"It’s the passion, stupid."

Between the constant barrage of stock market reports and political attack ads of late, it’s hard not to notice that the economy is a bit rough these days.

Last week, our practice completed construction documents for two projects simultaneously. Possibly the most significant projects we’ve worked on to date. Construction should commence in a few weeks and we are thrilled with the potential they both hold to transform the college campus and the town in which they are located, as well as the lives of students and community members that will assemble there, not to mention what we hope they will do for our practice over the long term.

This week, we photographed the completed renovation of the Games Center at Missouri State University, now renamed LEVEL 1. This is always a time of fulfillment for us because it marks the completion of the project and records it forever. The camera doesn’t lie. At the same time, our addition to Exeter schools is nearing completion and recent construction photos of that project suggest that our efforts to expand design possibilities into rural communities is working. These are exciting times for us at Dake Wells Architecture.

Next week, several of us will be attending the AIA Central States Regional Conference in Kansas City with the hope of making new connections with other like-minded professionals and renewing existing relationships that have helped us through our first four years of this gig. On Thursday evening, October 23, I’ll be presenting some random thoughts about our design work at Pecha Kucha, a 6 minute and 40 second presentation format that may or may not interest others, but thrills me to no end.

So amidst the roller coaster stock charts, political banter, and admittedly challenging economic times, just remember that it’s your passion that moves you.

3+1=4

Dake Wells Architecture has been presented with 4, count ‘em, four, awards for design excellence from AIA Springfield in its bi-annual awards competition DA08. Three from the program’s prestigious professional jury from Seattle, including Jon Wagner, AIA, Eric Lagerberg, AIA and chaired by Eric Cobb, AIA and one granted by the public jury of local community leaders.

The System, A Paul Mitchell Partner School received a Citation Award from the professional jury,

Stoutland School Addition received a Merit Award from the professional jury,

And Joel E. Barber Elementary School received the professional jury’s highest honor- Honor Award.

And then the public jury, chaired by Nancy Brown-Dornan, saw fit to grant Joel E. Barber with yet another award- Public Recognition Award for Small School.

These are the fruits of our labor.

This recognition is a huge thrill for us and validates our efforts. We see awards granted by our peers in the profession, especially ones we have such admiration for in their own right, as encouragement to continue our efforts to constantly push our designs to a higher level.

There is no question that it takes exceptionally supportive clients, consultants and contractors to make these kinds of projects possible. We extend our sincerest thanks to all those we’ve worked with on these three projects in particular.

But wait, there’s more! We have some truly exciting projects currently on the boards in our office, several of which are our largest projects to date. They each present their own unique design challenges and look to be equally exciting design solutions that we hope to share with you all in the near future. Check out our website for some previews and of course – stay tuned.

May Art Walk

We love creative talent here at D|Wa, and while we might know our way around a set of floor plans, we’re lost on a lot of other artistic endeavors.  So, after recognizing our limitations, we’ve begun opening up for art walk and convincing that creative talent to hang out with us.

Architecture & Music

Ever since we got rid of our cable television service and switched to dish, I’ve been a huge fan of Classic VH1. So I just finished watching (for the third time) an episode of Classic Albums that featured Def Leppard and the Hysteria album. A fantastic album if you don’t know it, but it’s the connection to architecture that I’m interested in right now.

Our firm has been frantically working on submissions to the AIA design awards over the last few days. We’ve been putting in some long hours in an effort to make a good showing in the competition and to be sure that the underlying ideas in our architecture are clearly communicated to the jury. I really think we have some good projects to present, but we are anxious to see what our peers think of our work.

In watching the members of Def Leppard talk about the creative process making the Hysteria album, I’m struck by the similarities to our practice. The band members talk about the collaborative process and how they don’t think of the band as having a “front man.” Instead, they have five front men, each contributing their own unique talents to the collective whole. The show presents band members in the studio sharing raw music tracks that were folded together to make the most significant and influential tracks on the record. In many cases, you get to hear separated tracks, with band members pointing out the specific contributions of each of the other band members. But when you hear the end product, the music weaves together with such fluidity that the ownership of specific contributions is blurred in favor of the whole. This is the way we work. Our motivation is the prize of the end product. The built space. Each of us contributing our own talents and experience to the project in an effort to make the end result the best it can be.

In my opinion, (and I’m sure others will disagree with me) the greatest band that ever lived is Kansas. Their music and lyrics challenged the listener to think about what music (or more specifically, rock music) should be. The band’s musical talents were fantastic, the lyrics were thought-provoking and intellectual, and the end result was a layering of instruments, vocals, rhythm and transcendent expression. The music was art, not commodity. And the art was collaborative. The liner notes of most Kansas albums, especially the early ones, would always end with “We are Kansas. Kansas is a band.” Plain and simple.

