JULY 31ST, 2009
By BUILD LLC
It’s official, as of last week the BUILD World Headquarters has received more resumes in 2009 than from the previous 10 years combined. Maybe it’s our international popularity (doubtful), maybe everyone wants to take advantage of our mild climate in Seattle (although this spirit-crushing heat wave may change that) or maybe it’s the terrible economy and escalating layoffs in the design and construction industry. Whatever the case, we’ve become well versed in the protocols of resumes and employment inquiries over the last 7 months. We’ve seen everything from well-composed beautiful presentations to dismal, mind numbing attempts that crash our email -and everything in between. So we thought we’d put our minds to the task and come up with a series of do’s and don’ts for resume composition. You know the dealio – this is just our take on resumes, and if you ask 10 architects about it, you’ll get 10 completely different (and sometimes contradictory) answers.
With that said, here goes; The BUILDblog guide to resume composition and employment inquiry:
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JULY 27TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
[Photo by BUILD LLC]
Special Projects Division (BUILD’s cabinet and furniture shop) just finished up a handsome project that involves some cool details.
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JULY 10TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
[Photos by Jinyoung Yoon and Christopher Kicherer]
There is a powerful synergy between design and cooking. It’s a wonderful thing to take the daily habits and necessities of life and make them beautiful. To elevate the routine utilities of survival into something extraordinary makes a day of hard-work more fullfilling. We find that the same discipline informing good design commonly applies to food and cooking. We take great pleasure in design and cooking -all the more so in the summer time when you can drag the dining room table out onto the deck and host dinner parties that last into the late summer evenings. There’s a few resources doing some truly inspirational work when it comes to blending design and cooking. Hopefully some of them are fresh to you; as always let us know of your favorites.
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JUNE 11TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
If one factor alone was responsible for us becoming architects, it was probably Legos. And as fascinating as the plastic bricks are, they’re not what captivate us these days. As professional architects now, looking back, it’s the Lego instructions that we find so brilliant. Needless to say, the Danes were very clever with their color-coded, three-dimensional, blocky instruction booklets. Because the graphic instructions were crafted in such a clear, understandable method – words and explanations weren’t needed. This allowed the instruction booklets to accompany the sets practically anywhere in the world. It allowed the instructions to guide both children and adults in assembling the sets.
When the circumstances are right, we like to bring the graphic language of Legos into our architectural drawings. We’re currently working on a project that is a good fit for just such a graphic language. The “Listening Circle” is a simple wood framed shelter for the Seattle Youth Garden Works here in Seattle. Because the project will be constructed by a group of unknown volunteers, a step by step instruction booklet is very advantageous. While architectural drawings typically don’t address means and methods, in this situation step by step instructions with a roster of the required parts and assemblies could be very helpful. So we brushed up on our Lego language skills and thought you might get a kick out of the instructions booklet. We’ll be following up with the construction process and finished product in a later post.
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JUNE 3RD, 2009
By BUILD LLC
We were recently asked to recommend a daybed for a project that is being completed. In doing a bit of research on our favorite daybeds we came across so many well designed options that we figured why not make a blog post out of it. We’ve concentrated on simple, handsome functional daybeds that will last a lifetime. Let us know what we missed out there.
CB-41 Modern Daybed by Craig Bassam and Scott Fellows. Purchase here.
76-3/8″L x 33″W x 11-3/4″H
Price not available
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MAY 12TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
Timeless (adj.): 1. Independent of time; eternal. 2. Unaffected by time; ageless.
We think timeless, in our case, conveys something that is simply enjoyed each time a person experiences the thing; something that is durable; something that takes the cares of the world away momentarily (causes one to transcend their concerns and worries if but for a moment).
Today’s post is a collection of timeless household items that we’ve discovered over the years. You’re probably familiar with most of them, but hopefully there are a few unknown gems in here for you. Although these items can be pricey, you’ll pass them down to your grandchildren – which is pretty cost effective.
Wishbone Chair designed by Hans J. Wegner
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APRIL 23RD, 2009
By BUILD LLC
As some of you may know from previous posts, we’re big fans of graffiti when it’s clever and executed with craft. Recently on a trip through South America we observed some evolutions in graffiti that were fresh (to us at least). Today’s post reviews five graffiti methods that got our attention.
Pixel Graffiti: The massive amount of tiled walls in Sao Paulo are put to use with this method of graffiti which obeys the rules of the grid. It’s like graffiti for the anal retentive.
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MARCH 19TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
A couple of months ago it became painfully apparent here in Seattle that; A. The architecture and construction industry is going to get hit hard by the recession and B. Design firms will have to strategize new methods to stay alive for the next 10 to 12 months. We quickly concluded that, in order to keep our heads above water, we would need to employ the following:
1. New and more diverse avenues in which to apply our design skills.
2. A wider audience of potential clients.
3. A higher ratio of finished products sold per items designed.
4. Alcohol.
Putting our cabinet shop into full throttle mode, we designed up the SIDEBOARD mobile bar. It was exciting to design, it can be sold and shipped anywhere in the U.S. to a wide variety of design conscience consumers, it’s designed once and produced as many times as need be, and it makes you look like you mean business when it comes to serving drinks. We schemed all this up over Manhattan’s of course. So without further ado…
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MARCH 17TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
While in Manhattan at the Guggenheim last week we stumbled on the work of New York artist William Anastasi. A particular piece of his titled Issue got our gears spinning about the nature of art, architecture and society.
The piece is created by following a simple set of instructions, stated adjacent to the art on the title plaque:
“Score: Draw two vertical lines 4-1/2 inches apart from floor to ceiling on a plaster wall. With chisel and hammer chip the surface away within the lines to a one-quarter inch depth. Pile the debris at the base of the removal in a mound as wide as the strip extending onto the floor at a right angle from the removal.”
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FEBRUARY 26TH, 2009
By BUILD LLC
It has taken us 17 months to finally finish our own office here at the Park Modern, but that gave us a little time to focus our industrious nature on the task. Through our good buddy Chris, we were able to obtain some unused perforated metal material that was going to be scrapped from a local project. Keeping this in mind, we employed the same tricks we use to keep our client’s budgets reasonable on our own space- finding reusable or discounted materials and finding a way to turn them into elegant compositions (in our humble opinion).
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