Commercial Market Trends - April 2009

By Darius Helm

Even though the commercial market has slowed abruptly in recent months, there’s still plenty of activity, most notably in the government and healthcare sectors. But even in the most sluggish sectors, like corporate and retail, interiors are being renovated and new floors are being installed.

To get a better sense of trends within the commercial market, we spoke with designers from prominent design and brand strategy firms—including Lippincott, Gensler, Idea/Span, Perkins+Will, HDR, Wright McGraw Beyer, Perkins Eastman, KMD Architects and Westlake Reed Leskosky—about everything from design and color trends to shifts in flooring use, sustainability and market sector performance.

Either by chance or because they’re targeting growth markets, most of the design firms we contacted cited healthcare as their biggest sector, and in general acute care was bigger than assisted living. Many of the designers also do a lot of work in the government and education sectors, as well as corporate and retail store planning. Several also do work in hospitality.

All agree that healthcare and government are the strongest sectors right now. Some designers feel that part of the reason that those sectors seem to be holding up is because of projects that were already on the books when the economy started to backslide. Others say that while there’s plenty of work in healthcare, it’s not that predictable and the competition is fierce.

Many corporate projects have been delayed and even canceled, but designers report that there are still big jobs out there, though with significantly smaller budgets. For many designers, retail store planning has come to an abrupt halt, though a couple of designers pointed out that the single bright spot in that sector is the restaurant business, which for no clear reason is still fairly active.

The education market has not slowed as much as corporate and retail, though there’s a lot of uncertainty about new projects and about the potential impact of the stimulus package.

Internationally, projects in higher education and science and technology seem to be holding their own, along with healthcare.

For the full story on Commercial Market Trends, see the April 2009 issue of Floor Focus Magazine.

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