I spent my last full day in Boulder at HMH, an architecture and interior design firm near downtown Boulder. This firm, like Caddis, is pretty small and has about eight people. After arriving at the firm, Cherie, one of the partners, showed me a website called Architizer. This is a website where people can post and look through tons of architectural projects, both conceptual and already built. She wanted me to pick some designs that I liked to show the group at their weekly design review meeting in the afternoon. Each week, they take current projects that anyone in the office is working on and they discuss them as a group, suggesting modifications and improvements. This seems like a good way to make sure a project is in its best form before being built. But I didn't explore this site just yet. First, I went with Leah, an interior designer, to a residential house project near the end of its construction. She gave me a tour of the house(which has an AMAZING view of the mountains) and then began to discuss paint colors with the owners. They decided on a medium-toned grey for the upstairs bathroom before moving onto the front door. Leah was taping various paint swatches of reds, greens, and yellows to the door when Cherie picked me up to go to another project site. This residential home was just in the beginning phases of construction, and Cherie had to confirm some details with the contractor. When we finished up at that project site, we headed back to the office and Jenn, another interior designer at the office, gave me a project to do that she gave her students in a kitchen and bathroom design class. She gave me some blank kitchen and bathroom layouts and had me draw in a design with the right appliances, cabinets, and such. After drawing a few options for each room, I looked through their supply of sample materials to find what I'd choose for cabinets, flooring, backsplash, paint color, and more. It was super fun to design a kitchen with pretty much endless possibilities and explore different materials. Then, I went back to Architizer and compiled a list of my favorite designs. We ended the day with the design review and we started with a project from another architect that they collaborate with sometimes. The HMH team found a few design flaws such as a couch facing the opposite direction from the TV and the awkward placing of the toilet in the master bathroom. Everyone sketched their ideas to fix these problems and we ended up finding solutions to all of them. They also looked at the designs I did earlier and gave me feedback on good and bad parts of them which was super helpful! Lastly, we looked at some of the designs that I picked out earlier and discussed what I liked about them. Today actually made me consider whether I should pursue architecture or design, as that is my favorite element of architecture. Everyone at HMH was so welcoming and willing to answer my questions, and I had a really great day with them!
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Walking into Coburn Architecture was a bit of a shock this morning. My goal for today was to learn the differences between a large firm that develops and designs buildings and very small firm that only designs. This firm, I soon realized, is perfect for that. There are at least 20 employees, a receptionist greeted me at the door, and the building is much bigger, containing multiple conference rooms and offices, as well as a large working space for most of the employees. I was quickly introduced to Bill, the owner of the firm, and he brought me into a quick meeting about zoning in a downtown lot. The architects at Coburn hope to build a corner with a sharp, acute angle but the current restrictions prevent that, only allowing a rounded corner or forcing the building to minimize back. Because the building will be market rate housing, the city council has no reason to favor their design and change the zoning of the lot, but they are going to try to prepose it anyways. Another topic brought up at the meeting was the parking basement for the three buildings on the lot. The developer wants 90 parking spaces but in the current design, there are only 85. They are considering the possibility of pushing out the basement on either the font or the back side by a few feet in order to add a row of spaces, but they only have about 5 feet to work with on the back side of the building, not enough to add a full space, so they may have to adjust the placement of the structural beams in order to utilize that space. After the meeting concluded, I went with a few architects to a construction site. Each of the three architects I was with broke off to go to their own meeting, and I tagged along with Jim as he met with the project manager from Xfinity, the contractor, and a coordinator for lot 1. They were discussing the placement of the power and gas lines in conjunction to the network lines. Jim pointed out to me the power hubs that they wanted on the site and why or why not the sights worked. I then talked with Grant, a senior architects and design manager at Coburn, about what he does. He explained that not only does he work on his own projects but he also deals with interviewing new employees, checking that all of the staff currently trying to get their architecture license have the right hours, and reviewing current projects. He gave me some project files to look at which include all of the floor plans for a project, the Revit sketches, the applicable zoning codes, the utility needs, and more. When I finished checking out those projects, Grant and I went to the city planning office where you apply for building permit in Boulder to pick up some material samples he had given them. On the way, we drove by some of the projects that Coburn has either designed or designed and developed. This included the first net-zero building in the US, affordable housing units, and multi-use buildings. During the ride, Grant and I talked about why he loves Coburn-- because he gets to do everything. He gets to explore design, area planning, and contracting, and he gets to learn the strengths and weaknesses of his employees and help them grow. Some people might hate the chaos of job like his, but he loves it. I found that really inspiring and something to work towards.
