Why the World Needs Interior Designers (or Why You Shouldn't Just Trust an Architect)

For the past day I have been working on rendering the floorplan of a restaurant for our hotel project, which had been created and designed by the architect in our group. Thankfully I am looking this over, because so far I have found that...

1. the patrons would not be able to use one set of elevators, as there were walls drawn around all four sides of them.
2. the customers would not be able to use the restrooms, either, since there are no doors to get into them.
3. the mens restroom looked just like the women's restroom...i.e. no urinals.
4. actually the other set of elevators has walls around all four sides, too, so apparently nobody is getting up to this 5th/6th floor restaurant unless they are trekking up the stairs...
5. ...except that the stairs also have walls around all four sides. But there is a window curtainwall on one side, so if you managed to get trapped there somehow, at least you'd have a great view!
6. the bar had no chairs around it.
7. the circular booths had backs and seats all the way around them...meaning that there was no way to sit down in them unless you climbed over the back. But then that makes waiting on these tables interesting. Maybe your food is dropped down to you from the ceiling?
8. the area where you pay the big bucks to watch the chef prepare your meal also has no chairs around it. I guess you are paying top dollar to stand around.
9. the walk-in freezer room has no door to it.

In addition, when she first gave me the plan, the waiting/lounge area was completely blank and devoid of furniture so she told me to just draw in whatever I wanted...which is fine, except that area is a good 1/3 of the entire space! And the bar area just had large squares where she "wanted furniture to go". Talk about feeling undervalued as an interior designer...

Anyway, the architect in my group is actually pretty good, and built a rockin' model for our review...

...which is in only four more days!

A Week in the Life: Friday

3:45 am: Home again!

4:02 am: GOOD NIGHT!

11:12 am: Morning stop for Caribou. Bring on the caffeine!

11:17 am: Hello again, COD.

1:09 pm-1:30 pm: Photos of our presentation for the critique. Check out those rockin' boards and picturesque model. Yup, this is exactly what I have been staying up for all week 'til the wee hours...

4:59 pm: And my roommates wonder why I am never at home. Note: Crystal made me promise not to post this picture on Facebook. Did I violate any of those terms here? I think not.

6:33 pm-7:42 pm: Dress rehearsal for the dance recital that is (eep!) tomorrow! Too many cute (and crazy!) little kids in one place. These are just some of my favorite shots, but I took a ton more!

And now...TO B-E-D!!!

A Week in the Life: Thursday

3:39 am: Working on the boards for our project in studio. You can see my friend and groupmate Kraemer in the background. We've been buddies since freshman year here at ISU (eep-that's 5 years ago!) and took the same studio together this semester and happened to be placed into the same group for our project.

4:27 am (duh, silly): Arrive home! Yay!

9:18 am: One last, longing look at my bed before heading back to studio 5 hours after I left it.

11:46 am: The start of a rendering.

11:46 am: Breaktime. Dark chocolate M & M's Premium break time, that is.

2:15 pm: Heading back to studio after art history class, some good ol' Caribou Coffee in hand. My body has ingested more caffeine within the past few days than in the last few months combined...

2:19 pm: Rendering, middle stage.

2:36 pm: Realize that except for the handful of delicious M & M's I had earlier, I have not eaten all day. Yogurt covered pretzels to the rescue!

5:03 pm: Dash home to grab my glasses and my car. Take another longing look at my bed. I am pretty sure there is a Shannon-sized spot in there...

7:08 pm: Finished rendering. Yay!

At 1:48 am I am still here...no new pictures...this Thursday wasn't too exciting...but at least it involved chocolate and Caribou!

A Week in the Life: Wednesday

Well, it may be after 2:00 in the morning, but here I am...still at home studio. As there is a slim chance that I will be going back to my apartment anytime soon, (to people grilling again?), I decided to post up my photos of Wednesday now:

10:12 am: Eyeshadow in the morning...

10:31 am: ...before my daily dose of Bible. Today: Exodus 3. "I AM who I AM..."

1:19 pm: A delicious cinnamon crunch bagel from Panera, lovingly brought to me by my friends Jennie and Chad. :)

3:15 pm: View of my rendering wall in studio. I probably look at this wall about 1,340,987 times a day as a reference for our hotel.

