The business of building and supplying swimming pools is an interesting one for a designer. Some people are happy picking out a fiberglass mold from a magazine or website and then surrounding it with landscaping to create their backyard oasis. Other people can get a custom pool built by on-site. Some of these custom pool builders provide high-design pools built specifically for that location while other builders are content to rebuild the same “better than average” pools repeatedly. Serenity Pools in Baton Rouge, falls somewhere between those two operations. On occasion they would contract me to design custom pools for their more difficult to sell clients. Swimming pools do not typically require a permit so owners will pursue all sorts of interesting designs. Couple that freedom with southern Louisiana’s climate and a growing trend of houses with outdoor kitchens and rooms and my role as a home designer moves into the backyard.

With the growth of web-based shopping and digital media, Bluefly finds itself at the cutting edge of browser based shopping. No longer will people find themselves packing malls and shopping centers, rummaging through countless piles of inventory. Digging through the mad house of marked down clothing has been made simple with the help of Bluefly’s internet database of fine clothing. The only drawback to Bluefly’s operation is the problem of fitting the clothing to individual levels of comfort – both in physique and persona. With this project, I designed Fitting Centers where potential Bluefly customers can test-fit clothing to their unique body and personality. After doing so, they can order the clothes in the Fitting Center, or back at home online. The customer will then receive their garments directly at their doorstep. If the clothes don’t work out, just return them to your local Fitting Center for a refund or exchange.

Occasionally I get the opportunity to do graphics. When that chance presents itself I use techniques similar to my architectural design process. While the disciplines of design are different, the principles are universal. The major difference between the logo and a building is that a logo is a singular composition, supporting itself without context. It has a graphic language instead of a materials language. It has form, both relative to the overarching whole and the disparate components. And perhaps most critical to a successful design composition, the logo can carry a communicative intent. Highland Custom Homes wanted there logo to embody the selling points of there company. The logo should be solid, able to stand on its own. The logo should be easy to relate to, which I translated as being easy to understand. The design should not be too complicated, but should not boring either. And finally, the logo should be adaptable.

A designer’s work surface can be the most limiting component when working. More surface allows more things to be accessible at one time. We see this in productivity studies that result in employees being issued 17” monitors instead of 15” monitors, dual monitors, larger cubicles, and so on. We see this in the workplace when upper management gets a huge office with a ‘C’ shaped multi-desk arrangement, while the journeyman employee gets a 4’x6’ cubicle. A busy desk makes for a messy employee or an overloaded student. At school in DC, I created a non-invasive, ergonomic addition for my desk that would increase my productivity.

To kickoff the spring semester of fourth year design school, an Arbor Day competition was held where students were asked to design something to enhance Frady Park, a small green space in a nearby neighborhood. Students could design whatever they wanted so long as it cost less than a thousand hundred dollars to make and that it drew on the traditions of Arbor Day for its inspiration.

Design is almost always a process of problem solving. Architects, planners, product designers, and artists start with some subject matter and they work to produce a composition that engages the viewer with the subject. A good design is one that evokes a feeling from the user of certainty, as if its solution is meant to be, and that any alternative design would be less effective than the design they are seeing. When my school found itself the recipient of a few hundred pounds of donated concrete, of course we had a concrete design competition. My roommate and I teamed up to join in the fun.

The classic viewing space of a museum is calm, bounded by walls and ceilings, and well lit. The space is static. The room is kept simple so as not to take away from the viewing of the art collection being displayed. The 2x4 Museum project called for students to design an anti-museum. Where typically calm, this museum would be dramatic. The arts’ presentation would delay its exposure as opposed to being overt. The building (if we can call sticks and cardboard a building) itself should embody the art - long, engaging, dynamic, etc.

Second year studio introduces abstract, theoretical organizational concepts; space, form, function, and the resolution of materials and structural systems. How do we perceive space? What are the relationships between space and form? Is space something to be designed, and if so, what are the factors dictating the design of space? These are the questions second year students learn to answer. In the staircase project students were asked to design a staircase that resists its own terminus.

An aspiring architect’s ability to interpret, discuss and understand architectural space begins in first year studio. What is Architecture? What is beyond the scope of Architecture? Early studio projects force students to question the common notion that architecture is the backstage and that what's backstage is architecture. This project looks at the architecture of the urban environment through a map of motion and sensorial experiences, begging the question “where do fact and fiction merge?”

The root function of a practicing architect centers on their ability to follow rules, like building codes and client requirements. This first semester project, dubbed the nest, had to hold a half pound object on a 4"x4" platform 48" above the ground a minimum of 4" away from any surface such as a wall, stairwell, tree, etc. The nest could not be permanently affixed to any surface, could only touch the floor at one point but could touch any other amount of surfaces as necessary. Students were asked to take on these rules as a source of inspiration rather than an oppressive constraint in the design of the nest.