I finished the day by walking around the office and chatting with people about the projects they are working on. I spent a lot of time helping one of the architects work through and try to sketch more one bedroom apartments in a building they had previously designed with larger apartments. He had to move the location of the second stairwell and it was proving difficult to use all of the space available without putting in larger apartments. I also talked to a designer at the office who was trying to put together a permit request for the city and had to gather al kinds of sketches together. Surprisingly, even though Coburn is a pretty big company, everyone was joking around and the general mood of the office was very mellow. Everyone was super nice and willing to talk to me which was really encouraging. Also, because of the large scale of their projects, many people would be apart of just one development, opposed to Caddis where there were only two architects on most projects. Today has definitely confirmed that I should work with a larger firm in another intensive or in the summer, and I've had a really fun time meeting new people and learning about everything that Coburn does! I started my last day at Caddis by working with Kristen to reformat some images in Revit, one of the software programs that the firm uses. She will be presenting the designs to a client later this week, so she needed to make sure that they were ready to be seen. Later, I was helping Bryan, Stephen, and Molly prepare to leave for a conference they are going to. They ended up leaving around 2:00 for the conference in Portland which is on the subject of cohousing. Bryan will be doing a joint talk with another architect at the conference and they brought other materials for Caddis' booth at the conference. They are going to the conference both to inform other firm and organizations on how to effectively design and make cohousing a reality, as well as hopefully get some bigger cohousing jobs. Overall, because of everyone running around a bit, this ended up being a pretty mellow day where I made some progress on my essay and planned some of my intensive fair presentation.
I still have two more days in Colorado, but I will be visiting a firm called Coburn on Thursday and a firm called HMH on Friday to get an idea of ho different firm sizes operate, so today was my last day at Caddis. Today has been pretty bittersweet because I've really enjoyed working with everyone at Caddis. The firm has been so welcoming with letting me join in on projects and meetings, and I'm really grateful to them for that. My goal for today was to really think about everything that I've earned while I was here and consider whether I really want to go into this profession. There is a lot that goes into building a residential or commercial building, and while I don't know that all of it will be my favorite, I can see myself really enjoying the personal side of architecture. Designing and crafting something for someone's personality is really appealing to me, and I think that as I intern with more firms, I will be able to understand what kind of business I want to be a part of. The firm that I am visiting tomorrow does it all-- they have engineers, planners, architects, and contractors. This means that the firm is bigger in size and I would assume that everyone is a bit more specialized, which I can verify tomorrow. I also plan to intern with a single architect sometime in the next two years to see how that compares. This internship has definitely not deterred me from the profession as a whole, but I think I understand now that I need to really explore what going to architecture school can mean for my future. This has been such an amazing experience and I'm so grateful to everyone at Caddis for letting me be a part of the team for these last few weeks! After the long weekend, we started the week at Caddis with a coffee from Spruce Confessions, a bakery near the office that I've become a regular at over the past few weeks. Here, everyone discussed the various ongoing projects that they will be working on this week. After returning to the office, me and a few other people began checking the new website that launched yesterday to make sure there were no errors. I proceeded to make sure every link worked, the formatting looked okay, and there were no errors in the text. this was actually pretty enjoyable because I was able to read more about Caddis and the newer projects that they just added. Then, I met with Carrie and Bobby, residential clients working with Caddis, for the third time. This meeting started at the Sierra Pacific window and door company showroom. These clients weren't sure if they wanted double hung or sliding windows, as well as what material of windows they wanted(vinyl, fiberglass, or wood) so we were checking out the different window models they had to get some idea of the options. This is a comparison showing two different ways to handle a sliding door. On the first door, the handle is cut out of the wood, allowing the door to open all the way to the left. The second door has a handle that sticks out so it can't open all the way. The salesman at Sierra Pacific showed us this difference so Carrie and Bobby could deliberate on what type of sliding doors they want to have, and it was pretty cool to think about. We continued the meeting back at the office so that Carrie and Bobby could look at the render of their house in a virtual reality simulation to figure out what window placement they would like and make a final decision on the pitch of the roof. Everyone at the office had a fun time listening to Bobby's enthusiastic exclamations at seeing her future home in VR. After wandering around the house, they both decided that a 9 foot pitched roof is what they wanted, and they adjusted the windows around the furniture a little bit. I actually tried wearing the glasses and did a walk around the house-- it's really interesting to see the difference between being in the goggles and just looking at the view on a screen. It really feels like you're in the house! Finally, we ended the day by discussing the issues Carrie and Bobby had with the plans that we gave them last week, and outlined what they wanted changed. This included height changes in Carrie's bedroom, window alignments in the hallway, and spacing in the kitchen. I'm sad that I won't see these clients again-- they've been super fun to work with and I've witnessed some real progress on their home!
