Design Thoughts
Geoff Anderson Nationally Certified as Associate Design-Build Professional
Schemata principal Geoff Anderson has successfully completed the Design-Build Institute of America’s comprehensive education, training, and certification testing program to achieve the designation as a nationally certified Associate Design-Build Professional.
DBIA Certification is the nation’s only measurable standard of an individual’s knowledge of the Design-Build Done Right principles, which are vital to successful project delivery.
I have a long and successful history of working on Design-Build projects. These range from multi million-dollar community recreation projects, to over 500 housing units in Alaska, to smaller scale projects. All of these were completed well before I even considered getting DBIA Certification, but were built using the key touchstone of Design-Build: collaboration. I suppose I was lucky to be a part of these great teams and successful projects even early in my career, and they continue to shape my approach to my work. Going through the certification workshop and materials, it has been fascinating to think back on these personal experiences and compare them to DBIA’s Best Practices.
The key to a Design-Build project is that the owner holds a single contract with the design and contractor team. The General Contractor, Architect, and Engineers are integrated as a single entity that relies on collaboration and trust for success. There are many benefits to this contracting method. Owners might choose it for the accelerated schedule and innovative design solutions, especially if they are flexible on the specific details and approach. As a best practice, it is recommended that the owner picks a team based on qualifications rather than price. This best value approach considers both quantitative (price) and qualitative (technical) aspects of a Design-Build team’s proposal.
Family Housing Replacement - Siku Basin | Fort Wainwright, AK - photo courtesy of Ken Graham Photography / Osborne Construction Co
As I reflect back on my own experiences, as well as my certification process, I have gathered a few guiding thoughts that I will take with me into future Design-Build projects:
Clearly Define the Performance Requirements. This is possibly the most challenging but important part of any Design-Build project. These lay out the expectations for the project and should be objective and measurable. I worked on one project where this could have been improved upon: A Progressive Design-Build, where two teams competed beyond the qualifications-based selection phase to prepare a schematic design that met the stated performance requirements. In the end, our team felt like we were able to creatively deliver the on the objectives and stay within budget, although we strayed from one wish list item -- to have a second floor. Although this was not explicitly identified as a Performance Requirement, it worked against us. The project was eventually built by the other team, but we felt justified by the fact that our team was truthful, effective, and adherent to the Performance Requirement.
Creativity and Innovation are Essential. These have been key to the overall success of each of my Design-Build projects. For the housing projects in Alaska, the owner (the Department of Defense) was very prescriptive about many of the project requirements. This prescriptiveness is counter to the creativity that is central to DBIA’s Best Practices. Regardless, our team was able to develop plans and details that allowed us to panelize nearly all the framing for the homes, including the stair elements. This resulted in construction being able to advance year-round in the shop, despite the climate-shortened window when crews were able to work on site. At the peak of production on site, crews were able to fully assemble and “dry-in” six homes per week.
Family Housing Replacement - Denali Village | Fort Wainwright, AK - photo courtesy of Osborne Construction Co
Designing to Price is the Key to Success. In Design-Build, the price is set early in the process, and the Design-Build team needs to design and hold to that price. This means having a team build on close collaboration and trust is essential. For a small community pool project in remote central Washington, the Design-Build teams were asked to tell the city what they could get for their budget. As the team which promised the most, we won the job. We delivered on our proposal by joining forces with a prefabricated pool manufacturer, minimizing the need for specialty trades to travel and work on the rural project site. We were also able to work directly with the manufacturer to ensure our design and technical details were correct through the shop drawings process.
Othello Community Pool | Othello, WA - photo courtesy of: Aquatics International
These lessons learned have been important in my development as an architect, and I look forward to future Design-Build opportunities to apply them along with the knowledge I have gained from my DBIA Best Practices education. I am now proud to be an officially certified Associate Design-Build Professional®.
Grace Kim Elevated to American Institute of Architects College of Fellows
Schemata Workshop Founder and Principal Grace Kim has been elevated to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows, in recognition of her national and international leadership in the profession.
AIA Fellows are recognized with the AIA’s highest membership honor for their exceptional and significant work and contributions to architecture and society. Only 3 percent of AIA members have this distinction.
From her work in the Cohousing movement, to her novel approaches to mentorship, to her tireless efforts both advocating for and designing equitable affordable housing, Grace has displayed a consistent dedication to inclusion through her over twenty five years of practice. Grace’s approach has international reach – inspiring and influencing practitioners, educators, and students alike. The following are excerpts from her application, outlining the three facets of Grace’s leadership.
Advocating for Change from Within the Profession
Grace has framed her professional approach to architecture with inclusion as the core principle. Grace has advocated for underrepresented voices within our profession – whether they be emerging professionals, women, or people of color. She has worked diligently to combat embedded inequities in the practice of architecture by creating an inclusive, mentorship-based model of practice.
For over two decades, Grace has been a vocal advocate for emerging professionals. Her wide-reaching work, from her internationally distributed book, The Survival Guide for Architectural Internship and Career Development, to her development of the innovative Laddership and Speed Mentoring models, has garnered her national recognition and the 2004 AIA Emerging Professionals Mentorship and 2008 Young Architects Awards. Her professional contributions in cohousing, participatory design, and social equity have resulted in Grace being a highly sought-after speaker for national and international conferences and symposia. Her TED Talk on cohousing has reached over 2.4 million viewers worldwide.
