| Hello and welcome to Bloomberg’s weekly design digest. I’m Kriston Capps, staff writer for Bloomberg CityLab and your guide to the world of architecture and the people who build things. Sign up to keep up: Subscribe to get the Design Edition newsletter every Sunday.  Strobel House is a permanent supportive housing building for homeless people in Nashville, designed by Moody Nolan. Courtesy of Moody Nolan Curtis Moody opened his architecture studio in Columbus, Ohio, as a young designer in 1982. Today that firm, Moody Nolan, is the largest African-American-owned firm in the country, with more than 350 employees across 12 offices. The firm has built a reputation for its community-oriented projects and strong company culture. Curtis’s son Jonathan, who followed in his father’s footsteps as a designer, joined the firm 14 years ago. Jonathan Moody rose to the level of president and eventually succeeded his father as CEO. As chairman, Curtis Moody stepped back from daily practice early last year without ever fully retiring; he died on October 13.  Jonathan Moody, left, and his father Curtis Moody. Courtesy of Moody Nolan One of the things that distinguishes the culture at Moody Nolan is the firm’s practice of setting themes for its work each year. This year, the theme is “Show Him Who We Are.” Moody Nolan isn’t any single individual, Jonathan Moody says, but a collection of people united around his father’s vision for a more diverse architectural world. Jonathan Moody spoke to Bloomberg CityLab about his father’s work, succession at the firm and his optimistic vision for the industry. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. As an architect, what can you share about your father’s work?
It wasn’t necessarily the most complicated thing, but one of the things I admire so much was his simple humility. He could command a room and a team to be better and inspire and motivate them. Later in his career, he couldn’t be as hands-on, for many reasons. Like so many things done with technology — he’s not gonna learn [the 3D modeling software] Revit; he sketches, he draws, he does things that way. So he always worked with a team that would implement things. But it was elevated. He could draw together both the significance and the strengths of a team through something simple but powerful. Sometimes it was a sketch, sometimes it was a doodle. It was as simple as the way he carried himself into a meeting that would inspire confidence in both a client and a team. Everybody would leave with the feeling that we’re gonna do something amazing. Can you talk about any final projects he worked on?
One is the University of Pittsburgh Recreation and Wellness Center. Part of what was unique and special about his career trajectory is he’s one of very few architects that played collegiate athletic sports. A lot of that sports background rippled into the early practice. The University of Pittsburgh Recreation Center, which is going to finish later this year, became this unique challenge. Typically, rec centers are one- or two-, maybe three-story buildings. But Pittsburgh’s landscape doesn't really work with that. We’re doing something that had never been done: We’re building a nine-story rec center. That was a particular passion project.  The nine-story, 276,000-square-foot University of Pittsburgh Recreation and Wellness Center opens later this year. Courtesy of Moody Nolan What has the transition meant for the firm?
Early last year, he stepped back completely. There was this need to continue with the model that we had. The training wheels were off. The complete transition was obviously a challenge, but [as] I told our team toward the latter part of last year, a lot of people may not have even realized that he hadn’t really been involved in the firm since early last year. For a lot of people who felt, “I'm not sure I can do this on my own,” the answer was, “You’ve already been doing it on your own and you just didn’t know it.” Studios don’t always have a chance to implement a succession strategy before it becomes urgent. Could you talk about what you learned by having these discussions early on?
I can tell you that writing the plan is a lot different than living the plan. It is not just a transition in terms of a plan on paper. It’s a cultural transition of values and relationships that have been built over time. The only way to gel or mesh that kind of transition is with more time to get people comfortable with the idea. I'd say the most important is the signal that you send to the market and to the world that it's happening and how much time you give that to happen.  Built in 1937 as an administrative building for University Homes, Atlanta’s first public housing project Roosevelt Hall now serves as a community center. Courtesy of Moody Nolan What are the plans moving forward for Moody Nolan?
One of my themes for this year is that we have to conduct ourselves like a 43-year-old startup. Some people have asked, what does that mean? My father has always said he built the firm to be diverse by design. I think we’ve got the ability to define that a little bit more, even specifically with project types. We don’t just have to say we do everything, but we can specifically say, we have practice expertise in housing, health care, retail, student life, recreation, wellness and education. And we’re growing our practices in workplace and sports. It’s not the typical two or three or maybe four focus areas. The junior high school that your father attended as a student — a school building later renovated by Moody Nolan — surprised you with a plaque to honor your father. Can you talk about the awards he received?
When we won the American Institute of Architects Firm Award in 2021, the recognition was for the firm he had built. Now there’s been some individual accolades, like singular, to honor the individual. I wish it were the other way around, where he was able to witness some of the individual accolades versus the firm accolade. But it’s also a reminder. The truth is he built an amazing firm, a great collection of people and teams and attitudes and cultures and mindsets. My charge for the team this year is to recognize that. You may not have known it, but you've been doing this thing on your own, without his hand on your shoulder, for quite a while. Design stories we’re writing |  The Gundam pavilion at the 2025 Osaka Expo in Osaka, Japan. Photographer: Richard A. Brooks/AFP Dating back to 1851, world’s fairs have a long and storied history. The most famous editions, like the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, left a huge cultural imprint on their host cities. Some were so legendary that the whole notion of a world’s fair seems old-timey — but in fact, they’re still happening today, with the ongoing 2025 World Expo in Osaka, Japan, being the most recent chapter. Mark Byrnes talks with world’s fair historian Charles Pappas about why (or whether) world’s fairs still matter today.  An aerial view of the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington. Photographer: David Ryder/Getty Images North America The US Senate is currently weighing a budget that would give an unprecedented $45 billion boost to border control and immigration detention. Such a dramatic expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would require the work of dozens of companies that specialize in detention facilities. Rachel Adams-Heard, Sophie Alexander, and Fola Akinnibi writes about ICE’s efforts to prepare to spend tens of billions of dollars on facilities for holding for immigrants — including by pre-approving 41 companies to bid for contracts.  Scaffolding over Gilman Hall, a Georgian style building at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Photographer: JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Archive Photos Last week at the American Institute of Architects’s convention in Boston — and again this week at the Congress of New Urbanism gathering in Providence — people couldn’t stop talk about the 4 Rs: Renovations, restorations, rehabilitations and retrofits. In an era of sky-high interest rates and perpetual uncertainty, restoring existing buildings is a safer (and less carbon-intensive) approach than tearing down and building new. Anthony Flint writes up what this backward-looking trend means for forward-looking architects. Design stories we’re reading | Just in time for summer, Oliver Wainwright writes about Horace Gifford, the mod architect who designed the “queer Xanadu” homes of New York’s Fire Island Pines. (The Guardian) Benjamin Riley reviews Owen Hopkins’s The Manifesto House, a book about the statement home designs that challenge prevailing architecture ideas. (The Wall Street Journal) The 2025 Design Vanguard winners are here. (Architectural Record) Boston architect Graham Gund has died. (The New York Times) | 