The first part of my Friday was spent transferring notes from a client meeting into a document detailing the wants and needs they have for their residential home. Details like where the dog crate would go, which level the guest room should be on, and the size of their bathroom needed to be adjusted on their spreadsheet. Next week, I will be at the follow-up meeting for this client, where we will discuss the finality of these changes as well as discuss the choice of contractor and engineer for the project. I've really enjoyed being able to go to weekly meeting with this type of client, as I feel that it has given me a real insight on the personal side of this business. At lunch, everyone from the office discussed a conference that Kristen(my sponsor) attended last week. the conference was addressing air-barriers for hot and humid climates. She showed us pictures of displays at the conference showing correct and incorrect sealant and construction techniques, which were very interesting to compare.
In the afternoon, we headed as an office to The Spot in Denver. The Spot is a climbing gym in Boulder that decided to open a location in Denver. Architects at Caddis designed the building, so at 2:00, we all loaded into two cars and headed to check it out. After arriving, we changed into our rented climbing shoes and hit the rocks! The climbing routes were labeled from level one to five, one being the easiest and five being the hardest. A few of the guys from the office were pretty experienced climbers and started at level three and four-- I stuck with the one and two crowd. While I'm not a very experienced or talented climber, this trip was super fun! Everyone was cheering each other on and giving tips for getting to the top, and it was even worth the sore arms! I can't believe I've already spent two weeks getting to know everyone at the office and discovering the world of professional architecture! Last night I attended a Boulder Housing Advisory Board meeting at the city council chambers. The topic of the meeting was affordable housing in Boulder, and my goal was to learn more of the intricacies of the issue and understand it on a more personal level. There was a turnout of about twenty community members at the meeting, all of them ready to discuss their experiences in affordable housing. The members of the board decided to do this meeting a little differently than normal. They set up chairs in a large circle and invited everyone who signed up to speak to sit with them in the circle. This promoted a very open and comfortable discussion for everyone which was super cool to see! But before opening the discussion to everyone, they had two speakers give presentations: a staff member from the city and a leader of one of the largest affordable housing organizations in Boulder, the Boulder Housing Partners. The first gave a presentation on the history of affordable housing in Boulder, and the second presented about what his organization has done to improve the housing situation in Boulder. After these talks, everyone joined the circle and began a discussion. Most of the people that spoke were members of Boulder's affordable communities, but one person was a for-profit contractor who builds affordable housing. It was really interesting to me that he decided to come, and he didn't try to hide the fact that he ran a for-profit business, yet the tone towards him was not at all hostile. He talked about how his company, when given the legal option to raise the rent of all of his tenants in affordable units by 10% decided to only raise it by 4%. His main point, though, was about how they were allowed to to raise the rest that much, which isn't within many of his tenant's means.
It was really nice to see that the tone of the room was really understanding and appreciative on both ends, and almost everyone who spoke about the issues with their affordable housing also mentioned thanks to the programs that created their housing in the first place. One of the women that spoke lives in the Holiday neighborhood and she brought up the issue of cheap labor and materials in the construction of her home which has led to long-lasting damage and a constant need for repairs. From the response she got, I could tell that she was not alone in this situation. Another woman spoke of the unsafe conditions of her rental home which is a result of post-construction rental inspections being short and insufficient. Because the Housing Advisory Board is a group that is supposed to represent the people and help the community, many of the members spoke about their experience with affordable housing in response to these stories, and you could tell they were ready to advocate for reforms to the system. I'm planning to go to Study Sessions meeting next Tuesday at city hall concerning opportunity zones and large homes and lots, where there will be a discussion addressing the possibility of capping the square footage of new single-family homes. I really enjoyed hearing the community's thoughts on the issues of affordable housing at this meeting and it was very informative to hear real stories and flaws within these programs, so I'm looking forward to this next meeting! You can find recordings of all Housing Advisory Board meetings here: https://bouldercolorado.gov/boards-commissions/board-and-commission-meeting-video After arriving at Caddis in the morning, Bryan began showing me the zoning map of Boulder which shows what kind of development can happen where. He pointed out the Holiday Park area where the office is located, and how it is color coated to show that it's a business/residential area. On the other hand, the trailer park nearby is an area where only trailers can reside. His tour of the website was in preparation for a meeting with some potential buyers of a site in downtown Boulder. I came along to this meeting, where Bryan briefed them on the zoning restrictions of the area. This particular piece of land had zoning restrictions that would allow a future project to be no taller than 35 feet and have no more square footage than half of the lot size. This lot size was 9,000 square feet so no matter how many floors they decided to add, a building on the site could be no more than 4,500 total square feet. The building would also have to be 20 feet from the street in front and 15 feet from the street on the side(it's a corner lot). Needless to say, the potential buyers were not happy about this information, but