Prepare Before You Start

As spring break quickly approaches (many of you may already be home from spring break), I couldn’t help but think about traveling for spring break.  This year our family is set to take a short road trip to Chicago where we will then catch a flight to a much warmer place! Thankfully my kids are old enough these days that we don’t have the dread of long road trips (and long airplane rides) with little ones. In the old days, we were always told “good luck” traveling that amount of time with two little kids. Back then my wife and I did very well because we planned ahead. We made sure they had movies downloaded from “insert your favorite streaming service here”, arts and crafts along with lot of snacks of course! The hours typically went quickly with no major incidents or melt-downs.

Why did the long travel days, that had every chance of going badly, go so well? The answer is “we prepared before we started”. Just like all building projects, if you don’t prepare before you get started, the chance of the project going well greatly decreases.

Three questions to answer before you start your next building project:

• What Do I Value? Wants vs. needs must be balanced on every project.

• Where am I Compromising? Compromise is not a bad word, it is only bad when you compromise and didn’t know it.

• When Do I Need the Project Completed? Having an overall schedule with milestone dates will keep the project on time and your stress level under control.

We always had fun & built memories along the way because we prepared for the trip. I knew what I valued, which was time with my family, and understood there may be some compromise to accomplish that goal. The kids normally had all the snacks eaten before we crossed the first state line, but the trips still went smoothly!

Let us help you prepare before you start your next project. Give me a call; we would love to take the trip with you.

Unique Architecture

My family and I recently took a weekend trip to Louisville, KY. We had a nice time seeing the sights and exploring what the city had to offer. As we were walking around downtown, a very unique building (at least it used to be a building) caught my eye. In the picture, you can see that they kept the façade of this old historic building on West Main St., but tore down the rest of the building. They actually made a city park out of what used to be the building. There are playgrounds and sports fields where the building once was. I have never seen this done before and it really caught my eye. Whoever designed this was able to keep the old historic charm of the adjacent buildings, while creating an outdoor gathering space for the general public.

This got me thinking about “Unique Architecture” and how it can be used on all kinds of projects. For instance there may be a local municipality that has deemed a specific building or area as historic and one way to work with that local governing body would be to think outside the box and keep a façade in place, while removing the rest of the building. We often come upon clients that want a unique architectural feature in their building, such as a comic book store wanting their building to mimic a famous landmark in a Marvel comic series, or an owner that loves New York City and wants his building to take on the look of the New York skyline. There are endless options when it comes to unique elements in architecture.   

If you’re in the market for something unique or something that stands out from the rest, give us a call, we’d love to help you bring your unique architectural vision to life.

How do you draw a phone?

I'm reminded of a story about my kids from several years ago, when they were still pretty young. As we often did at home in the evenings, we were doing crafts at the kitchen table. My daughter, three years old at the time, said “how do you draw a phone”?  As my mind started to think about how to draw a base unit with the key pad, curly cord and a handset, her six year old brother said “I will show you”. I was thinking that he is very talented and he can likely draw the phone I had envisioned in my mind. He grabbed the piece of paper, drew a rectangle, another rectangle inside the first, a circle at the bottom (back when iPhone still had the home button) and a small line on the top. My daughter looked at it and said “ok, but where are the apps?”  My next thought was “wow” how things have changed from generation to generation. Technology has given us the opportunity to perceive things differently today than we would have been able to just a few short years ago.

The idea of technology giving us tools to help communicate ideas or solutions more effectively has never been more prevalent in Engineering & Architecture than in the use of 3-D modeling. In the old days we would use 2-D blue prints to indicate solutions to our client’s requirements. Sometimes the client was able to visualize those solutions from the 2-D blueprints and sometimes not so much. Today with the aid of 3D software we are able to give the client a better visual perspective of the solutions to meet the needs of their project. 3-D modeling of the project allows our clients the opportunity to See It- Then Decide. So what can they see?

• How people and space interact within the facility.

• How the scale (feel) and materials (look) of the facility interact with people.

• Where conflicts occur between building systems or facility flow.

Contact us about how we can use our 3-D modeling tools to deliver a project you can see before you decide to build.