Building Bridges between Education and Practice
Creating a more inclusive and equitable architectural profession begins with access. Grace has dedicated herself to removing barriers to entry and providing a path to leadership for women and BIPOC students, beginning in the classroom. By engaging students and youth around the country and the world, Grace provides a model of female minority leadership that makes achievement more tangible.
Women and people of color continue to be underrepresented in architecture, particularly in leadership positions. In 2019, NCARB reported women and minorities respectively comprised 38% and 20% of those finishing core licensure requirements. Grace has experienced this inequity firsthand, and has worked as a critical agent of change. From speaking regularly at regional and national AIAS conferences, to jurying design studios, to providing lectures, tours, and workshops for the Seattle Architecture Foundation (SAF), Grace has built a pipeline for future generations of diverse architects. Grace has inspired and provided a pedagogical influence internationally with courses and studios on cohousing and user-centric design.
Amplifying Underrepresented Voices in the Community
Grace is invested in fostering inclusion in her community as an extension of her service-oriented practice. In Grace’s leadership and advocacy for community-based initiatives, from affordable housing, to anti-displacement efforts, to collective ownership models, she demonstrates an attentiveness to the needs of diverse people, providing them amplification and empowerment.
Over years of service on the Housing Development Consortium Board and as a Seattle Planning Commissioner, Grace has combatted racial disparities, restructured Board recruitment processes, and implemented an equity-based lens for developing planning and policy documents. In industry-wide planning and land-use policy discussions, Grace has been a constant advocate for climate justice and the rights of renters, low income families, and people experiencing homelessness or displacement. Grace has also contributed to the community significantly through her leadership in the global cohousing movement — a collaborative housing model that encourages user-participation through the design and development process.
For more information on the other newly-honored Seattle-based AIA Fellows, click here.
For a full list of the 2021 AIA College of Fellows recipients, click here.
Leadership Tomorrow - Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 4: Arts + Culture
Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.
LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.
Geoff’s Reflection on Challenge Day 4: Arts + Culture
photo of Public Works Program courtesy of Seattle Repertory Theatre
As a fan of many arts and cultural events and organizations around Seattle, I was looking forward to our Arts & Culture Challenge Day. On any normal year I make a habit of attending several plays at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Seattle Children’s Theater with my family, operas at McCaw Hall on date nights with my wife, museum shows with my daughter, and of course, and I love to take advantage of the wonderful food by patronizing restaurants around the city. However, in 2020 this topic was burdened with the additional considerations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has affected all these cultural institutions, and has disproportionately impacted BIPOC artists and organizations.
For the Challenge Day, we broke into three groups that each had the opportunity to join a conversation with one or two amazing leaders in the Seattle arts and culture community. These included Elishaba Johnson of Wa Na Wari, Tim Lennon of LANGSTON, Brian Carter of 4Culture with Leilani Lewis of the UW, and Angie Kamel of the Seattle Rep’s Public Works program with Becky Witmer of ACT.
I chose the latter because I have a great appreciation for the Rep, and I was curious about their Public Works Program. Angie brought this program to Seattle in the past few years and worked hard to not only explain the program to the Rep’s Board but get them to support it. At the program’s core, it seeks to build diverse relationships throughout the community. They hold workshops with community groups, resulting in a “Grand Play” production with as many as 100 people on stage. Because of the hard work and years of relationship-building, they were able to continue this tradition despite the pandemic, pivoting to a virtual community theater performance of their own musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This kind of community resilience is inspiring.
We also learned about some of the other amazing creative problem-solving that our local arts organizations have implemented in the past year. According to ArtsFund, 100% of arts organizations are currently offering some sort of digital programming. The Seattle Symphony is broadcasting performances with musicians positioned spread at a safe distance throughout the theater space, including areas normally reserved for the audience. Artists are banding together to create organizations like the Seattle Artists Relief Fund through LANGSTON, and community kitchens are cropping up across the city.
I particularly enjoyed reading about some of the amazing and diverse restaurateurs who are persevering through the pandemic. It happens that one of the first charitable contributions I made when the pandemic hit was to the Seattle Community Kitchen Collective to support not only the food service workers, but the provision of free meals in the community. My wife and I had been awaiting the opening of Melissa Miranda’s restaurant Musang, and were excited to hear they quickly and innovatively pivoted to this generous concept as soon as the pandemic hit (a stark contrast to the reaction of Tom Douglas). We learned that many other amazing chefs joined the effort, including Chef Kristi Brown of That Brown Girl Cooks and now Communion (who we were lucky enough to have cater our Schemata company holiday party last year!), and Tarik Abdullah who led a grassroots effort to build Feed the People Plaza. These chefs are not only good at their craft but are an inspiration for how to build community and bring people together through arts and culture.
Photo of Feed the People Plaza courtesy of Gabe Guarente / Eater Seattle.
