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.

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.

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.