Design Futures

At GKC, design has always been part of our approach to creating value for our clients. Our goal remains to create high-performing, resilient and beautiful projects across an expanding field of expertise. 

Design Futures is our unified response to foster creative solutions that advance design excellence across our practice. Building on our record of commercial, industrial, workplace, and mixed-use environments that respond to both business needs and user experience, we are meeting future challenges head on. Design Futures leverages design innovation as a tool for resilient, effective and meaningful responses to our clients, our cities and our worlds’ needs.

Led by our new Design Principal, Andrew King, FRAIC, this evolution will supercharge the firm's strategic thinking and technical rigor with an equal and complimentary commitment to design innovation. The Design Futures program informs the growth of all aspects of our practice; urban design, interdisciplinary process, user experience, interior design, and architecture.

More than an initiative, Design Futures is a platform for sharing ideas, methodologies, and perspectives that reinforce the role of design excellence in driving performance, enhancing experience, and delivering long-term value.

Design Futures extends beyond project delivery, creating opportunities to engage clients, collaborators, and the broader design community through innovation, knowledge sharing, and thought leadership.

• Design Talks
  A series of dynamic and interactive monthly public events exploring emerging ideas, innovation, and the future of the built environment. The series will begin in an in depth look at Andrew’s work across Canada on several highly recognized projects, and then become a public laboratory for GKC’s conversations around Design Futures.
   
• Design Show
  A curated installation of conceptual models, design studies, drawings and video exploring three decades of Andrew King’s innovation on design and architecture. The show will re-engage the physical, material design tools as a driver of excellence, innovation and communication. The show will be welcoming clients, partners, industry peers, design students and the public.
   
• Design Futures Video Series
  Released through GKC's YouTube channel, this series features our Design Principal, Andrew King using drawings, model and past projects to explore design concepts, project examples, emerging trends, and perspectives on our design process.
   
• Design Futures - The Book
  Design Future' primary and most significant manifestation is the book. A statement, a manual, a map to the future, an understanding of how excellence has emerged and what we can learn from our expertise. The Design Futures' Book is a GKC and AK_A collaboration, a truly innovative initiative to map a meaningful and powerful future across principles, methodologies, scales, opportunities and responsibilities. This is the future growth and evolution of GKC, developed for clients, collaborators, our studios and industry partners.
   
  Together, these initiatives create opportunities to engage with emerging ideas, share knowledge, and contribute to conversations shaping the future of architecture, commercial real estate, and the built environment.