Friday, December 24, 2010

Historic Preservation Commission

I'm honored to have been selected to serve on the City of Grand Rapids Historic Preservation Commission.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the interesting projects that come before the commission. meet the people behind them, and help shape a better Grand Rapids.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Grand River Endodontics

Welcome to the nicest office you hope you'll never have to visit! However, if a stray hockey puck or too much Halloween candy has the root canal fates conspiring against you, have no fear.  Dr. Sarah Lennan's Grand River Endodontics office is now open, with all the expertise to set you right as rain.  Her new office suite at 4211 Parkway Place in Grandville features 4 operatory rooms to handle patients and referalls from all around the West Michigan area in a welcoming and soothing environment.

Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Lennan and First Companies on a great project!

Project Partners: First Companies, Henry Schien Dental, 
 


Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Smedley Dental

Combine an entrepreneurial young dentist with two historic buildings in downtown Zeeland. Add a pinch of retail frontage and a hefty helping of dental office goodness.  Combine the two upstairs apartments and stir into one great new condo unit.  The result is great new mixed use project for Smedley Dental. 

The Smedley Dental building represents the sort of downtown redevelopment sought by the City of Zeeland.  It brings professional services, retail and residential together in a model project for Zeeland's newly formed Shopping Area Redevelopment Board which is guiding the renewal of Downtown Zeeland.
Congratulations to Dr. Meredith on her new practice and on giving new life to two historic buildings and helping to create a vibrant downtown Zeeland.

Thanks to all the Project Partners!  Smedley DentalFirst Companies, City of Zeeland, Think Design, Benco Dental





Wednesday, September 29, 2010

How not to suck at ArtPrize.

For all the ArtPrize aspirants out there....

I applaud everyone for their efforts, talents, and input, and mean no disrespect. But here's my latest thinking on a winning entry.

1. Don't promote.

Ran Ortner never asked me to join an Open Water Facebook group. I didn't get spammed with invites to "Open Water Opening Party!" Ran never asked for my vote, and so I was able to give it freely. Every effort to promote sub-communicates that your work must not be good enough to win on it's own. It must be forgetable if you have to keep spamming us with reminders to go see it. It must sort of suck if you have to keep telling me it's so great. Like the middle aged guy showing off the sports car, what exactly are you compensating for? Remember, it's supposed to be Art, but if you're pitching it like it's OxyClean, then guess how I'm going to feel about it? If you're just glad to be participating and want to make sure I notice your very cool efforts, then that's great and and I'd love to stop by your party and see your work. It's fine to inform me, as long as there is no sense of agenda. But realize you may be preventing the possibility of us falling in loving your work due to your promotions. If you want me to truly love it, you'll have to back off and let me fall in love quietly from across the room.

2. Don't over explain.
Let me read into the piece. I care what I think about it. I care what I see in it. I care how I feel about it. I care what it stirs in my soul. If you put up a wall-of-text artist statement filled with your thoughts on the work, then you're telling me I'm wrong about your work. It's your work, so your interpretation would be the correct one. Jeez, I almost voted up for it because I thought it was about something I really thought was interesting. It stirred something in me, and almost moved me to vote up. That is, until I read your artist statement about how it's really about how you "loved a bunny rabbit you had when you were a child and how it's soft fur inspired you to investigate the familiarity and psychological nuances of subtle textures and light." Oops, I guess it's not something I really understood or connected with after all. Next.

3. Don't convince me, move me.
Connection with artwork is not logical. If you're trying to convince me how great your work is, you are engaging the logical circuits of my brain. If my logical circuits are firing, then you aren't moving me. My emotion and soul are not stirred. You're operating on the wrong channels, and you're done. So put away the big artist statement, stop with the references and connections to ideas you'd logically think would be a winner. Show, don't tell. Circumnavigate the logical and get to me on a deeper level. Don't make the neurons in my fore-brain logical cortex fire, get me back on the old mammalian and reptile brain levels, where emotion and instinct rule. Now you've got art.

4. Don't stand there.
Seriously, please. We know you're proud. We know you want the ego validation. We know you're curious what everyone thinks about your work. We know you think if you're there for us to ask questions then maybe you'll get one more sale of work or votes. But please, just shut up and go away. Let the art speak for itself. It's my chance to develop a personal relationship with the work, not you. This year I was all ready to vote up for the Elephant Walk sculptures. I liked the simplicity of it moving in the wind rather than being motorized. I liked that it was so finely balanced and well engineered. I appreciated that it was made out of corten steel. I was having a quiet moment of art appreciation, when suddenly he burst in with "YOU NEED A STICKER!!" as the artist lunged at me to stick his promo piece to my arm and thereby make me his walking billboard. I rebuffed him, "No, I really don't" as if he were holding a roll of scratch and sniff dog poo stickers. He'd have gotten my vote, if only he hadn't been hovering and promoting. I promptly gave him a down vote for being so obnoxious.