5:53 pm: My lovely roommate Crystal has come to get me so we can watch our Pre-K kiddos at church.

5:54 pm: She even brought me dinner! Taco bread that her mom sent with her last weekend from home...and it was scrumptious!

5:55 pm: And here she is, ladies and gentlemen, in the flesh. This is probably the best picture ever taken of the lovely Crystal Ann. Did I mention that she is my maid of honor? And I am hers in July? Actually that will make her my matron of honor...but she doesn't really like to hear that title too much...maybe that's why she is making that face right now...

6:40 pm: Here's those darn cute kiddos I was talking about. They thought I should be able to fit into their 5-year-old-sized dress-up clothes...as you can see, it didn't quite work out...and though I have always wanted curly, red hair, this is not quite what I had in mind. Good thing Gavin was there to get it out of my face. Thanks buddy!

8:33 pm: I looked down while I was at a red light and noticed that my car was at exactly 97,900 miles on it's odometer. Not quite a significant milestone, but I thought it was interesting anyway.

That's it for today...I wish I had a photo of my bed in here...or just a bed in here...I'm afraid I will be rather bleary-eyed for photos tomorrow!

What's Left

One exam...

Before yet another big, important, lots-of-work, in-progress studio critique...

Which is the same day as the dress rehearsal for the dance recital that I have to organize...

And the dance recital is the next day...

Which is the same day as a bachelorette party that I am in charge of...

After all these things, my senior honors project is due, which includes a 2-hour poster presentation (which equals a 2-hour critique in my mind)...

Not too much later a cost-estimate project is due, which has yet to be started...

Two days later a 5+ page paper is due...

And the next day is THE FINAL CRITIQUE for studio...

But then I just have one (or maybe two) final(s)...

Before I can GRADUATE!

So the question is...

Just how little sleep (and how much caffeine) can I survive on for the next 6 weeks?

Mind Doodles-College of Design Edition

1. Dear Architects of the COD: Notice how every other building on campus is built close to the road? Do you know why that is? Because when it is cold, raining, snowing, windy, etc. or any combination of the above (as it is 4 out of 5 days here on campus) nobody wants to walk an extra 1000 feet to their destination! Congratulations, because that walkway from the road always feels like the longest part of the journey from my apartment to my studio.
2. I am always slightly fearful when I walk over the unavoidable, uneven grate on the pathway to the COD that it will finally give way and plummet me down a story to the abyss below.
3. Planning when to go to the COD cafe for lunch always involves a master set of strategic skill. 10:00-10:30: Looks funny to be getting lunch at this time, plus soup is not served yet. However if you have pulled an all-nighter, this feels like lunch time, so may be your best option. 11:00? Best to be avoided, as that is when they start serving soup. 11:20-11:50: Usually safe. Noon-12:25: To be avoided at all costs. Never, ever, ever get lunch at this time. The exception: you need a good 20-30 minute break from studio without your professor getting upset that you are not in class. Caution: Too much later than 12:30 and there is the unfortunate possibility that they will be out of your chosen soup/bread/sandwich topping/pasta salad/sub sandwich for the day.
4. Dead Week/Finals Week brings the inevitable posters that proclaim the giving of free espresso shots, buildings open 24/7, and printing services open past midnight. Dude, it's like that every week here, and you don't see us getting all excited about it.

this pic summarizes my trip to Miami perfectly

More pics to come...once I can figure out how to get my computer to read my camera's new SD card...

ArtID 469 Watercolor

What I Didn't Know

In church today, there were some freshman girls sitting behind me, talking about what they thought of the church and other things. It made me think of my freshman year in college; what I thought I knew then, and what I definitely know now...but mostly, it made me think of what I DIDN'T know four years ago...

