Job Shadow

   While in Seattle, I was so fortunate to spend a day at the Gensler firm located on Sixth Avenue in downtown Seattle. It was an absolutely wonderful experience, and I would not change one thing about the entire day.

   The morning began with meeting Chelsea, a LEED certified designer in the firm.  She started with a tour of their office space. It is a beautiful space, and I am sure that clients are as comfortable as I was when I visited.  Chelsea was relaxed and friendly, and immediately I felt at ease. She showed the break-out rooms for small meetings, the living room that was used for meetings, or when the people working need a little more relaxed space could work. I toured the design library space, the kitchen, and the working spaces. Chelsea pointed out some of the projects, and models that people in the office were currently working on. A hotel project in Tahiti immediately caught my eye.

   After the tour, Chelsea took out the materials from the project she was working on. It included all the materials, as the project was ready for a client presentation that afternoon. I saw the plans, elevations, color schemes, and materials she had chosen to show the clients. It all was very inspiring, and I could definitely see myself doing this type of work.

   After Chelsea, I met with Jennifer. She is a Test Planner in the Gensler office. She showed us the project she was working on, and how she takes the program from the client, and tries different spaces to see if all the needs can be met within the space. She does this through bubble diagrams, and trace overlays. It was so educational to see her approach, and something I will take from for a long time.

   Jennifer passed me along to Kara. She took me to a project they had recently finished that she had been working on. It was so exciting to see the space, and hear about Kara’s job at Gensler. Kara is a design coordinator, which basically means that she is the one that plans all the components of a project, and makes sure they are all in sync.  She took us to the Glumac office space there in downtown. I t was such fun to see a completed project! I learned a lot about details, and things I hadn’t even thought about while I was with Kara. She definitely opened my eyes to job possibilities that I did not know about in the design world. Kara took me to the Seattle Convention Center for a wonderful, healthy lunch, and then we headed back to the Gensler office.

   Once we were back in the office, we saw a presentation from a furniture design company from London. It was a good experience, as I had never sat in on a presentation of this type. Their aesthetic was very clean and modern, and they had many good features to their designs. I especially appreciated the green aspect to their designs.

   Finally, I met with Stephanie de Villa and Savannah Barker. Stephanie is working on a project with Princess Cruise Lines, and talked a little about that. But what was really interesting to hear from these two, is how they go about getting new job opportunities in a sector of business they don’t currently have a large market share in. I heard how the developed a focus group, and things they did to try to obtain business in the restaurant and boutique sector. I am sure they will be successful at this, as they were both talented resourceful women.

I really could not have had a better Job Shadow experience. It was an inspiring day filled with inspiring people. I hope to be part of this exciting design world soon!

Z Home

   What an exciting experience visiting the Z-Home in Issaquah was! I have read and learned about sustainability and energy usage strategies, but to see it in a real space was a wonderful, and very educational time. The Z-Home definitely surpassed anything I had envisioned for this type of home. Initially the project looks like an upscale condominium or apartment complex. There is beautiful landscaping, and garden areas outside. I learned that the gardens, pavers and even the concrete used for the back driveways are all sustainable and eco-friendly. The concrete is porous, so the rain water can be absorbed into the ground, creating less runoff.

   Inside the home is equally impressive. There are beautiful, sustainable finishes everywhere, even the window are made of fiberglass frames, a strategy to create cleaner air in the home. It is really true in this home, that the beauty is deep within. It is considered a net-zero home, which means that there are no utility bills. They do this with solar panels on the roof of each residence, geo-thermal heating, and energy efficiency built into every square inch.  I learned that in these homes there is typically a small utility bill in the winter, but it is offset by the summer, when they are able to sell back energy to the power grid. It is a very informative, educational experience, and I think this is the building of the future. At least, I hope it will be.

Frye Art Museum

   During my day of touring around Seattle, I visited the Frye Art Museum. It is also located on Capitol Hill in Seattle. From the outside, the museum look rather ordinary, but once you reach the entrance, is when you see the beautiful architecture begin.

   The entrance is a series of arches, or an archade, made of bare concrete. The simplicity of the material fits perfectly with the honest straightforward design. Rick Sundberg, the architect that did the design, was there and talked about how he wanted the entrance to be an experience. His vision was to prepare visitors to see the art in the museum. He spoke of how we all come to buildings equally, and how the arches were set up in a sequence with the water pool to create a sense of calm before entering the structure.

   Inside, the rotunda is the star of the building. It has a domed ceiling that is a perfect sphere. The rotunda, the sphere, and the entire building are based on the golden section. Even the pavers are based on this geometric theme.  Mr. Sundberg also talked of the buildings theme on light, and how it is used to move people through the space. The light enters through windows a s well as shafts that stream light into the space. It was definitely am inspiring space, with many great ways of playing with light in an interior space.

Sketch Crawl

Saturday morning, I got up, grabbed some coffee, and was headed to Seattle Center. I was going on a sketch-crawl! It was a meet-up of sorts with the local Urban Sketchers group. Now, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Were we going to crawl or lie on the ground to sketch? Would we all sketch the same thing?