Architecture is a bit different that pure art, I suppose, because it has to solve problems. It is not willful expression, but rather a response to problems that need to be solved. But the need for collaboration in order to make the best solutions is similar. The creative process of layering, critiquing, pushing, pulling, challenging and working together to make it the best it can be is the same. (Remind me sometime and I’ll share my comparisons to George Lucas’ work on the Star Wars films.)

We’ve recently added another person to our studio. That brings our total staff to seven, not counting the three part-time interns that are currently helping us with some model building duties. Our design team is incredibly talented. We are admittedly young, but older than Def Leppard when they recorded Hysteria. We continue to pursue excellence in our work and consistently discuss what would make our work even better. That’s why we’ve been working so hard lately.

We are DWa. DWa is a practice.

D|Wa Buzz

It’s been a while since we’ve made a new post here, but that’s because we’ve been so busy. People say that’s a good thing. Just so you know, here’s what’s been going on.

The lecture went well and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback from that experience. Our work was well received, I think, and hopefully others will be able to share in that experience soon with new projects posted on our website and (hopefully) a few video clips from the lecture. (Stay tuned.) We’ve had a number of inquiries and new relationships formed as a direct result from that experience. Thanks to Michael Buono, Director of the Hammons School of Architecture for the invitation to participate in the lecture series.

Also, we’ve been awarded some new commissions since our last posting. Most notably, a commission from Missouri State University to design two new buildings for the West Plains, Missouri campus. We are thrilled with this opportunity, especially when you consider that our practice was selected from a record number of submissions (seventeen in all, I think) down to a short list of 5 prominent firms in the state – all much larger and more established than ours. We believe this is a testament to the talent and dedication of our staff and our commitment to design excellence and are looking forward to the design process and fulfillment of two significant projects for Missouri State University’s West Plains campus. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about these projects in the months ahead.

We’ve also been selected for two more rural K-12 projects which are currently in the design phase. Similar to our work at Stoutland, Missouri and Joel E. Barber, both projects are in relatively small communities but have the potential to make a tremendous impact on the lives of kids and their parents in those communities. That really excites us.

Another residence is up and coming as well as some new urban projects that we anticipate will have a significant impact on our own downtown community as well.

So we’ve been extremely busy lately. I’m not sure we expected this to be happening this early in the formative years of our practice. That is encouraging and tells us that we’re doing (at least) some things right. It seems that clients are hungry for smart design. Especially in this time of economic, political, social and environmental uncertainty. Design quality seems to be important to people and we’re responding.

All of that being said, I attended a lecture today at the Hammons School of Architecure. Steve Rainville, a project manager at the office of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects in Seattle presented several projects from that office and talked about their design process and how those projects are executed. Wow! I have been big fan of that firm’s work for a number of years (as have others in our practice) and to say that it was inspiring is an understatement. Mr. Rainville was impressive in his presentation and inspired me to try harder, think deeper, take more risks and have more fun in the development of projects that also inspire others. If you’re not familiar with the firm’s work, you should be. Check it out at www.oskaarchitects.com.

And finally, April’s First Friday Art Walk. Convey Studios will be exhibiting some recent photography from trips to Africa in our gallery space in our office at 401 W. Walnut in Springfield. This will be the first in a series of exhibits displaying photographs from recent trips to the African continent and we’re looking forward to opening our office space to the community. If you have a chance, come by and see the exhibit. The photography will be awesome and the conversation might not be bad either.

Ordinary

For a long time now, I’ve been fascinated with ordinary things. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I grew up in a relatively ordinary place surrounded by ordinary things. We didn’t have a whole lot of money when I was a kid, so I entertained myself by seeing the potential in ordinary things and then transforming them (with my imagination) into something of much more significance for me.

My dad owned a retail shoe store, until Wal-Mart came to town. I loved it when a new shipment of shoes came in, because then I got full run of the cardboard boxes that were left over. Many times, the boxes were large enough for me to fit inside. We also had three colors of Marks-A-Lot magic markers, red, blue and black. Dad would let me use those markers, a pair of scissors and whatever tape I could find to transform those cardboard boxes into cars with working doors, steering wheels and dashboard lights, airplanes with wings and rudders, and so on. I even remember making a soda machine one time, that I would sit inside and dispense soda to anyone who was willing to slide a quarter through the slot I had cut in the top of the box.

My interest in the potential in ordinary things has filtered into our architectural practice. I still think it is fueled by where we live, the clients we have the pleasure of working with and an all too common limitation of financial resources for our projects. But I think those parameters force us to think about innovation through reinterpretation of the ordinary.