5. Be a little Mysterious.
Let me imagine you're exactly the kind of cool artist I think ought to win ArtPrize. Maybe I'd like whoever wins ArtPrize to be a poor struggling starving artist. Maybe I'm the kind of guy to who wants the winner to be the kind of down to earth guy I could have a beer with while out fishing. Maybe I think the ArtPrize winner ought to be educated in the most elite design schools and weary funky glasses and all black. Whatever it is, if you're standing right there and you aren't it, then you've tainted my view of your work. Go easy on the resume, don't stand there, don't put your name all over it, don't give me your life story, and don't make it all about you. No matter how cool you are, you probably aren't the kind of person I think ought to win. As long as I don't really know you, I can still hope you're exactly who should win.

The same lesson in mystery goes for the work. If it looks like gold, but really is spray painted foam, feel free to not explain that detail. If part of what is compelling about your piece is that I'm not quite sure how you did it, well then don't ruin that mystery by explaining how it actually is quite simple and required hardly any skill.


6. Not so Big, not too Small.
If your work is going to be the size of a building, then it better be seriously impressive. It better be Chartes Cathedral , Sagrada Familia, or Sistine Chapel impressive. If it's that big, it better bring me to my knees from the sheer overwhelming awe you have inspired in me. I think the size of Open Water 24 was just about right for Artprize viewing. You can stand back with a group of friends and all admire it at once. You can walk up to it and see the fine detail. You can stand back and it will still fill your field of vision. It's big enough to show me that you've put some serious time, effort, and dedication into it, and yet 'bigness' isn't what makes it good. It'll be interesting to see if a pattern of scale develops in the ArtPrize winners. I'm thinking something around 6' x12' is about the right size. Bigger than a person, smaller than a bus. We're all selfish little creatures. Your work should be impressive, but 'have-able.' If I'm going to love it, I want to be able to picture it on my wall, or in my yard. Size it to be own-able, but barely. Something to fill the empty space in that castle I'll never own either.

7. Don't rehash last years idea.
Seriously, we know you've 'got your style' and a certain way you work. We appreciate it, but I don't want to see last years work rehashed for this year and next year and the year after. Get over it, move on, come up with some new stuff. It's going to get real dull if each year ArtPrize is just a remix of last years entries. Even worse is if you're basically copying someone elses idea. Yes, faces can be made of pushpins, and Legos, and little colored balls. Yes you can build a giant seamonster, or steampig. But if I don't feel like I'm seeing something for the first time, it's not going to get my winning vote. Wait wait wait.. if only it were a giraffe made out of nails. Monkey of nails? Nail platypus?

8. Let me discover the work.
The first time I saw "Open Water, no.24" was when I walked into the room and saw it hanging there on the wall. My first impression of the work was the work itself. If you've been uploading Facebook photos, handing out promo cards, and telling me all about the work, then by the time I see your work, I've already formed a first impression. There is no surprise. I can no longer form a clean opinion of it. Do you really want me forming an opinion of your work based on a flicker upload or a 2" glossy handout? I want the thrill of discovery. I want to experience it raw. Don't do anything that ought to require a spoiler alert.

(What ever happened to keeping things secret and literally under wraps, building anticipation while we wonder what mystery is unfolding behind the curtain, waiting for a great unveiling?)

9. Don't piggy back on a cause.
I think it's great that you want to save the whales, or the children, or the oceans, or the trees. If you're just trying to raise awareness, then that's great and noble of you. But don't try to win my vote by trying to make your great cause my great cause. If your work is all about a charity cause that I may respect and think is important, but I'm not in love with, then it gets in the way of me loving your work. Being all about a cause, issue, or charity limits my view of your work to that one issue. You can't be appreciated universally. You've made your work into a niche issue about a certain negative problem in our culture. You're no longer timeless. You're no longer transcendent. You're just the salvation army bell ringer. I'll give ya a buck, but not my winning vote.

10. Spectacle can't seal the deal.
Creating a novelty or a spectacle will get you a lot of attention. It will earn you a lot of votes. Done right it can easily get you into the top ten, but I don't believe it can seal the deal. Because to win it and take home the prize, I need to love it. Dancing monkeys are entertaining, but don't earn my deepest respect. If your entry is basically a Vegas showgirl, then it's hot, sexy, and fun to watch, but I'm not in love, and I'm not taking it all the way home.