• I didn't know that I would not get into the interior design program the first year I applied
• Related to the above, I didn't know that I would be in the middle of some Iowa cornfields for five whole years of school
• I didn't know just how difficult DSN 131 and DSN 102 would be
• I didn't know squat about interior design
• I didn't know how much I would miss Minnesota lakes
• I didn't know that I would not be studying abroad in Rome my senior (or in this case, super-senior) year like I had planned since high school
• I didn't know that I would ever find a boy so perfect for me
• I definitely didn't know that my final year of school I would be much more concerned and preoccupied with planned a wedding (MY wedding, of all things!) than with any schoolwork I might be given
• I didn't know that life would be so filled with ups and downs during these college years; almost nothing has been static during this time

Basically, everything that I ever wanted and planned for in college has been completely twisted around and turned upside-down. I was supposed to be done in four years, fully graduated with a degree in interior design, fresh from a semester studying abroad in Rome, before jetting out to the East Coast to work for a few years, and I definitely thought I was going to be single for quite some time (not by my own choice, but I just assumed). Instead, I had my dream of interior design taken away from me for one of the hardest years of my life, and then given back again; had my dream of studying abroad in Rome completely taken away, (that one is not going to be given back), and met my wonderful boy right after I became 100% fully content and happy with being single. God definitely has his own plans, and I have to say, they tend to be at least a little bit better than anything I could ever dream up for myself. :)

the advent of the Sims 3

The Sims 3 is here! .

Design-Build 2009

Above you can see what I worked on all this past semester.  Started January 12, and completed on May 2, is the "sleeping cabin" my class created in South Sioux City, NE.  (I just figured out how to hyperlink text, so I am pretty stoked. :))  In a mere 17 weeks, the 16 of us were given the project and client, created a design concept, argued repeatedly about the design concept (weeks 2-4...), finally agreed on a single design, presented the design and budget to the parks and rec board of South Sioux, and, finally, constructed the whole darn thing.  

I personally joined the class not knowing a soul, as I was the lone interior designer working on the project, along with 12 architects and 3 landscape architects.  There were also 3 graduate students mixed in amongst the rest of us undergrads.  Also included was our professor, Bruce, who had the charisma and patience, as well as 12 years design-build studio experience behind him, to put up with us.  I know there were times that I never thought this thing would actually be finished.  Most notable of these times is probably when I went with 3 others to pour the 12 concrete foundation piers.  Not only was it a wicked cold and windy day, but I just kept looking from our pitiful mess of a site to the cabin they had built last year (a similar project was done by the design-build studio last spring) and all I could think was, "We have to go from this to that in 6 weeks?!?".  I could not get my mind wrapped around that fact.  I still could not wrap my mind around that fact a week and a half later when the deck crew called to say that the foundations had been poured in backwards on the site, and they had to repour 4 of them before they could install the deck.  Needless to say, we did get it built in time for our final review, and it truly turned out to be a beautiful project.  

 

Check out more photos at  http://www.getdropbox.com/gallery/491315/1/design%20build%20pics?h=bf4961 

design is...

http://designwashere.com/50-excellent-posters-about-design/

mind doodles

Just some things running around in my brain lately...

1.)  I may be considered "old-fashioned" by some because I do not believe in living together before marriage.  One of the #1 excuses I hear for living together before marriage, and the one that irks me the most, is that people say, "Well I need to know what they are like before I get married to them.  What if we get married and live together and it is awful?" or something to that extent.  (On a similar vein, though not completely related to living together, is people who have sex before marriage and say, "Well what if they are bad in bed?"  and/or "Well if you wait until marriage then that's the only person you ever have sex with your entire life."  That's the POINT dummy!)  Anyway, first off, statistics show that people get divorced at a significantly higher percentage than people that wait until marriage to live together.  Secondly, it has only become "the norm" to live together before marriage during about the last 60 years.  That means that for thousands and thousands of years people waited until marriage to live together and the human race has done just fine.  And lastly, if you are THAT worried about how living with your significant other will go, whether married or not, I am pretty sure you have bigger issues to worry about in your relationship.

2.)  I need to start eating healthier.  This is my reminder.

3.)  I am very, very sick of school.  I feel like I have been here forever and I am ready to be done.  Unfortunately, I have a whole nother year left.  I am actually extremely glad that I got into interior design the year that I did and consider it to be proof that God knows things better than I do, but...this is just another instance where I want to have my cake and eat it, too.  The biggest thing is that I am sick of running around and doing things for other people to try to please them and try to get that A.  And then to work hard on a project and get told everything that is wrong with it.  At least when I create a project in the real world to try and please another person, I will most likely know much more about it than my client, and will therefore be able to easily convince them that it is exactly what they want.  

