[week.09]

The focus this week has been on our healthcare project again. We are making changes from the meeting that we had last week. I am editing our floor patterns, updating drawings, and editing our floor plans. This week has been hectic at my home – I am moving apartments inbetween all of the hours that I am working!

This week I met the Knoll rep, John Romano, who showed us a slideshow about their new products and updated our catalogs. He was a pleasure to meet and talk to – he has great energy and enthusiasm for what he does. He seemed interested in coming by UT to do some informational presentations for us about Knoll and their products.

This week went by really fast. We have been really hitting it hard at work and had a really big presentation with one of our big clients. People have been in and out of the office a lot! Another exciting update is that the Treehouse is coming along great – I have not gotten another chance to go out to the site and help build it again, but I will do so in the future! It is a really exciting and heart-warming project. To know that you are building something that is making a difference in somebody’s life or bringing them happiness is a really great thing.

Our Design Philosophy at Smee+Busby varies from person to person. Our Design Manager has a philosophy that he holds very close to heart – he really looks up to Mockbee. He believes in architecture and has known that he wanted to be an architect since he was three years old. He was a kid who grew up in a house that had a wing dedicated to his father’s firm. His architecture is not just a style it is a methodology. He believes in honesty in materials, in cultural relevance, and appropriate climate response. Design should be utilized to serve the poor, not just as a means to glorify the already fortunate. He believes that you can do world class excellent design no matter where you are – you do not have to be in a big city to produce quality work. He sees that building and designing tend to be very separate, and he intends to blur the boundaries between the two. He studies under contractors to inform his architecture – he knows that learning the skill makes him a smarter and more informed designer. He brings this spirit to work with him every day.

Cheers to you all.

This week my friend Tom and I are putting together our heads and mass-producing a few sets of cornhole for friends. Putting our woodshop skills to good use :)

[week.08]

The focus this week has been on the pre bid meeting for one of our projects. My eyes have been opened to a pre-bid finally! I have been helping to prepare and edit final design documentation. After the meeting Susan and I spent time reviewing the notes that we took and getting organized again before jumping back into the project. We meet with our reps and get information for finishes that we will be using for the project. We are working on the carpet specification. It is difficult because we a re working with existing systems furniture in the space, so we are looking for a carpet that satisfies the needs of all of their different spaces. It is amazing how huge a difference carpet can make.

This week I met Drew Daniel, who is about 25 years old and manages 33 different reps in many different states in the east and west coast. He travels a lot, and he is working for Jasper Furniture.

The second half of the week are focused on the healthcare project. We are renovating an emergency department and designing floor patterns. We are utilizing wayfinding into the floor pattern as well as considering hygienic and practical ways to design the floor.  The great thing about this project is that we know the client very well and have a great relationship with them. They are great clients! We have fun and very interactive meetings with them.

To top my week off, I helped work on the Faulkenberry Tree House project. We spent time setting up scaffolding this afternoon so that we can start building the treehouse -It is going to be wonderful! Of course, it rained on us around 3:30 so we had to stop working (as it turns out, being underneath a giant tree on a large metal structure during a lightning storm is really not ideal). It was a great week here, and I am looking forward to next week's progress.

For our presentation techniques, we definitely extensively use our plotter and our printers. We make finish selection boards and utilize our 3d modeling softwares to show our ideas to clients.  The formats and content change immensely from client to client. With one ofour long-time clients, we have much flexibility with them and our meetings are somewhat casual. With another large and influential company, we have produced large slideshow presentations with diagrams, schematic design,  and final proposals.

We use a variety of different softwares. Microsoft Office and Adobe suite of course, CAD, Bentley Microstation, Sketchup and Form Z, and we are hoping to acquire Revit soon.

 Here's a photo of Gregor working on the Faulkenberry Tree House project:

[week.07]

The focus this week has been on our healthcare project - I am getting to see how the design process works from schematic design to document completion. We kicked off the week with a staff meeting to get everybody caught up on current events. I love working at Smee+Busby - we are like a big family. Everyone  here is so kind, welcoming, and they have really taken great care  of me!

This week I met a lot of new people at the meeting with our healthcare project. I met the president and vice president of the hospital as well as many other people who head up their departments – I learned a lot from them. They know their departments very very well and as designers we should never stop trying to learn from other people. They are able to give us guidance and relevant input on design elements within the space, and even come up with great ideas themselves that we can use to better our design.

I am focused on making floor pattern designs for a healthcare project. We are collaborating with the client about what general direction we want to go in, and Susan and I are designing the floors, choosing finishes for a registration desk, and looking at paint colors for the walls. It is a big renovation project - they have to work around the schedule of the hospital which can be very trying.

Staff and client always interact differently on every project. It depends largely on the client - each one is different. We have relationships with clients that we have been sustaining for over fifteen years, and clients that we are just now building new trusting relationships with. The relationships are built over time based on performance, reliability, trustworthiness, and following through on what you say. Our long-term clients are very relaxed around us and we always refer each other to help each other with business.

For assessment, we always do a one year warranty check. On furniture, whatever the warranty is, we maintain it and take care of issues that way.