   It turns out neither of those things happened. I met them in the Seattle Center food court, got acquainted and saw some of their amazing, inspiring work, and headed out to sketch, with a plan of getting back together after an hour.

   First, I will tell you a bit about the Urban Sketchers organization. They are a group that meets about once a month to sketch. They feel strongly that there is an educational, storytelling aspect to location drawing. Their aim is to tell a story of their surroundings and to record the time and place. Urban Sketchers have a network of blogs, and a Flickr group to share their work with others.

   I choose for my sketch to do the newly installed “sonic bloom”. Sonic Bloom is a motion-activated set of giant flowers that create noise when there is motion nearby. The set of five flowers are solar-powered, and they bask colored light over the Seattle center at night. While I was there in the daylight, it was still a fun and unusual thing to sketch.

The Chapel of Saint Ignatius

   The Chapel of Saint Ignatuis is located on the top of Seattle’s Capitol Hill area, on the campus of Seattle University.  It is the main chapel on the Catholic University’s campus. I was there to study and enjoy the creation by architect Steven Holl. He based his design on the Catholic worship story of “seven bottles in a stone box”. Light passes through various colored glass windows into each “bottle”, defining each space through light and color. It is not difficult to see, and even feel the building’s theme of bringing light to life. It is so masterfully done, with direct light, reflected light, indirect light, shade and shadow.

   The interior walls are almost entirely made of white plaster, tooled with a 12” serrated trowel. Even this most basic material is brought to life through the light. The designers of this space felt this white light was a metaphor for the collective students at Seattle University coming together.

   There were many aspects of this building that caught my attention. First, the door and its beautiful bronze handle. Architect Jim Graham spoke of the handle as being “the handshake of the building” It is the feature most often touched by anyone who enters, and may be the only thing they touch. It is therefore important that the handle be beautiful and comfortable to touch.

   A second detail that caught my eye, were the bronze pieces on the building exterior. I took time to sketch one, but could not figure out what their purpose might be. Mr. Graham was kind enough to explain them, and the story was fascinating. He told how the concrete walls were poured into slabs, but they wanted the top of the slab to face the building’s exterior, which is not the norm. For this reason, they needed to place metal hooks into the concrete, so they could hoist the slabs into their vertical position. Instead of just using rebar, or something just totally utilitarian, they made the pieces part of the design. The pieces are cast bronze, sculpted from a cast of an old Japanese fishing float. One can even see the wood grain from the float in the bronze. It was very inspiring to see beauty and function working together in harmony. That is how I felt about the entire space, beauty, function and inspiration all working together. Exactly what a Chapel or Church should be.

325 Westlake

In Seattle, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit a construction job site, located at 325 Westlake in Seattle. The building was right in the middle of the construction phase. This is a remodel of an existing building plus an addition “the tower”. The tower is a five story apartment complex with twelve 700 to 800 square foot apartments, and a fifth floor penthouse suite with a large outdoor area. The existing first floor and loft space are to house an art facility for local artists and an office space in the loft.

   I donned my hardhat and toured the space with Leann, an architect from the Graham Baba firm. Leann mentioned the design was based on a raw, clean aesthetic. Instead of covering the buildings infrastructure, they wanted people to see what is behind the design. They tried to avoid layering sheetrock over functional elements, and instead left most of the original structure exposed. This translated to brick and pipes exposed in a beautiful, simple, industrial manner.

  I learned a lot from this visit. Just listening to Leann speaks of the building in design terms, how they designed with beauty and livability in mind. I hope I will be able to visit again once the project is complete to see the entire vision come to fruition.

New Horizons Shelter and Street Bean Espresso

   While in Seattle, one of the most inspiring places I visited was the New Horizons Teen Shelter and Street Bean Espresso. The tour began with the teen shelter, and the re-purposed loading dock they now use for an entrance. The teens can wait in this small area out of the cold and rain before the shelter opens.

   I was then led into the facility and upstairs to a meeting room. Street Bean is a faith-based non-profit shelter. They provide food, shelter, clothing, laundry and showers to homeless teens in Seattle. They average 30-40 teens as walk-in each night. They would like to have some semi-permanent rooms for the teens that are regular users of the facility and have proven to be working toward a better life.

  From a design standpoint, the space was nothing special. Street Bean needs the space to be welcoming, safe and efficient. They also need a place for the kids to feel safe, and be able to decompress from the streets. The space they have takes a lot of abuse, so durability is definitely a factor. Safety is, of course, the main concern. Therefore, the space needs to be open, so monitoring the kids can be done easily and constantly. They also need a flexible and adaptable space, as there are many different activities that take place there.

   Street Bean’s biggest concern is to get the teens ready for work. The teens that are provided with food and shelter are asked to work in the Espresso Shop located across the street. The coffee shop provides on the job training for the teens, as well as a source of income for the shelter. Truly Street Bean provides more than beds, food, and job training for homeless Seattle teens. Street Bean provides hope. Hope for a better future and a better life. Hopefully some good design implemented into their space can help provide an even brighter outlook for these teens.