they may consider the option of buying the land in hopes that the zoning laws in the area would change in the next few years. In the afternoon, I went with Kelly, another architect at the firm, to visit the construction site of a small home in the mountains. After a forty minute drive through the steep, snowy roads, we reached the partially constructed house. This house was not being build entirely new, but parts were taken from the old cottage that was previously on the site. You can see in image one the old rafters from the cottage still in the house, but with a new steel crossbeam. They also included a spacious crawl space(see image 3) and made sure to include plenty of windows in their studio space(see image 7). Kelly had to come to the site to take some progress pictures and make sure everything was meeting code standards. I was pretty much out of the office all day which was a fun change of pace. Bryan also put me in contact with another local architecture firm, Coburn Architecture, and I will be spending next Thursday at their firm, so I'm very excited for that! Website to view Boulder zoning areas: https://maps.bouldercolorado.gov/emaplink/ From going to client meetings with architects in the office, I've continued to understand just how many details even a residential project has. Today, I went to a follow up meeting with the same clients that I met with last week. While the discussion last week led to changes in the square footage of the entry and the layout of the upper floor, this week's meeting focused more on how to implement heating and cooling in the house, both structurally and architecturally, because one of the clients has a resistance to mold. Window placement and roof slant were also discussed at this meeting. Because those are hard decisions to make, at next week's meeting with the clients, they will come to the office to look at roof slants and window options in a virtual reality program. VR is a newer feature that architects are utilizing for situations like this. It's really cool that because of the regularity of the meetings with this specific client, I will get to see the progress of the plans for their home over my full three weeks at Caddis. Because of the immense detailing of the plans as well as notes to the contractor to reference, the principle architect for the project believes that the final documents that the firm will send to get permit approval and will be given to the contractor will end up being around 100 24'' by 36'' pages. I think this long process of back and forth discussions between an architect and a client is really cool because you truly learn about the client as a person and their style. Architecture is a profession that very much deals with people as much as art and math.
The more that I participate around the office, the more I'm realizing that a good chunk of what residential architects(at least at Caddis) do is simply understanding the personality and needs of their clients. Today, I met with a residential client to talk about the needs of her new home. We were discussing the spreadsheet that I had created last week detailing the rooms and features the client wanted in their house from Kristen Uitto's meeting notes and a questionnaire they filled out. At first glance, it may seem like an initial meeting and survey about their needs would cover everything, yet as time passes, the client generally thinks of more details. For example, this client realized that instead of having her dog's wire crate in their living room, she wanted Caddis to design a built-in space for the dog. She also forgot to mention at the last meeting that she wanted separate laundry and mud rooms. The amount of decision changes clients tend to make became even more clear when another architect from the office had to submit an approval form to the county about mid-construction changes to a residential home. The owners decided after partial construction that they wanted a staircase into the crawlspace/basement area, rather than a latter. And while the ever-changing needs of a client may seem frustrating, the architects at Caddis are very used to it. This is just one way that the job of an architect diverges from design. There is a lot of coordination that goes on between the architects, the county, the client, and the contractor that complicate the job and take away from design time. Electronic rendering and calculations also require a lot of time and divert the focus on design away from an architect. Despite this, I can still imagine myself in an office like this one day, and the job of an architect as a whole is still very appealing to me.
As I was chatting with one of my uncle's friends yesterday about why I was staying in Boulder, she remarked that it was ironic that I was learning about affordable housing in a city where the cost of living is extremely high. Yet this is actually one of the reasons I was drawn to Boulder, and Caddis specifically. Caddis is one of the leading firms in the country in the field of co-housing and affordable housing. They work every day to build a more inclusive, livable city for their neighbors. The cost of housing is so high in Boulder that even the principle architect's at the firm can't afford to buy homes in the city. This issue is affecting everyone. And if there's one thing I've learned from my research in the past few weeks, it's that there is no easy solution to create affordable housing. Rent control, inclusive zoning, up-zoning, and direct cash subsidies all have both pros and cons, and none of these can work on their own to create enough affordable housing, especially for those in poverty. A lack of affordable housing forces teachers, restaurant workers, and many other low paying occupations to live far from their place of work, creating longer commutes. People are have less children than they want because of housing instability. This issue is real and requires the attention of people like Bryan Bowen. Bryan is one of the principle architects at Caddis as well as a member of Boulder's planning board. Last night, the planning board discussed the idea of creating a new zoning law for the city that will restrict the construction of single family home to 3,500 or less. This would make room for development of more affordable housing in the area. Boulder is a city with very little affordable housing, but with the help of firms like Caddis, that is changing.
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