645 Congress Street officially opened yesterday. It’s great to see an old tired building revived on the upper part of Congress — providing affordable housing for many in the city. It was my first project working with Greg Shinberg – a very experienced builder in his own right. I was pulled into the project last April thanks to Ben Walter at CWS Architects. I also had the opportunity to work with a gifted interior designer who is a recent graduate of the New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University, Leah Cantor. For me, collaboration with people like Greg, Ben and Leah are what make my work so enjoyable. I hope the folks that inhabit 645 Congress Street enjoy their new digs, too! Special thanks to Greg and his business partner, Senator Justin Alfond, for seeing the potential in the old hotel and making an investment to improve the great city of Portland! Click here for a 2 minute news clip by NBC affiliate Channel 6 about the project.
If you read anything in the “Advocacy” section of my web site, you’ll learn that I’ve been working to raise the standards and credibility of the interior design profession for more than 15 years. Yet, in the past couple years I started to wonder about all of the energy that had been spent trying to define a profession. Many people have worked hard – and continue to work diligently – to pass legislation that protects the public health, safety and well-being. If you are interested in how my recent thinking has impacted my involvement in this fight, click here to read an essay I wrote that was published in this month’s Interiors & Sources magazine.
BEFORE- A fairly typical attorney’s office, with papers, files and boxes filled with notes that need to be within arm’s reach and are referenced for months at a time.
Everyone loves before and after photos, don’t they? Whether it’s hairstyles, clothing or rooms — there is something about seeing what ones potential can be that makes us crave comparing before and after images. In my work, it is very difficult for a client to imagine what a finished space will look like – plans and elevations just don’t cut it; it is hard to see a two-dimensional drawing and imagine the finished space. Luckily for me, there are now great rendering software packages – and, more importantly – brilliant people who know how to use them! The brilliant person I connected with is Jim Reben, who owns Architectural Image Solutions. He’s the mastermind behind the image below that shows my concept for the “cockpit” office for an attorney who needed files and boxes at his fingertips. I’ve been designing offices for more than 20 years – and, now that I have Jim Reben as my not-so-secret weapon, I can’t imagine doing a project without him!
AFTER- An office that is 50% smaller then the one shown in the “before” image above, yet allows for far more efficiency and improved productivity. Plenty of uninterrupted worksurface area to layout files and documents, and a total of 24 lineal feet of shelving to hold cardboard banker boxes, allowing for cases that go on and on to be handled seamlessly. Windows let in natural light and a sliding glass door allows privacy when needed. Check out the smaller images to see Jim Reben’s incredible attention to detail — from the reflection in the desk lamp to the labels and words on pieces of paper — this guy makes everything seem realistic!
Thank you to Brian Lehrer for inviting Sara Rimer and me to appear on his show today to talk about personal space and home offices. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed taking listeners’ comments about their office challenges. Brian’s show is fantastic — he is on the NPR affiliate in NYC — WNYC. Click below to listen to the interview – it is only about 12 minutes long.
Professional organizers can be a Godsend — my client Sara Rimer recognized that and was grateful for the assistance Liz Ureneck gave her in clearing her clutter and organizing her files. I hired a professional organizer myself when I was dealing with 38 years of clutter my parents left behind. Organizers’ work and Certified Interior Designers’ work can go hand in hand; organizers often focus on systems, and designers focus on the people and their space — both approaches are complementary to create efficient, productive work places. Listeners of our segment called Personal Space on the Brian Lehrer Show, and readers of the New York Times article may want to know how to find Liz — I urge you to seek her out! Click on her name and you will discover why reporter Sara Rimer claimed, “I was awed. I was grateful. Liz was the one!”
The office I work out of – and the one I created for Sara Rimer of the NYT – are both small spaces. My philosophy about offices is similar to Sarah Susanka’s philosophy about homes. Susanka is an architect and author of The Not So Big House series of books, a woman who has achieved an almost cult-like following and who believes bigger is not better when it comes to houses. I have the same belief about offices — there is a lot of waste in most corporate office environments. Offices tend to “creep” — someone leaves, and, instead of clearing out the cubicle or office, papers, boxes, files and broken chairs get stashed and stuffed into the vacant space. No one notices, until a visitor or prospective client is scheduled to take a tour — then there is a mad dash to make the office presentable. An office should be like a cockpit: everything you need within easy reach, comfortable chair, view out a window (ideally) and no clutter or boxes to trip over. Creating these spaces is not difficult – smaller, efficient, tighter – but offices like this also need to be planned carefully, and include amenities like good task lighting, color, natural light, views to outside or to other people, places to get up and walk, sit and talk. Environments that allow us to do our best work, and be our best selves, do not need to be grandiose or elaborate, they only need to be efficient, well-thought out and designed to support us in our daily work.