4.)  Related to #3 above, I have also been very, very tired lately.  I come home every day and say "Today was such a long day."  What happened to all the short days?  Running away and doing nothing for about a week sounds awesome.  Can the whole world just be put on hold for a week?  Please?  At least my whole world?  And Tyson's?  That would be wonderful.

McCafe v. Fashion Week

http://www.stylelist.com/blog/2009/02/11/fashion-week-has-an-official-coffee-its-mccafe/#comments

See above link.

A year ago, I probably would have thought the same thing as the author of the blog post above.  McDonald's + coffee?  Not just coffee, but espresso and lattes and mochas?  I would have assumed that it tastes like the "cappuccino" you get out of the gas station machines.  You know the kind, it's basically sweetened, syrup-y water infused with a drop of "coffee-flavor" substance.

However...

While I have not had any of the hot coffee drinks from McDonald's, I have had their cold ones.  They make a mean iced coffee or (my personal favorite) iced vanilla latte.  Being a slightly picky coffee addict, I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious these drinks were.  And all for a dollar or two cheaper than the big coffee chains (ahem, Starbucks).  I have had their regular black coffee, too, and it is also pretty yummy.  And I read on the McCafe website that they don't charge you for a syrup shot!  I realize it is only 60 cents (at Caribou anyway), but when I get coffee everyday, that adds up to $4.20 every week, or $218.40 each year.

I have no reason to believe that their new hot coffeehouse drinks will be any less scrumptious.  Let's face it, McDonald's is an advertising and research-oriented powerhouse.  They tend to set the trends for the fast-food industry, and other chains are now trying to get their own coffee lines up and running.  Mickey D's is already a step ahead of them, and I am sure that they have done their homework before releasing such a radical hit to the market.

And have you seen the new McDonald's, particularly the "McCafe" portion of them?  They're...nice.  Rich woods and warm tile...no more hard, cold, plastic booths.  Instead of wanting to leave as soon as I sit down so I don't catch some unkown disease from the starkly neutral plastic seat, I actually wouldn't mind staying for longer than 10 minutes.  They even have contemporary lighting: drop down pendant lights and cove lighting that gives off a nice ambiance. (McDonalds?  Ambiance?  Crazy, huh?)  Though evidence of the traditional ketchup red and mustard yellow that characterizes the McDonald's logo can still be seen, it is in a much more tasteful way.  Deeper reds and warmer yellows that warm up the space, instead of causing it to look like a preschool classroom.

I understand that McDonald's (even McCafe) being the official ANYTHING at fashion week seems a bit...low class.  But this is another evidence of McDonald's genius.  Get the celebrities, the fashion-forward celebrities, drinking their coffee, and oh, what a marketing scheme.  They don't have to do anything but give away free coffee, and the media will do the rest.  It's freaking FASHION WEEK, images of celebrities with a McCafe cup in the hand will be plastered all over the place.

I think it's brilliant, delicious, and that Ms. Wintour is in for a little shock.

Much as I enjoy college (well, I am actually pretty ready to be done.  I mean, I have been here for 4 years and am going to be stuck here for another one...I technically am a senior so aren't I allowed to have senioritis, too?  But that is a whole different blog post...) 

Anyway

I do enjoy college, but my biggest problem is living in my crappy university apartment (ah...could I be an interior design major?).  Well, it's not so bad, but there are some necessities I do miss.  Like a kitchen table.  It is super annoying to make a nice meal (or even a not-so-nice meal) and have to eat it at the ugly I-am-trying-to-look-like-wood veneer coffee table, or else at the kitchen peninsula with tedious stools that have no backs, so it completely wrecks any attempt at posture by forcing one to eat hunched over their food.  

