The pandemic created many winners and losers in the ebbing economic tide, but one key winner that has remained consistent is warehouse storage. The reason behind its growth is fairly obvious, particularly in the cold storage set. The pandemic brought a dramatic surge of online grocery shopping, thereby necessitating the need for more literal space.

We’ve designed a wide array of buildings, from disaster preparedness training centers to shopping centers. However, it is a lesser known fact that principal and founder Brian Doiron has a penchant for master planning. He has a passion for designing much more than buildings–designing true communities. Brian has a knack and love for the complex details of land use, long term planning for housing, transportation, civic engagement, and amenities. “Putting it all together is like a beautiful, complex puzzle,” Brian says. “The flow…the aesthetics…blending with the necessary practicality…it’s all a joy for me.”

Thankfully, the latest heat wave that has taken the globe by force seems to be cooling down. For weeks, we were regularly seeing temperatures above 90 degrees in the Upstate of South Carolina, but we are fairly used to that kind of weather in the heat of the summer. It was the temperatures observed in Europe and the Pacific Northwest/New England that caught our attention. The mid-July European heat wave sparked wildfires and even caused tracks in the train-dominant transportation zone to expand, bend, and break–leading to the icing down of tracks in some locations to prevent further damage. Plane runways were even being watered after heat lifted a section of runway in London’s Gatwick airport. 

For years, scientists have warned of the possible impact of rising temperatures resulting from climate change, but what does that have to do with architecture? 

COR3 came up in the world of retail architecture and with it, have endured the highs and lows of our pandemic economy. After the immediate impacts of COVID-19, the whiplash of supply chain woes and inflation will surely be studied by economists for decades to come.