My client, Sara Rimer, who is a reporter for the NYT, wrote a piece that is on the front page of the Home section today. She is a writer and journalist who needed a more efficient work space that supported her – and, more importantly – supported her working style. Incredibly creative, she often is juggling many writing projects at once, with deadlines looming daily. The process I used to create her office is the same I use when designing any office – whether it is for one person, 100 people or 500 people:
understand the individual’s (or organization’s) overall goals, mission and vision
observe people in their existing environment
interview as many people as possible – through focus groups, one-on-one interviews and/or surveys; listen intently and take notes
create accurate existing condition floor plans – measure everything
draft, draw, redesign, edit, draw some more, brainstorm – share best results with client
get input from client, refine and revise plans to create final solution
implement plan; visit client 3-6 months after change to assess environment and tweak if necessary
Sara claims that her new office has, “changed her life.” That’s the power of a great space that supports the work you are trying to do. You spend an incredible amount of time working – almost as much time as you spend sleeping – so, just as you are encouraged to invest in a good mattress, go ahead and invest in a great office environment – you deserve it!
Color is like oxygen for me. I must have it around me; I am especially drawn to vivid hues. Most office environments lack color – they are bland, gray and neutral. I think this is because people have strong opinions about color and employers do not want to introduce something (yet, another thing) that could cause conflict or disruption in the workplace. This is a shame, because color (especially wall color) is such an easy element to change in a space — low cost and relatively little disruption, especially if low-voc paints are used.
Last week I was in DC and visited the Reynolds Center at the Smithsonian. They had a fantastic exhibit, Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975, featuring work by the Color Field artists. The scale of these paintings was impressive — many were 8 feet tall or larger — a fantastic opportunity to see large scale paintings in relation to one another. As I walked through the exhibit, I could imagine similar large expanses of stretched canvas hanging in offices, painted various hues, adding life to a neutral interior.
This weekend I’m off to New York to see the Color Chart exhibit at MOMA. If you need to kill a few minutes at work, check out their online video clips of the exhibit installations — Jim Lambie’s left me giddy (talk about a color-oxygen high), and Niele Toroni’s made me laugh outloud — such a wonderful perspective on life.
Photo credit: The image above is one of Lambie’s installations at the National Gallery.
I was researching universal design for an aritcle I wrote last week for Interiors & Sources. Ron Mace coined the term “universal design” more than two decades ago. All designers and architects know about designing to meet the ADA (Americans with Disability Act) Guidelines – it is a given to design spaces that someone with a mobility or vision impairment can use. (Although, sadly, there are still so many spaces you can walk into today that clearly don’t meet the ADA – I don’t know how they get built – but that’s a topic for another entry.) Unlike the ADA Guidelines, which are minimum standards for barrier-free design, universal design “is the design of products and environments to be useable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Universal design emphasizes the user of any ability and any size.”
Mace shared a story about a hotel he stayed in. Yes, it met the ADA requirements, but all of the bathrooms in the ADA rooms (there was one room on each floor) were for left-hand transfer – Mace requires a bathroom that allows a right-hand transfer. From a builder’s perspective you can understand that the architect stacked all of the ADA rooms in the building, and therefore the bathroom footprint was identical throughout the building. However, if two rooms were provided back-to-back on every other floor, then the same number of ADA rooms would be provided, but a guest would have the choice of a left-hand or right-hand transfer. That is an example of universal design that the ADA does not consider.
Last week I was invited to speak to the Senior class at Deering High School. In addition to sharing the path that led me to interior design, I was asked to tell the students the one successful decision that I have made over the years. That one thing has to be strategic planning. I leared about the strategic planning process in 1995 and have used it ever since to plan my business. However, it was a professor at Antioch, Ed Tomey, who introduced me to the concept of Personal Strategic Planning. Creating a “road map”, especially when one is beginning his or her career, is a tool that has infinite value. I told the students I would post the Personal Strategic Planning process to this blog. However, because there are several documents involved, if one of those students is reading this and is interested in learning more about the process, please email me and tell me what my major was when I was at UMaine Orono. (I shared that tidbit with the audience last week.) I’ll then email you the documents along with an explanation on how to use the Personal Strategic Planning process.