We are always learning from our experiences and our mistakes, no matter how experienced we are in the industry. This is a big part of it. Susan tells me that when she started, she kept a journal of things that she would write down, whether it was a mistake, important lesson, or happy event. She would always write down important lessons so that she could learn from it for the future.  A great lesson she taught me is to always know ahead of time if you can get the furniture into the building - we all remember the story that Sandy told us about the conference table.

When future updates are needed, typically the client will call us - we are not in the building, and more often than not, no news is good news. With clients that we are constantly doing work with, there is always something to be done, so we are frequently hearing about updates, etc. just from being in contact. The facilities budget cycle of a business also dictates how much updating ensues.

Post occupancy evaluations are not held formally - you'll know if a client is having a problem with something. We make sure to show plenty of samples on the front end of a project so that the client can become familiar with all of the products they will truly be interacting with. We brief them on cleaning instructions, and beyond that, there is nothing you can do if the client wont take care of the product that is in the space. It is their property even though it is your baby. Again, no news is good news. Anything they ask for help with we will do.

The client types that we are involved with are all across the board. We are involved in healthcare, government work, private sector, hospitality, community, the list goes on and on. Many of our clients have hundreds of employees and  do not want us to release their information - some of them hardly let us take any pictures. Their corporate information is very sacred to them! 

Here's a photo of steve cutting a birthday cake :) we had lots of birthdays this summer!

Week 9

This past week, I had alot of fun with people from work. We just found out that the FOOD ROOF is getting a $60,000 donation. So, we celebrated by dinner at the Ostafi's house. Mary and Jo Ostafi are definitely my people of the week. They both work at HOK and are super awesome. Mary is a sustainability specialist and Jo is the Vice-President of our S&T(Science and Technology) Group. Living in downtown, they all invited us over for dinner to enjoy some produce from the 1st Urban Garden site.

Mary Ostafi, founder of Urban Harvest stl at the Garden Site with her Sunflowers

I spent a portion of the week coordinating a marketing booklet for the Urban Farm. The other part of the week I spent designing the Taj Mah Toilets. This is project is such a nightmare, but it is going to be the best looking toilet. We've decided to use this beautiful Carvart glass toilet partitions and are inserting lightblocks into the ceiling... craziest bathroom ever. However, the client gave us some direction, so I will be representing the concepts based on the clients input.

These values guide everything HOK does for our clients:
We create exceptional environments that meet our clients’ most complex design challenges.
We inspire people through our work by expressing timeless cultural, organizational and personal values.
We connect people and place with ideas that come from many minds and imaginations.
We care about serving our clients, enriching lives, improving communities and protecting our natural environment through design.

These are the values of most every person I have met at HOK. I cannot believe how many creative, inspiring, connected, caring people I have been priveledged to work with this summer. The 4 principles of HOK, as simple and small as they may seem, truly guide and compromise what makes HOK one of the best design firms in the world. I will never forget my experience, and I will never forget the people who have molded my perspective on design and touched my life.

Week 8

This past week we wrapped up our intern project. This is what I worked on the majority of the week. Of course, with all the work we have had, we procrastinated until the very last minute. Over the weekend, we scrambled to build everything in 3d. Then, on Monday, we combined each of our 3d files into one. Then, we set to work on doing renderings, diagrams, finalizing the plan, photoshopping, and putting together the presentation... no big deal right? 3 days, we can do this. Can't we? After a couple late nights, we pulled it off.

We presented at our First Thursday gathering in front of the entire firm and our client, Beau. The response to the presentation was great. People said it was an interesting, functional, and practical project. The Director of Design for the office, Ripley Rasmus, was especially complimentary and stunned by our effort. We were flattered. I felt blessed to be able to learn from August and Bernard who are Masters of Architecture at Cincinati and Kansas City. They were so great to work with and had lots of ideas. Also, August introduced me to Vray for Max. I will be using Vray forever and ever. I will upload some of the final images from the office tomorrow.

New Person of the Week: Ripley Rasmus. I first had a chance to sit down with Ripley during a mentorship speed dating session. There were 20 mentors and 20 mentees. Mentees spent five minutes with each mentor. It was awesome. I enjoyed talking to Ripley then. During this week, I had another opportunity to interact with Ripley during a set of design discussions about a recent competition project. He is very thoughtful in his design approach. I was happy to see someone so advanced in the profession to be continuing to be involved in the process with sketches and design development.

As far as HOK's presentation strategies, we use a wide range of methods. Sometimes virtual presentations are acceptable. However, for Design Development, we always try to have something in the clients hand that they can reference. With the capabilities of our print shop and large scale printers, it is very easy to put together a small booklet that can be professional bond by our print shop and a couple of spreads to be produced at up to 48" width. This is the most common method for a presentation. However, when presentations are made within the office or even with our other offices, these presentations are always done virtually. This is more sustainable and takes away the time and hassle of printing. These presentations are displayed as PDFs or as Powerpoints. For design presentations, the firm uses a variety of software from Excel files for numbers data to Photoshop for the renderings, Word, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. The final is typically put together in InDesign.