As part of the 2007-2008 lecture series at Drury University’s Hammons School of Architecture, I will be presenting some of the work of Dake Wells Architecture over the first three years of our practice. The lecture is entitled “Ordinary”, it’s schedueld for this Friday, November 16 at 1:00 p.m., and I hope you can make it.

Design Matters

We’re designers. We think that design is important. We believe that design actually affects people. Good design or bad design, it doesn’t matter. It affects people. Why does it seem to be so difficult to get others to see how important it is? It’s not about a particular style. It’s about how you think.

I just read the editor’s letter in the October 2007 Fast Company and I’m encouraged again. Read it for yourself, if you can. In fact check out the whole issue. But in case you can’t, I’d like to give you some excerpts from Robert Safian’s introduction to the issue.

Mr. Safian writes “What does design really contribute to an organization’s bottom line? In a global marketplace where price competition and commodification have slashed margins and “reengineered” jobs, it can be easy to peg what designers do as indulgence – style over substance, form over function. Committing business resources toward the tangible is just more efficient than – sniff – the soft world of design.”

He goes on to write “Studies have now shown that design-oriented firms in all kinds of industries outperform their more traditional peers – that design and innovation go hand-in-hand with financial success. Research from Peer Insight has calculated tenfold advantage in stock-market returns versus the S&P 500 for companies focused on consumer-experience design, as senior writer Linda Tischler explains in her profile of Yves Behar.”

Safian contends that CEOs are starting to get it, citing examples such as Hewlett-Packard (seen their commercials lately?) and, of course, Apple (we’re an all Mac office – thank you very much.) “They’re making the connection that design can help them get on their next growth cycle,” according to Peter Lawrence, chair of the Corporate Design Foundation.

This is all great amunition for us designers. The benefits of quality design not only benefit super-corporations, but also your local school district, the place where you live, your library, community center, coffee shop, or bank. Heck, even your strip mall. Matt O’Reilly is proving that.

So design does matter. We’ve always known that, but in a state whose motto is “Show Me” it takes a while to get the point across. We’re doing what we can. We hope others take notice.

Game Center

This project attempts to divide a currently banal office style space into a young, lively, relaxed lounge atmosphere for a local university. The approach taken to achieve this was to focus on dramatic lighting scenarios while creating smaller gathering spaces partitioned by light. This light partition not only acts as an object defining space but also uniquely ties and identifies the university to the space. This was normally executed on campus by focusing on color schemes or literal image relationships. Our approach used the light partition as a metaphor for the gooey, amber; shiny, transparent bear treat, “HONEY”. The qualities of honey create an undeniable subtle relationship to the university while making the space a special place. Along with the light partition simply reorganizing and locating light in areas that create high contrast and frame space create variations in mood to define different areas of the program.
The second component of the project and maybe just as critical as light is the super graphics and pop culture icons used in the space. Images of the “The Big Lebowski” and “Kingpin” as cult classics set the stage for a whimsical and youthful atmosphere.

Photographers

Photography is a significant part of what we do as architects. We’ve worked with a few and admire the work of others, but thought we would use this format to tell you about a few we know and love.

Sesha, at Convey Studios, recently spent some time with us in our office. What a great experience getting to know her and her staff. Her laughter is infectious. And her work captures who we are. We are so thrilled to have had the chance to work with Sesha. Check out their website for more engaging images. www.conveystudios.com

We’ve also worked with Gayle Babcock of Architectural Imageworks for years. Nearly all of the architectural photography on our website was done by Gayle. She recently photographed our office space as well as a school project in Stoutland, Missouri. Gayle has great sense of composition and she really sweats the details. She works hard to capture the right shot and has always been a real joy to work with.

We just want to say thanks to both Sesha and Gayle for the relationships we have with them. Two great young photographers in Springfield that we admire.

Classic Monsters

Our office is located on the second floor of a building built around 1896, as I understand it. We’ve received a lot of positive comments about the use of our windows as an image gallery. We usually debut a new set of images on the first Friday of a given month to conincide with Springfield’s First Friday Art Walk. The images usually have some special meaning for us and it’s a lot of fun to see people walk by and point and discuss what the images mean.

This month, the set of images is pretty easy. Consistent with our interest in pop culture, our awareness of the season, and our understanding that our current office was once a notable “haunted house” in downtown’s most recent dilapidated state, we’ve chosen to display eight images of classic monsters from the early days of film.

The images are not intended to be frightening, but instead an homage to our building’s past and to the creative talent of people like Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. And if you read the previous post, you know we have a special affinity for Frankenstein.