Finally, in all things ArtPrize, stay out of the way and let me fall in love with it on my own.


Good luck!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

When a building dreams....

This is what it looks like when buildings dream.

Monday, July 19, 2010

LEED for Homes Overview

If you ask around, you'll find everyone wants to live in a LEED Certified home, but almost no one actually knows what that means. This video provides a good overview of the LEED for Homes certification system.

Benefits of a LEED Home from U.S. Green Building Council on Vimeo.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Latest Design:

A glimpse of the latest proposal...

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Project Update: Smedley Dental



Smedley Dental is a mixed-use dental office, retail, and residential loft project on E. Main Ave. in Zeeland. The project will rehab both buildings at 131 and 133 Main Street. Earlier today we received Heritage District approval for our green roof, new rear awnings, and additional windows from Zeelands Shopping Area Redevelopment Board. The roll of plans are in to the City of Zeeland for a building permit, so we should be under construction soon. I can't wait to see it come together!

Monday, June 21, 2010

Project Update: Grand River Endodontics





The new Grand River Endodontics office suite is under construction. It's located off 44th street by Rivertown Mall. I'm really looking forward to seeing all the interior finishes come together. You can see a 3d preview of the space in this previous post.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Retreat: A New Cottage Home Plan

Here is the latest design I've developed as part of a product line for a home plan site. It's a lot of character packed into a fairly compact floor plan.

Click and drag on the image to spin it around.






Thursday, April 22, 2010

Name this House Plan:

I'm creating some stock residential plans to be sold online. I've been messing around with the presentation style to create something that is appealing and real, and yet not so photo real that you can't imagine it on your own site, whether it be in the woods or on a beach.

Here is the first model. Suggest a name in the comment box.


Click and drag on the image to spin it around.


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A peek at the drafting board: Grand River Endodontics

Today I'm trying out some new technology on the blog, a 3d Virtual Reality Model of a new dental suite build out. If you have the Quicktime plug in you should be able to click and hold on the image and spin it around to get different views.

The plans are submitted to the city for permit approvals. I can't wait to see it built.


Click and drag on the image to spin it around.


Industrial Proposal VR

Another VR Object file for a recent industrial building proposal.


Click and drag on the image to spin it around.


Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Are you building a place worth caring about?

I ought to make this video a prerequisite for any patron who wants me to design a building. I've been doing some design work for urban projects lately, and I've never seen urban design explained better than in this 2004 talk by James Kunstler at the TED Conference for Technology Entertainment and Design. If I could choose only one thing anyone would ever learn or hear about architecture in today's America, it would be this talk. It's funny, it's pointed, it's patriotic, and it's insightful. If you're ever going to design, build, buy, visit, live in or drive past a building, then this talk is for you. (He does tactfully drop the F-Bomb, just so you've been warned.)


Friday, March 05, 2010

Dental Suite

I've been working on a design for a new dental suite to be built into an old brick building. Here is the animation I did to illustrate the sequence of spaces.


Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington


I'm currently in Washington DC for the AIA Grassroots national leadership conference. I spent the morning in a seminar regarding the upcoming International Green Construction Code. Have listened to congressional speakers on the economy, Haiti reconstruction via the state department, and spent the evening touring the city around the White House, Washington Monument, and other monuments.


Sight seeing is done for the evening; I'm off to turn out a late-night preliminary design. Stay Tuned!

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Pascucci Marble & Granite Facility

The new Pascucci Marble & Granite facility is finished and open for business. The 22,000 square foot building houses their new tile and countertop showroom, offices, and warehouse space for the stone slabs, including a 5 ton bridge crane. They're located at 4260 Broadmoor, just north of 44th street.






Saturday, January 02, 2010

The base value of architecture...


In Shanghai, a 13 story apartment building literally fell over on it's face. Apparently they used inadequate pilings and liquefied the soil via the excavation. "Large quantities of earth were removed and dumped in a landfill next to a nearby creek; the weight of the earth caused the river bank to collapse, which, in turn, allowed water to seep into the ground, creating a muddy foundation for the building that toppled."

Architecture in the US is so good at the fundamentals of construction that the discussion of the value of architecture often surrounds topics such as style, design, tectonics, being green, etc.
But when an event like this happens, it's a very straightforward reminder of the core value of architecture. Architects are licensed under oath to protect the "Health, Safety, and Welfare of the Public" so that our buildings don't end up like this one.

Full Story Here from the Wall Street Journal