For many interior design and architecture students and professionals, books by Francis D. Ching have proven to be extremely useful resources. His Design Drawing and Building Construction Illustrated are often required or recommended reading material for design students.

 

Ching's illustrations, descriptions and discussions on the topic of drawing basics in Design Drawing reflect an ease and simplicity that certainly gave me confidence in my own sketches and drawings, and his coverage of building construction provides a common sense and practical overview of building technology, emphasizing that one must be familiar with construction practices before one can actually design something that would be feasible or buildable.

 

One of the first books required as part of my four-year interior design studies at Cornell was Ching's Building Construction Illustrated which emphasized the important relationships between construction, technology, and design.

 

Ching's books have been updated over the years to reflect changes and advances in sustainable practices, building technology, building code, and in CAD software applications. A number of Ching's books are available with a companion CD-ROM which adds three dimensional demonstrations and applications of the material covered in the books. The timelessness of his drawings and written content keep the material fresh and relevant.

 

Other Ching classics, Architecture: Form, Space and Order and A Visual Dictionary of Architecture present invaluable written and visual information regarding the vocabulary and elements of architecture and design. These books offer budding architecture and design students, as well as practicing professionals, a review of the fundamental principles of architecture, and describe the relationships between components of building, architecture, and design.

 

The books I've listed are but a few of his works.

 

Francis Ching is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington's Department of Architecture. He earned his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame in 1966, and began his teaching career in 1972 at Ohio University. Mr. Ching has taught at the University of Washington for the past 20 years, teaching design studio and drawing courses. Here's his profile.

Designers - Ever find yourself running around, spending huge amounts of time looking at tile, stone, plumbing fixtures, lighting, fabrics, and the like? The internet is a highly useful tool, but there's often no substitute for seeing and touching "the real thing" when it comes to material selection. Ever then wonder if you can justify all of that time when billing your client, if you're working on a hourly or consulting basis?

 

The answer is a big YES, given that you are researching and selecting items with the clients' best interests in mind, and providing information and specifications as they have hired you to do. Generally, designers and clients have established a budget framework to follow, and hours can be incurred in many different ways.

 

If working on a fixed-fee basis, designers need to be careful that they are fairly compensated for the all of the time they spend on a project, and that their compensation doesn't flatten out. Experienced designers are usually fairly well accomplished at estimating fixed fees, but it can sometimes take quite a bit of homework and thought about every possible detail of a project to arrive at a realistic and fair fixed fee.

 

Even minor details can consume a significant amount of a designer's time. Grout colors, cabinet hardware, switchplate and outlet cover colors, paint finish specs (eggshell vs. pearl?), and many other details must be kept track of and taken into account when estimating fair compensation.

 

At the same time, clients need to understand that the designer is typically highly invested in making sure that everything turns out great for the client, and that he or she will typically need to spend a significant amount of time pay attention to details, making potentially numerous trips to the design center, as well as phone calls and emails to ensure that all aspects of a project are covered, no matter how large or small. The intangibles that contribute to a project's success are sometimes difficult to measure. Whether you're working on an hourly basis, a fixed fee, or a mark-up basis, designers typically strive to produce wonderful results at realistic and fair rates.

 

Check out the Green Thinker Network at www.greenthinkernetwork.com. Green Thinker Network is an online source of information and a catalog for the green building industry. The website features products and building materials, service providers such as architects and building professionals, LEED information and guidelines, recycling information, articles and blogs, and links to websites promoting green practices and products.

 

GTN recently announced its "Sustainability 2011" competition, which seeks the best sustainable products. Judging criteria includes post-consumer content, recycled content, third party certifications, LEED Points, life cycle, energy efficiency studies, and renewable energy production and usage.

 

For more details about "Sustainability 2011", click here.

 

The Green Thinker Network will have a booth at GreenBuild in Chicago from Nov. 17-19.

 

 

Most of my clients, both commercial and residential, ask me to specify paint colors, but I frequently encourage my clients to incorporate wallpaper, especially in powder rooms (not bathrooms where moisture can be an issue), dining rooms, and bedrooms. Wallpaper in powder rooms can create many different wonderful effects: drama and sophistication, whimsey, an outdoor/garden feeling, a cabana effect, an architecturally detailed/moulded effect, and more. Powder room ceilings are often papered to complete the look.

 

Dining rooms are part of the home where a bit of formality can prevail, and wallpaper can add formality much better than paint is able to. Crisp stripes, subtle damasks and beautiful florals are time tested and relevant wallpaper styles that allow significant room for creativity and provide a formal backdrop for dining room furniture, area rugs and window treatments. For more casual dining areas, wallpaper can still provide a lot of charm through color and pattern.

 

Bedrooms can be wonderful spaces to personalize with wall coverings. Without getting locked in to something too cute, kids' rooms allow for many different fun and colorful patterns. I generally encourage clients to choose something that seems a bit grown up - kids seem to really love it, and the selection then lasts many years. Master bedrooms, often viewed as private oases, allow for favorite colors in wallpaper or paint. Wallpaper contributes to a specific look or feeling, be it garden-like, tailored, or posh and elegant.

