week 7: pressing on

I started off this week with a trip to Cumberland University in Lebanon ,TN to do a photo shoot of one of the new dorms that ESa designed. It was an all day event! We staged an empty dorm room to look like a boy's room, complete with bedding, posters on the walls, lighting, and desk accessories. Photos were taken in the dorm room and a couple lobby/lounge spaces. I was a "model" in a few shots and helped with staging the rooms and moving supplies. It was really interesting to watch the professional architectural photographer at work. These photos, like all others taken of completed projects at ESa, will be used for marketing.

When I came back to the office for work on Tuesday we were SWAMPED. All of the sudden everyone needed help, CD packages were due and meetings were approaching. I teamed up with Alana again to help her crank out a TON of renderings for Lone Peak Hospital in Utah: multiple floor plans and elevations of patient rooms, corridors, patient bathrooms, case work, nurse stations, etc. Next week they will all be finalized and we will add the renderings to finish boards. I'm starting to really get the hang of this hospital lingo:

CVOR= Cardiovascular Operating Room.

LDR= Labor and Delivery Room.

PACU= Post Anesthesia Care Unit.

But there are some room labels on those floor plans that are just so strange and almost creepy. For example:  "Frozen Section", "Blood Bank", "Soiled Linen", "Body Hold", etc.

We didn't have very many reps come by this week, but we were visited by the Momentum rep and her son in their ICE CREAM TRUCK on Wednesday! That was fun and everyone enjoyed getting out of the office for a few minutes for some ice cream.

ESa attempts to create and maintain relationships with their clients so that they feel comfortable working with designers and really have all of their needs met. The client then frequently comes back to the firm when future design work is needed.

Completed projects are monitored by the architects, designers, and CA's. They try to tour the facility a year or so later and do a post occupancy interview, again striving to maintain relationships with the clients. Other designers benefit from these interviews as well; designers share any information they learn from these post occupancy interviews about products, manufacturers, and specific situations at department meetings. 

Square footage ratio evaluations along with other similar observations are made in the progamming phase, not typically done by interior designers at ESa. Though the company has done corporate design (the "Batman" building, Caterpillar building, and even our own office,) we have not done any recently. Mainly ESa focuses on healthcare, higher education, and hospitality design.

This is Joey, the hall director of the dorm at Cumberland University that we photographed. He helped us access different parts of the dorm and assisted us with anything we needed from the school during the shoot.

Joey, Hall Director at Cumberland University

 Camera ready to goStaging the boy's dorm room

Week 9: Already?!

Monday morning first thing I rendered a few nurse station options. We then had an office meeting to go over what everyone had on their schedules the next couple of weeks. After the office meeting I finally finished combining all the F100 sheets from all the projects. Now all the reps can be contacted, so they know what projects their products are being used on. I also called a textile company to hold some upholstery. Monday afternoon Brennan and I started working on some contractor boards. Tuesday we continued working on the boards. We are now just waiting on a few samples to come in for the boards to be complete. I also got to place finishes in an excel file as part of a furniture package.  Once the furniture package stuff was done Brennan and I pulled the materials for a presentation board. At the end of the day Tuesday the Momentum rep showed up. She has rented the ice-cream truck for the day! Her son was also with her. He was so cute and had an umbrella ready to escort each of us outside to the truck in the rain.Ice-cream truck I got Reese's if you were wondering.Wednesday Lorraine got me started on using Access to do a set of furniture specifications. It was fun! I had a standard to follow, but it still took me a few hours to start to feel comfortable with the program. I was bugging Lorraine all day long with questions! Thursday morning I finished up the furniture and gave it to Lorraine to proof read.Furniture SpecsI then rendered a wall tile pattern and a floor pattern. Thursday afternoon Brennan and I started working on laying out a presentation board for one of the designers. Friday was Friday the 13^th! Rebecca placed finish materials on a presentation board and I emailed the pictures to one of the designers for approval. Lorraine gave me back the furniture specifications to correct. There was defiantly a lot of red on them! So I did the corrections and then had my final review with Rebecca. I can’t believe I have already been at Inner Design Studio for nine weeks! The summer has flown by. In house testing...it comes off!

Design Philosophy:

Inner Design Studio’s design philosophy is to create “timeless, custom designs – on budget and on time.” They are fun, energetic and understand how to create designs that their clients love. They assist their clients from start to finish. It is their ultimate goal to make sure their clients are pleased. Interning at Inner Design Studio has been very educational and a lot of fun!

Alli and Monika are both project designers at Inner Design Studio.

