The Biber Partnership AIA
ARCHITECTURE PLANNING INTERIOR DESIGN
Portfolio
Office Buildings
The Biber Partnership AIA provides professional services for many diverse office structures, including institutional buildings, public buildings, corporate and commercial buildings. We strive for our designs to give the user considerable flexibility for the future and to provide spatial separation within the workplace environment. Covid-19 has changed the way we work and has brought into question the future of office building structures. To what degree will they be impacted by size, configuration, budget and population? The renovation of existing office buildings will become more compatible with new ways of workplace thinking. New directions in which office buildings are designed now include housing, social structure and retail. The concept of the transit village will be a significant intent going forward.
Corporate Interior Design
Providing design services for corporate entities has been part of our work for more than 30 years. We have witnessed incredible changes in the corporate and institutional work environment. We have participated in the evolution of the design of the open office featuring concepts of collaborative spaces, free-addressing, benching and now social distancing in the workplace. There are buzz words attached to these concepts, but the goal for these spaces is allowing the workspace to be collaborative and interactive for the staff.
What you see here is a metamorphosis of spaces we designed through the years for our clients. Remote working is now a new normal. The need for businesses to connect with employees using videoconferencing o will continue. The physical working spaces need to support and enhance technology to help create a better experience for teams to work together from different locations.
Banking
Over 30 years ago The Biber Partnership became the design firm for retail banking. This included branch banks, branch bank branding, brand standards and new wave retail banking.
We designed more than 140 retail banks and created five brand images. The branch bank environment and the method of operation has changed drastically since we first began providing design services for the banking industry. The way of greeting the customer and steering them to the right customer service rep became the primary method of creating a service reputation. As the size of the branch banks shrank, and automated banking took hold, we created banking kiosks, freestanding ATM machines and smaller banking stores.
Today we are moving towards creating environments within a branch: collaborative and lounge spaces, coffee counters to keep the customer occupied as services, dependent on the number of customer service reps, became fewer. Mobile banking causes branches to close at an escalating rate, while consumer banking, based on a different service approach, continues to grow with modified technology being used to satisfy consumer demands while decreasing branch personnel and labor costs.
Recreation/Community Buildings
Design of community centers offering passive and active recreation, as well as a multitude of educational programs, is a major group of building types headed by municipalities. These projects can also be privately-sponsored and led by a Board of Trustees - the guiding force for a building program.
The Biber Partnership provided master planning, programming and design documents for about
40 buildings for recreation and community use.
We believe these kinds of projects require a collaborative effort from the members of the community and those providing the administrative and programming services. It is important to understand that the vision for any community project needs to correspond with the available budget allocated to make this vision a reality. Having been part of many project types, we find community buildings to be the most exciting. These are rewarding types of building projects for the firm, providing a wide range of opportunities for their users.
Dining Facilities
The Biber Partnership has been the design team for college and university dining facilities for over three decades. We have also been involved in design and construction administration of fourteen corporate and university dining facilities. The experience and passion for this project type can clearly be seen in our portfolio of dining venues and the awards received for quality of design. We work on the premise that every project presents a unique situation and no two problems are alike. We strive to create a different aesthetic approach to each and every of our dining facility designs. We work on building brand new dining facilities and renovating the outdated ones. We understand the problems that are constant in this building type. The need for efficient circulation and work flow, customer control, quality-driven serving stations and an enjoyable physical environment, appreciated by the user. These buildings are not only places for dining, they are also spaces for social gatherings, human interaction and collaboration. All dining facilities serve as important places relative to people engaging with one another in any environment.
Education
The design of buildings for education of all types has faced the need for flexibility of educational uses. This was brought about some years ago by the cost of construction and the amount of educational spaces that were vacant for a portion of the day. The Biber Partnership has designed all types of educational facilities that include laboratories, secondary and independent schools, buildings for the visual arts, biological sciences and some of the most-noted college dining facilities in the region. Of importance for design of buildings for education is their continued use throughout all the day and development of spaces that reinforce socialization and provide collaborative spaces for students as well as faculty.
Based on the recent pressures on our culture, one can anticipate considerable changes in the way we design buildings for education. The increasing cost
of construction will be another challenge for our educational system. We need to consider how school districts, colleges and universities will get the most use out of the educational buildings with their budgeted dollars.
Historic Structures
Biber Partnership AIA has been the lead Architect/Researcher/Historic Structures Report Writer on every historic building on which we worked. These projects go as far back as Murray Hall at Rutgers University and up to the present buildings that have been classified as historic structures by the State of NJ including the Elizabeth YMCA and Rahway YMCA.
Our firm was represented on the Board of Trustees of the Stickley Museum in Parsippany, NJ for 6 years. At that time our team helped to spur the movement towards restoration by recommending and interviewing firms that would do the historic structures report. We were also part of the interview committee that made selections for historic paint consultants.
The interest in the preservation of historic structures goes back to the very beginning of our practice, to a time when the movement towards historic preservation degrees was instituted at American colleges.
Early Childhood Centers
Nursery schools and daycare environments should be designed not only as care facilities, but also as learning environments. Our design for these facilities reflects the principle 'learning should be fun'. The spaces are reinforced by color, texture and visual interest. The Biber Partnership has designed a group of facilities in this typology, ranging from daycare centers to an Early Research Learning Academy. These facilities have gone beyond the expectations of the administration and users alike.
Multi-Family Housing
Places to live and enjoy life have been part of our design since the inception of our firm more than 50 years ago. We participated in the development of Planned Unit Development (PUD) concept from the beginning. We have always been believers in creating buildings to live alongside spaces for recreation, both active and passive. Our planning concepts for housing consider the ways in which people interact in a living environment. The amenities we design into our projects include gathering rooms, small scale food service, exercise rooms, as well as swimming pools and exterior sports facilities if the site and space allows.
We design and construct quality housing of all types, both in the private and public sectors and have expertise and experience in building transit villages, multi-family and senior citizen housing. Livability and homeowner/tenant interaction are always in the forefront of our multifamily design.
Single-Family Residential
From the beginnings of the office, almost 52 years ago, single-family residential projects were a portion of our work. These included new residences and renovations.
Our single-family residential portfolio features one-of-a-kind high-end projects with unique features specific to their function, location and context, as well as our client`s lifestyle. It is very rewarding to see a custom-designed residence materialize from the vision of the architect and client into a home that the client and their family will love and appreciate for years to come.
Transportation
Our transportation projects are comprised of three categories: parking garages, a railroad station and buildings that service automobile industry. Our work in the industry began 50 years ago when we developed a major building for a large scale truck rental operation. Since then we have been the architects for automobile sales and service companies and the design team for a new railroad station location on East Coast corridor of New Jersey Transit. Each of these project types is unique in the way it functions for public use and private commerce. Our projects speak to the way they operate and serve the public and private customers.