Blog

New office!

Posted Feb 20 2012, by geoff

When is the best time to move offices? Obviously it is a couple of weeks before you are expecting your new child to enter the world. Well, maybe not. Maybe that is actually the worst time to move offices, especially if it requires a non-insignificant amount of build out. Well, everything is better with a deadline, right?

We went ahead and left the sunny climes of Phinney Ridge and moved to the urban splendor of Capitol Hill. Now, five months after the move (and four months after the birth of Stephanie’s and my son, Milo) we are safely ensconced in our new offices. We are lucky enough to be sharing space with our friends, Chris and Sharon of 16th Workshop. They also happen to be super talented furniture makers as well. Check them out at 16th Workshop. As it turns out, our building is full of cool and interesting folks ranging from classical pianists to an ice cream shop.

Here is a panorama shot of the office as it stands right now. As always, when we are doing work for ourselves we take the opportunity to experiment a bit. In this case we are testing SCUF plywood as a flooring material. We will be posting an update on how that turned out as well as some other fun stuff in the near future.

...

5dot, commercial, office, tennant improvement, Logistics

Skagit Cabin

Posted Jan 17 2012, by geoff

We were recently asked to design a cabin on a large rural site for a client who envisions this as the first part of a complex of structures to house family and friends. Future plans call for orchards, a fish pond, trails, guest cottages and maybe even a distillery. What’s not to love? On top of that, the cabin is going to use passive solar design and use rainwater collection for potable and non potable uses. Right up our alley.

Below are a couple of early design images. More soon.....

Skagit Cabin front

Front View

Skagit cabin side

View from Uphill

Cabin, design build, Green, Rainwater, Solar, Sustainable, On the Boards

Mid Century Modern Kitchen Remodel

Posted Dec 16 2011, by geoff

We recently had the pleasure of remodeling a kitchen in a mid century modern house here in Seattle. Sometimes we work on a whole house remodel but partial remodels are more common (although occasionally these end up as whole house jobs anyway). Usually the task is to bring the kitchen or baths up to date with modern appliances, fixtures and layout.

The challenge is how do you update the functionality of a part without compromising the aesthetic of the whole and at the same time, avoid historical pastiche? The mid century modern movement was about moving away from historical imitation and exploring a new design language. This language talked about clean lines, expressed structure and materiality. If we attempt to copy the style of the time exactly, we will be undermining the idea that gave birth to it. With that in mind, we embraced the ideals of the period without clinging to the ‘visual trappings’ of the style.

In this particular case, we were working from a concept sketch generated by the talented folks at Shed architecture. We came into the project and worked with the clients to develop what you see below. Thanks to Nathan at Kerf Design (who made the awesome cabinets) for the pictures of the completed projects.

But first; the before. Below is a link to a photosynth of the kicthen in its 'before' state..... Functional but cut off from the main living area and badly in...

design build, Kitchen, Mid Century Modern, remodel, Design+Build

So you want to convert your garage....

Posted Dec 6 2011, by geoff

You need more space. Your mother in law is moving in to torture you and/or help with child care and there isn’t any space in the house. Or maybe there is space but there isn’t enough ‘space’. Or maybe you are finally ready to go out on your own and start that software company. As it really is customary to do this in the garage you are all set as you a have an underused one sitting out back. The problem is that we don’t live in California and working in the garage in winter is less than ideal. Wouldn’t it be great if you could convert it to a nice heated office? It would! But……

There is always a but, isn’t there?

We have worked on a couple of these types of projects and they are great to see. Many people are no longer willing to give valuable square footage to their car and would rather use it themselves. Many people no longer have two cars (or even one) and don't need a garage. The catch is that while Seattle is a very progressive city and as such advocates for reducing our dependence on cars, our land use codes haven’t quite caught up with the sentiment. Below are some of the issues you will need to consider and deal with before turning that garage into your game room and/or villians lair.

Where are you going to park?

As I mentioned, the city of Seattle (at least their land use code), is still pretty insistent that you have a place to park your shandrydan. So, if you are going to convert that garage to...

adu, design build, garage, office, Design+Build

Open Source Architecture? What’s that?

Posted Jul 12 2011, by stephanie

We’ve recently being seeing quite a lot of mention of the idea of “open-source” architecture, and thought maybe it was worth a little exploration. It seems to be a topic that defies clear explanation but it also seemed to us to be a good opportunity to talk a little bit about what architects do.

The term “open-source” comes directly from the world of computer software terminology and is used to describe software platforms that are free and available for all users to adopt and change as they see fit. An example of this is the Linux platform, which is free to download and encourages users to use as a format to develop their own programs. This is different from how a program like Microsoft Windows works, where you must pay for each copy of the software, and you are not allowed to alter it, at risk of legal ramifications from Microsoft. Whether this terminology is applicable to built architecture is questionable but there are some similarities to talk about.

The idea that we should be promoting open source architecture assumes that current architect is somehow “closed-source”. This isn’t true. There is no Microsoft of the architecture world. Sure- there are products, individual pieces of buildings – that are patented, but the architect does not have a patent or rights to the design of their building except in very specific cases. We are free to beg, borrow and steal ideas from all kinds of sources- existing buildings, magazines, our friend’s new...

Architecture, open-source, On the Boards

Blog

Main menu

Categories

Archives