The American Institute of Architects - Architect Barbie Makes Her Debut

Check out this recent edition of the AIA newsletter, which I have excerpted here:

Mattel is spotlighting architecture as its ‘’Career of the Year’’ for Barbie and hopes to educate and encourage girls to consider the field when thinking about what their jobs could be when they become adults.


With the launch of Architect Barbie by the AIA and Mattel comes a chance for architects to design a Dream House that meets her guidelines, including room for an office, open living and dining areas, and plenty of room for her five pets, including her giraffe.


The competition began on May 16. The AIA and Mattel will announce five finalists on July 12 and the public will be able to vote for their favorites between July 12 and August 1. The winner will be announced by the AIA on August 2.

‘’For more than a century, women have chosen to become architects to express and give form to new ways of living. Yet some still consider architecture an unusual profession for a woman. Architect Barbie salutes the many generations of women architects and encourages young girls to imagine a better world they can design and build,'' said Despina Stratigakos, Assoc. AIA and Professor of Architectural History at the University at Buffalo.


Mattel held a convention for girls to explore the ideas.  Here is a window into that event:
‘’One of my favorite floor plans, created by a seven-year-old girl, included a room for monsters; by acknowledging their presence and giving them their own space, the rest of the house would remain monster-free - a design solution to an eternal childhood problem that would have put Freud out of business,’’ said Stratigakos.


To read the whole article and view the convention, click here:
http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB090142

To view the fabulous designs, and vote, click here!!

http://info.aia.org/aia/architect-barbie.cfm

And now I have to reveal something....My profile on my website states that I have been an interior designer since the age of twelve, when I drew my first architectural plan for a doll house.  Yep, it was a Barbie house!   My parents had just completed a design/build home project with a local architect in Louisiana, and I had seen the plans and watched the construction.  That was my first exposure to architecture.  When I enrolled at Northwestern University I entered their Interior Architecture and Design program.

Here is a photo of the house that my parents built, and we lived in so happily for many years:

I've heard is said that "you can't go back".  But I did....this past June I visited my family in Louisana, and when I drove past the house it was FOR SALE.  So I got out of the car and took a walk around.  All the memories were still there, and have filled me with a deep peace.

WEEK 1 - Demolition and Building Walls

What a mess!!  This week the contractor took out all the old cabinets and the wall between the kitchen and dining room. Time to start over!  They also assembled all the Ikea cabinets.  Ikea is well built, but you have to assemble them yourselves.  If you don't have experience, then be sure to get a contractor to do that.  The price for an Ikea kitchen is very reasonable, but you have to allow for assembly in your budget.

Here's the wall where the frig goes...note the new dedicated elec box for the frig on the left (no more hanging cord!)....

....the new half wall between the kitchen and dining room.

....the frames for the dining room cabinets in front of the wall.  These cabinets will be a bank of drawers in a beautiful brown-black finish on horizontal oak.   They relate well to the new bathroom cabinet just around the corner.  In the back of this photo you can see the new black frig peaking out from under a canvas drop-cloth.

From inside the kitchen - the view out to the living/dining area.

Inside the kitchen....the center cabinet is for the oven, the 2 side cabinets will be doors and drawers in high gloss RED....Stay tuned for the progress....hopefully we will make new strides this week, and have more to show next week!

RED KITCHENS

 

I ADORE red kitchens!  They have so much life and an expectation of something really COOL just about to happen.  (BTW, it's possible to have a red kitchen and still have it be cool.  Red does not always have to be warm.  However, a red kitchen is never COLD.  How's that for contradictory color theory?  Designers are allowed to do that!)  

My first personal remodel was updating a 1960s modern house to be current for the 80s.  We tore out the old kitchen and put in a modern white German kitchen (by Alno).  The walls were - you guessed it! - RED.  I cut my teeth on that project:  I had to layout the design in centimeters!  And my husband and I did all the installation ourselves. But that's a blot post for another day....Moving on with Doug's kitchen:

I had seen this red kitchen from Ikea on line and loved it, and I had read in shelter magazines about architects that were using Ikea for their own NYC apartment remodels.  If architects were using it, the quality would probably be OK.  And the price was right:  for an apartment, we didn't want to spend all our budget on Italian cabinets...there had to be some money left for art, since that is Doug's passion.

Doug and I visited the Ikea showroom in Palo Alto to check out the quality, and decided to go with it.  We started this project in 2007, long before I got my new Interior Design software, so I used Ikea's software to lay out the floor plan, import the cabinets and do the elevations.

The design developed as we went along, as design so often does!  The original design was for the microwave to be hidden behind doors, but Doug wanted to consider ease of access, so I laid out this elevation (above), showing the new black frig and dishwasher, with the existing microwave installed in an open cabinet. Neither of us liked this, so we went back to the original, with the microwave behind the doors.

This sketch is hand drawn onto the Ikea wall elevation of the back wall of the kitchen.  It shows the view from the Dining Room, with the new hood vent, the Dining Room drawers from Ikea, granite mosaic backsplash, and soapstone counters.  Doug loves soapstone - he had it in his Santa Barbara house and is hooked on soapstone!

This elevation is a study I did for Doug about hanging his new Wusthof knives on a magnetic knife rail on the granite mosaic backsplash.  I imported the Ikea elevation into my new software and imported the picture of the Wusthof knives from the internet, and correctly scaled it to see if it would fit properly.  We're going with it!   Stay tuned for tomorrow's post: Week 1- Demolition and Wall Construction....

SAN FRANCISCO KITCHEN REMODEL - BEFORE Pictures

REMEMBER THIS VIEW?
We are finally nearing completion of this very fun apartment remodel in San Francisco.  To get a little background on the project and to see the first 2 posts on the bathroom remodel, go to the label column on the lower right and click on "Bachelor". 

When I first arrived in San Francisco to help my client with this project (2007!  ...There have been some delays, but those of you who know Doug know that it's not his fault!), this was what I saw:

A VERY small closed-off kitchen.  With the 10-story view to my back, this boxy cave to the front definitely didn't live up to its potential.

Inside the cave, the suspended microwave with exposed electrical connections for the microwave and frig made this apartment look like it was located in a different part of the city than Pacific Heights!  Also, all the finish materials were completely utilitarian - like a kitchen galley in an office building.

So we began to develop a design concept that would open up this space and add some luxurious finishes.  You can see in the photo above that we experimented with red for the kitchen color:  there is a red napkin taped to the frig, with a piece of aluminum foil, to give us an idea of the balance of red and stainless.  There is a paint color fan deck on the table opened to red colors.  (Click on any of the photos to enlarge.) 

Guess what!!!  We decided on RED.  Check out the next post to see how the design progressed, and to see the pictures from WEEK 1 of demolition.