shift. (slideshow)

Green Giant: Rick Cook (BusinessWeek Podcast)

As the architect of Bank of America's new super-green building in Manhattan, Rick Cook has a front-row seat for the greening of Corporate America. In this podcast, he talks about his own green conversion, the Bank of America tower, and choosing work that matters. (link) (mp3)

Welcome to the Art Hotel (BusinessWeek)

Innkeepers around the world are tapping local artists to make their work an essential element of a new breed of hostelry (LINK)

"It's over for design hotels," says Ian Schrager, the man who invented them. "What once was the exception is now the general rule. It doesn't interest me anymore. I have taken it as far as it can go. This for me is a new beginning. I’m trying to change the game again."

By “this” Schrager means "art," at least as it's embodied in the 185-room Gramercy Park Hotel, set to open this August in New York City. Schrager, who famously worked with designer Philippe Starck on New York's Royalton and others, is collaborating on the property with artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel to create a "bohemian" spirit -- "but a bohemian with money," Schrager qualifies, describing their vision of “organized chaos,” with canvases propped up against the wall and a sense of "individuality and spontaneity."

Rather than just slapping art up on the walls of the lobby and guest rooms (although they'll do that too), its spirit will permeate the place. Picture flowers plopped into water pitchers set before a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

AROUND THE GLOBE.  If Schrager's track record is any indication, the "art hotel" is about to become a big deal. And yet this time around, the man who co-founded Studio 54 isn't the first at the party (even if he is arriving in style).

Hotels have always had artwork, but today the concept is being stretched to new limits, as boutique hotels replace hospitality-as-theater with hospitality-as-installation-art. Around the globe, hoteliers are working with artists (if they're not already artists themselves) to create environments with a sense of style and authenticity -- in explicit retort to the boutique hotel formula, with its contemporary furniture and dimmed hallways.

In part it's a backlash against the democratization of design: Now that there are "W" hotels by the dozen, hoteliers are seeking new ways of standing out. And yet, the hoteliers say, it also reveals the tastes of a generation that has come of age in a flat world.

Flexible Furniture (BusinessWeek Podcast)

On the floor at ICFF in New York (mp3) (link)

At this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the only constant is flexibility. From the floor of the Javits Center in New York, BusinessWeek Online Contributing Editor Andrew Blum talked about technology, materials, and how we live today with Yves Behar of fuseproject, Elizabeth Hertzfeld of Remake Design, Jocis Debo of Materialise.MGX, Ivan Luini of Kartell U.S., and Jerry Helling of Bernhardt Design

Green Engineer (BusinessWeek)

Guy Battle's holistic approach (slideshow) (podcast) (MP3)

"Engineers are a hidden hand when it comes to innovation," says Guy Battle, principal of London-based Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers, who specialize in green buildings and their role in creating sustainable businesses. It's an admittedly unusual combination, at least from the American perspective on the role of engineers. But Battle is an unusual engineer, choosing to chase down new challenges rather than merely solve the ones at hand -- like forgoing air conditioning in the tropics, or combining transparency and bomb-resistance. "We're very much seen as drivers, and that's why architects come to us and ask us to get involved," says Battle. (link)

High Line Aspirations (BusinessWeek Podcast)

Link (MP3)

On Manhattan's West Side, an old elevated freight railway is being reinvented as a public park called the High Line. As part of BusinessWeek's ongoing discussion on New York City's emerging skyline, contributing editor Andrew Blum speaks with Joshua David, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit group behind this unusual and innovative urban transformation.