Alli (left) me (center) Monika (righAlli is a dog lover and knows how to spell every word! Alli is more than likely to breakout in song if she hears a word that may remind her of a song. She also likes to take daily strolls around the office to help her wake up (I tried it and they really do help to wake you up!).

Monika used to be a teacher, so she has been really helpful walking me through how to do things. Her husband (who is an architect) and her are currently renovating their house all by themselves! Monika also keeps me up to date on free things that are happening in the Nashville area.

This past week, I mainly worked on the intern project. We had to pull together all technical information per the client request. The client wanted to see pricing for all of the programatic areas, especially the roofing material that is looking like its going to be around an 200k investment. EEK! However, we have decided to enter a compeition with our design, so I won't be posting anymore images online. Even though, I am very excited about and feel like it is my baby that I am going to be passing on to someone else in 3 weeks.

I also did some interesting materials boards this week. It is a lab tennant that is considering LEED Gold I believe. They had 3 different pallettes and one base pallette. They are trying to narrow down to one scheme, so the boards were for this. Each pallete had a theme: all rich, vibrant colors intermitent with dark greys, whites, and solid wood.

As far as budget, all of our fees and costs run through the project manager. He/she is in charge of reviewing all of the charges on the account and making any changes/policing time usage. As far as purchasing of goods and writing specifications, there is a guy in our office who works really strange hours because of his need for concentration. He is the spec writer, and he is the one who writes the spec and passing it back to the designer in charge of the specific item, be it furniture or finish. The designer will then handle on the necessary forms to do with documentation.

Person of the Week: Afton. Afton graduated from the University of Tennessee. She is a Senior Design Tech. I know her husband from Nashville. She has been very welcoming to me, and she is the sweetest. She has lived in St. Louis for 2 years.

 Afton in the Middle

Week 5: Happy Birthday America!

Well this was a very short week, I only had my internship on Monday.  We have finished our major deadlines, so Joy took her vacation this week.  Monday was a day of answering emails, doing surveys about the services from different companies that I had ordered samples from and organizing the office a bit more.  It was a slow day because the holiday was in the middle of the week! It Really threw my brain into a tizzy! Tuesday was the last day of Revit and we celebrated with Christina, our professor, at the Brewery by enjoying some drinks and some pool.  Wednesday I was at the pool with the roommates and Jonathan and watched some great fireworks from our pool deck!  Thursday and Friday I helped get the final stuff ready for Design Matters Camp in the Architecture building.  I will be helping with the behind the scenes set up most of next week as well. 

Since Joy was gone all week, I will have to journal more than one journal this coming week.  Hope everyone had a great 4th!

Week 7: Short Week!

This week almost everyone in the office was gone. Rebecca, Heather, and I only worked 2 days this week, and the whole office seemed empty those days!

some of the submittalsMonday we finally got samples for our donation wall for the Cancer Institute. We looked at the samples of all the fonts, colors, glass tiles, and vinyls we will be using for the "Wall of Hope" and discussed our opinions via a phone conference with the manufacturer. I sent out all the new designs for the door frostings to the VP of Cancer and got positive feedback. We made a final selection for those and I then dimensioned and made contract drawings for the designs on the door. Rebecca and I then went over submittals for the new Patient Registrations project. When we reviewed the submittals, we go through every material and finish we specified on the finish schedule, then check it with the submittals the contractor sends us. We actually found a few errors in what they had sent us, so it was good that we were careful when reviewing their specifications. I then did some updates to finish boards for the Cancer Institute because we had some last minute selection changes due to cost.

Tuesday I worked more on the Labor and Delivery project.view of downtown Knoxville from the 12 East project We did a walkthrough of 12 East to make sure we approved all the placement of artwork in the hallways. It is exciting to see that the project is almost complete! We had a discussion about ordering custom 3Form for the Cancer Institute with the 3Form Rep. I then sat in on a Cancer Institute Budget meeting with the VP of cancer, Director of Facilities Planning, and the Interior Desingers.

I had the rest of the week off of work! :)

Clients work differently here than they do in a typical firm. I have realized that once we have helped a doctor or staff in the hospital, they are very likely to stop us in the hallway and thank us or keep the relationship going even after the project is complete. To monitor projects after they are complete, we do hospital walkthroughs from time to time, and we keep relationships with the clients. We also keep records of all of our projects in order to quickly be able to access any material if it is damaged or needs replacing for any reason.

GrahamThis week I interviewed Graham, who is our CAD and Signage specialist in the office. He has been studying and practicing Architecture for 10 years. He is from England, but moved to the states when he married an American woman. They have two kids together! In his free time he likes to paint, do illustrations, and create sculptures. He has even sold some of his work!