It would also be nice to be able to actually DO something to an apartment.  Like paint it whatever color I want, or get furniture that I actually like.  A big problem with this is the transient state I am always in, being that I have not stayed in one place for more than 9 months (although factor in that winter break is for an entire month in the middle of that) in the past 4 years.  Buying too much furniture or things like that just amount to more stuff that needs to be hauled in and out every year during move in/out, and storage, of course, is always a problem during the summer months.  Not to mention that I have little drive to even attempt to decorate a place that I am going to be in for so little time.  Not only is it for a mere 9ish months, but when I am at school I tend to not spend time at my apartment because I am so busy working in the design building or involved with other extra-curricular things.  

My impermanent housing situation is only going to compound itself in the next year, since during the summer I will be on an internship somewhere (Minnesota?  Wisconsin?) and then will be in Rome for the fall semester, end up at home over winter break, before winding up back here in the spring to finish classes and graduate before heading to Madison (I think).  Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to these things.  It would just be nice to have a place to call home that actually felt like a home.  Mom's and dad's house doesn't quite cut it anymore...and anyplace I am when I am not there is still just too brief to make it feel like mine...and I really do miss having a kitchen table.

Monday + snow + 1st day of school = ...

When it is only 10 o' clock in the morning, and it feels like it is about noon, (*sigh*, it's STILL not noon!), you know you are in for a long day...

Dear Mr./Ms. Computer Lab In-Charge Person,

Don't update the ENTIRE computer lab over break unless you do it right.  It is very frustrating to come back over break and not have my flash drive recognized/tell me that I am not authorized to access my OWN stinking flash drive/not allow me to do anything with my flash drive if I can get it open (i.e. not make new folders or put any new files on the drive).  Using a flash drive seems like a pretty basic function of computers and any issues with it should be resolved before you have hundreds of students coming back to your building.

Thanks,

ShayJay

And I found out that my option studio class, for which we are building a cabin in South Sioux City, Nebraska, also meets on Fridays, not just on Mondays and Wednesdays like I originally thought.  I have not had class on Fridays for the past year and a half...call me spoiled, but this sucks.  No less because it is a 4 hour (yes, hour) class from 1:10-5:20.  Yuck.  This makes things additionally complicated because I plan on doing interviews on Fridays for my internship, and missing a 4-hour studio class does not sound like a very good plan.  However, we are also told that since as interior design students we have Fridays "free", that any absenses in our interior design classes because of job interviews are not excused, which also excludes the other 4 weekdays.  *sigh*  This is probably not the semester to finally have class on Fridays.  I am excited for the class otherwise though, although it would have been nice to know exactly when it met before the very first day of classes...

blah

While flipping through my most recent issue of Architectural Digest (which persists in coming to my house in Minnesota...for some reason I get about half of my mail at my apartment in Iowa and half of it in Minnesota...) I noticed that most of the projects featured were rather...bland.  Now don't get me wrong, there wasn't really anything wrong with any of the projects individually.  I actually truly liked the majority of them, and they featured interesting furniture selections or other nice components.  Taken as a whole, however, the magazine was pretty blah.  I flipped through it once, but when I was thinking about it later realized that I could not really recall anything specific from any individual project.  Upon looking through it again, I realized that if I had not known any better, I would have throught all of the images were from the same project.  Every design (except one, which featured different shades of blue interspersed throughout the residence...but otherwise was no different) was in the same neutral color palette.  

Basically I just found it interesting that in such a luxurious and highly respected publication, they would not feature more diversity.  I mean, do you know what kind of work it takes to get featured in their pages?  I don't mean to make them sound completely awful, though.  This is the first time I can remember (in about a year and a half of receiving the magazine monthly) feeling so disappointed in an issue.  I'll have to pay close attention in the future and see how I feel about what is being featured.

Some good did come from this disappointment, though.  I remember last year looking at the senior interior design students gallery show that displayed their range of work from being in the interior program.  Each student had a fill-in-the-blank profile next to their work, and one of the things each of them had to answer was their "design philosophy".  I have been thinking about that off-and-on ever since then, because while I have had a somewhat vague idea in my head about what my personal design philosophy is, I have not been able to nail it down.  Now, however, I know exactly what will go in that blank:

"Create every project to have its own personality, like something nobody has ever seen before."