 

For commercial use, wallpaper can contribute in a big way to a customized, finished look. I've used wallpaper on numerous office projects in bathrooms, hallways, waiting rooms, and lounge areas. It adds a layer of visual interest and keeps things from being too bland. There are many commercial grade wallcovers available in terrific colors and patterns.

 

Although many clients are somehow under the impression that wallpaper is "out" - not sure where that comes from - I encourage using it in many projects! Here are some of my favorite vendors:

 

Brunschwig & Fils

 

Maya Romanoff

 

Osborne & Little

 

Thibaut Wallpaper & Fabrics

 

And here are a couple photos from the Thibaut website:

 

 

 

Don't miss it! Through April 4, 2010, the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum is presenting "Design USA: Contemporary Innovation", featuring and celebrating the winners of the past ten years' National Design Awards.

 

Design USA highlights excellence in American architecture, landscape design, interior design, product design, communication design, corporate design, interaction design, and fashion. The exhibit "focuses on innovation through the lens of technology, material, method, craft and transformation."

 

This is a great opportunity to see the design achievements of the past decade showcased in one exhibit.

 

Every October, Cooper Hewitt announces the National Design Award winners. For more information, click here.

 

You've probably already heard about the small town of Greensburg, Kansas?

 

Greensburg was hit by a devastating EF-5 tornado in early May, 2007. The twister leveled 95% of the town's homes and buildings. In the aftermath, Greensburg city officials committed to using 100 percent renewable energy and mandated that every city building be built to the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED Platinum standards.

 

GreenTown is a community-based organization which has worked alongside Greensburg and Kiowa county officials, business owners, and local residents to help make Greensburg a model of sustainable living for the rest of the country. According to the GreenTown website, the organization serves as "an educational resource for the community, a conduit through which donations can be distributed, and a representative to those outside the community who are interested in the Green Initiative".

 

I found both the website and the town's story quite compelling. The site offers a comprehensive database of each of the green homes and buildings that has been built as part of the reconstruction, as well as a walk through the town in the form of a "Green Tour" PDF. As an example, the site describes the materials and techniques used to build the town's new City Hall (pictured below).

 

Greensburg's GreenTown City Hall

 

The town is still a work-in-progress, but what an amazing story!

 

Building Design + Construction has named its top architecture, engineering and construction firms for 2009.

 

According to the survey, the selected AEC companies place strong emphasis upon employee career development, training and education, display extraordinary involvement in the communities they serve, and have a passion for business leadership and excellence.

 

The top eleven companies are:

• The Beck Group - Dallas, Texas
• BLDD Architects - Decatur, Illinois
• Commodore Builders - Newton, Massachusetts
• DES Architects + Engineers - Redwood City, California  
  
• HKS, Inc. - Dallas, Texas
• KCI Technologies - Sparks, Maryland
• Manasc Isaac Architects Ltd. - Edmonton, Alberta
• Robins & Morton Group - Birmingham, Alabama
  
• Roy Anderson Corporation - Gulfport, Mississippi
• Rumsey Engineers, Inc. - Oakland, CA
• Suffolk Construction Company, Inc. - Boston, MA
  

Read about each of the BD+C's selections here.

 

Building Design + Construction magazine is still accepting survey submissions for its Giants 300 report. Survey submissions are due by May 29, 2009. Each year, BD+C tracks the business activity of the top 300 commercial architecture, engineering and construction firms in the United States.

 

This year's report will introduce ranking of firms that have the most LEED Accredited Professionals (APs) as of the survey cut-off date.

 

Click here to download the 2009 survey. The 2008 Giants 300 report is available in PDF format.

 

 

 

A recent article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel touches upon issues associated with getting LEED certified. According to the article's author, Doreen Hemlock, the current 'green' certification process can take about a year and can cost up to 5 percent of the value of a project, just for the required paperwork and verification tests. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recognizes the problem and is expecting that LEED v3 will help streamline the process.

 

The USGBC will launch version 3 on April 27, 2009. New projects will be required to register for LEED v3 rather than v2 after June 27th. And December 31, 2009 will be the last day of the free migration period, during which currently registered projects can transition to LEED 2009 and LEED Online without paying a new registration fee.

 

With LEED v3, the project certification process will move to the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), an independent non-profit that was established in 2007 with the support of USGBC. The goal will be to improve the speed with which projects can move through the certification process. I guess time will tell just how much more streamlined the certification processes and Online v3 tool will be. The LEED v3 rollout plans are described below.

 

In case you missed it, there are a couple of interesting articles in yesterday's and today's editions of The Guardian about the ten architects that were selected last year by French president Nicolas Sarkozy to present their visions for reshaping Paris, the most visited city in the world, and its neglected and isolated outskirts into a more well connected and much greener metropolis for the 21st century.

 

Earlier this week, the ten chosen architects previewed their visions for the future of "Le Grand Paris" in 30-minute presentations. Images from each of the presentations are available on the French daily's Le Figaro.

 

 

 

 

All images courtesy of Le Figaro.