Interior Architect Lecture

The New Value of Design An Integrated design Process Interior Architects

LeMay Car Museum

This new museum is located in Tacoma and has 4 floors full of cars from all over the world, different years, and different styles. This building is beautifully designed on the exterior and the interior. Signage was clear and concise describing year, make, model of the car and in some cases history of the car or its owner. I would have liked to be able to see the signs easier than it was. I can imagine an older person with eye problems having difficulty reading the sign. The museum was divided by models of cars and year. When you enter the museum you are given a map of the museum and advice from the receptionist to how to visit the museum easily. Without these instructions or the map, it would be easy for one to get confused or lost since the levels are strangely arranged with their slants on opposite sides of the building. As interactives, the LeMay museum had some racing car simulators and little questionnaires once in a while about energy consumption, fuel, or other aspects of how a car runs, etc. The scale of the building compared to the number of cars is perfect. One does not feel overwhelmed by the amount of cars.

Webster exhibit

This Geology, Environmental Sciences, and Physics museum in Webster hall, on the Washington State University campus, was interesting and challenging due to the reality of the project and working in a group of 9 students. Being able to see the actual site, analyzing traffic flows, and hearing feedback through students and teachers occupying this building made our problem solution more obvious and solid than if it were an imagined client and space. This project involved a lot of researching on the subjects of the exhibit. Making the information easy to read, fun, and informative is harder than one might think. The broad range of the population walking through this space created an issue of how complicated the information should be. Existing interactive exhibits were old and not easily explained. We created new fun exhibits and remodeled the existing physics exhibits. Continuous graphic identity in the museum was non-existent before we created new posters and labels for all of the exhibit cases in the space. As a team, I believe we communicated very well. Creating a Facebook group helped out a lot with keeping up with who is doing what and sharing information and our work. Being the group leader, was a challenge. It is easy to ask someone to be in charge of something, but once that person doesn’t complete their task on time or is not communicating with you it gets hard not to sound bossy when trying to get things done and on time. This overall project was rewarding and taught me how to deal with a group situation and communicate our idea through public speaking, posters, and a program. I would be interested in continuing this sort of exhibit design.

Depot Model

This is the Depot Project Model. There is separation between the Public space and the Private space. It will be a wooden fence and the patio will be a recreation space for the residents, but can also be used for art making by the artist.

Depot final boards

The Depot project was a different project and I loved coming up with different ideas for the space. The gallery space for this project was probably the most fun for me. I designed these cylindrical rooms for art displays. Too many times I have seen art galleries being way too plain and boring. I wanted to try different things with the walls and found it interesting to work with the circular shape that came from my parti and concept model. I learned about visual impaired designs in interior spaces and applied them in my designs in the overall building design.

Future Primitive

Future Primitive
Mike Jobes Lecture

This lecture had a lot of information and a lot of examples of the material we have learned in our class about the built environment. A living city was the main subject of this lecture. For many years, people have been trying to figure out how to make the natural and the urban core coexist in the same space, without having rural or suburban environments separating them. A living city would mean that it makes its own energy and cleans its own water. Green ways such as cleaning water and air naturally would be what it takes to make a living city. Making every 3rd street in a city a green boulevard, full of trees, a creek, forest like was an idea that Miller Hull was working on for downtown Seattle. In order to make this a living city, the buildings would have to have a limit of 5 stories to let light in every building and green streets. Mike Jobes wants to make the buildings cooperate with nature, not to have nature cooperate with an urban core like environment. He mentioned that although this process requires a lot of thinking and preparing, he envisions this plan happening 50 years or so from now. How would people react to the dense wild in the dense urban? The urban wilds would take some use to, not unlike any other “movement” America has been through, such as pre-fabricated homes or the super mall. The strip mall which is usually L-shaped with an island was looked at. Strips malls are great and should not be destroyed. It opens up opportunities for immigrants with low leases and brings layers of culture into the U.S.A. The idea was to make the strip mall a greener space, a Strip Mall Farm. Still having a building and parking, but above parking spaces would be huge trays of plants, and vegetables, and these trays could move up and down so the farmers would be able to take care of their production.
Having a sense of “Deep Time” was another subject he discussed. Feeling like you are part of something much bigger than what you feel. If you were to extend both arms on the side of your body, starting at the tip of your first arm would be the creation of earth, the creation of living things would fall on the elbow of your second arm, and only the tip of your nail of the second arm would be when humans were created. Hearing that just made me feel like such an accomplishment. We humans tend to forget where we come from and how amazing it is that we are here and we have invented so many things. I feel like we should repay the earth by making a greater effort on having a greener life such as living cities. The earth is sick, global warming is happening and we need to do something about it before it is too late.
Another subject of this lecture was about a project that Miller Hull took on. It was a house for Habitat for Humanity. It was called Habitat house of the Immediate Future. I have had experience on helping designing and helping with the construction of two habitat for humanity houses in the Palouse area. Seeing the ending product of the Miller Hull agency made me realize that there are many options you can pick even though you have a very limited budget. The house Mike showed up was very contemporary looking. He described it as a “Simple House” not referring to the aesthetics, but the construction of it. They used double stud walls, prefabricated parts, triple-glazed windows, fiber cement panels, and used rain water under the house for potable water use. All of this sounded very expensive to me, but since it came out as a net-zero energy house I guess that made up for the material costs.
Relating this material with the built environment is very easy. Looking at how people tried to separate their houses from the streets with trees was a great idea. Now the idea of having a forest as a street would be fantastic and bring neighbors together and make them socialize instead of getting in their garage and car and coming and leaving without saying a single word to anyone, or seeing anyone. I believe that the front door as the main entrance would be reintroduced if such a thing as the Urban Wilds would exist. This lecture has mainly about the city. We have talked about people wanting to get out of the city because of its illness, chaos, or just to get away from work. They moved out into the country, which then became suburbs. If the Urban Wilds were created, I believe that people would want to come back into the city. If they wanted to escape their jobs, or the noise of the city they could just walk down the next street and find a small forest there to relax and enjoy nature and clean air. It would be as equal as Central Park in New York, just much more accessible and repeated multiple times. Of course the automobile will still be in the picture, but in Seattle, the underground tunnel has been drilled and it will make way for more public transportation, and reduce the percentage of use of the automobile. This plan to have a true creek with salmon in cities might sound over the top, but we have seen this happen in suburb like areas. How hard would it really be to have clean water running trough the urban core? I would like to be alive and see this happen one day. I believe that this idea could lead to a great future for humans and the earth.

Academic Showcase

Spokane IDI

Linear urbanism is a re-visioning of infrastructure. Contiguous interventions follow existing linear urban features in ways that more fully connect the city in ecological, functional, economic, social and cultural terms. Linear urbanism proposes a method to re-naturalize our cities, facilitate improvisation, and integrate previously disjointed economic, social and environmental conditions. This poster presents these concept in three case studies, in Sao Paulo(Brazil), Spokane, and Belgrade(Serbia).


Implications for the Development of Interdisciplinary Foundation Course Pedagogy

This poster was an introduction to the new school of Design and construction and how we worked together with the different disciplines. They addressed that the implications for the new schools are to employ teams for creative projects, emphasize creative processes over solutions, allow time for group discussion and individual reflection, facilitate discussions so students understand perspectives.