If there is one thing that this pandemic has made me acutely aware of, it’s how much I miss community. Arts and culture organizations are unique endeavors that bring people together to share a collective experience. This is the foundation of building community. I am inspired by the level at which people have rallied to support the arts through this pandemic, but I also worry that it won’t be enough. I believe arts and culture play a role in the health of our community. I am also reminded how important it is to me personally. I write these reflections on Inauguration Day, wondering if a new administration may be willing to support a New Deal-type program that puts an emphasis on saving and restoring arts and cultural programs. What better way to bring unity? I also take it upon myself – what can we each do, professionally and personally, to better support the arts moving forward?
As I finish writing this, I am not only hungry to eat at one of the aforementioned restaurants, but am also feeling like I want to make a better effort at engaging in virtual opportunities to enjoy the arts. I was pleased that our family had kept a tradition of seeing the PNB’s production of the Nutcracker virtually, even dressing up to gather around the TV. It wasn’t quite the same, but I was able to appreciate the close-ups of the costumes in a way I hadn’t been able to from the 3rd balcony. This piqued my interest – maybe there are added benefits to the virtual format? I am looking forward to engaging in more opportunities in the future that not only support arts and culture and lift my spirits, but also build community across distance. - Geoff Anderson
Leadership Tomorrow - Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 3: Health + Wellbeing
Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.
LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.
Geoff’s Reflection to Challenge Day 3: Health + Wellbeing
With the heading of Health & Wellbeing, I was expecting to learn about the inequities of our healthcare system and the varying health outcomes along racial and socioeconomic lines. I was not expecting this week to focus instead on our criminal justice system. I have generally supported the elimination of the Seattle youth detention center, which has been in the media for the past few years, but it was impactful to learn more in-depth about the context surrounding the issue.
Money, power, and resources are all social determinants of our health. The World Health Organization has outlined two broad determinants of health: structural and political. These result in the unequal distribution of materials and resources, rendering those who don’t have access more vulnerable. The intermediary determinants are material, psychological, and biological circumstances. The everyday discrimination of black people, and the ongoing segregation of where we live affects our access to medical care, and manifests in poorer health outcomes for BIPOC. Studies show that even education levels cannot help reduce this discrepancy (on average, a white high school graduate will live longer than a black person with a college degree). To learn more, check out the King County Health Disparities Dashboard.
Photo of five-week Restorative Practice course courtesy of Choose 180.
In June 2020, King County made a declaration that racism is a public health crisis and adopted an "Anti-Racism Crisis Response Bill of Rights" which includes goals related to public health, behavioral health, infrastructure and environment, economic development, and the criminal justice system. We ended up spending a significant amount of time discussing the last topic on the list.
The “School to Prison Pipeline” and the impact of youth detention are concepts with which I’m familiar, but I didn’t fully understand the history and the racial biases which continue to play out. The increase of the number of police in schools (under the premise of school safety after incidents like the Columbine School shootings) has resulted in the use of those police as enforcers of discipline for student transgressions. As we all know from the outrage expressed this past summer, this rule enforcement is not distributed fairly amongst white and black students. While students are sent to the principles office at similar rates regardless of race, evidence shows that the enforcement methods used with black students are much more severe, with significantly more expulsions. According to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, black students are three times more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts for comparable offenses. This makes them highly susceptible to the downward spiral associated with loss of connectivity to the community and other support systems. It does nothing to restore or heal them.
I am convinced we need to invest more in alternatives to youth detention. We need to invest in the concepts of restorative justice. A great case study on this is the Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) program described in “Discipline with Dignity: Oakland Classrooms try Healing Instead of Punishment.”
TransformHarm.org outlines the following regarding the concept of Restorative Justice:
Three assumptions underlie Restorative Justice:
When people and relationships are harmed, needs are created
The needs created by harms lead to obligations
The obligations are to heal and “put right” the harms; this is a just response.
Three principles of Restorative Justice reflect these assumptions: A just response:
Acknowledges and repairs the harm caused by, and revealed by, wrongdoing (restoration);
Encourages appropriate responsibility for addressing needs and repairing the harm (accountability);
Involves those impacted, including the community, in the resolution (engagement).
On this Challenge Day we also got to meet with two very inspiring individuals to discuss these topics: Dr. Ben Danielson, Senior Medical Director of Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic; and Sean Goode, the Executive Director of Choose 180. Both individuals spoke passionately about the need for supporting BIPOC youth in our community.
Sean Good repeatedly spoke to how BIPOC youth are "A possibility to be developed rather than a problem to be dealt with." He talked about how a goal for his organization, which empowers youth and mentors them to have the skills necessary to avoid engagement with the criminal legal system, is to no longer exist.
Dr. Danielson inspired our efforts by asserting that “equity work is the intentional shifting of power - imprisonment is the ultimate taking of power.” He went on to explain how young people’s minds are in development and how the actions taken directly affect their long-term health and wellbeing. It was just a couple weeks after this meeting, that Dr. Danielson made headlines by stepping down from his position at the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic after more than 20 years, in a statement against the racism that had been accused of existing in the organization.
We should not define people by the worst thing that they have done or that has happened to them, but instead look for the possibilities and potential in people (particularly children), and foster their well-being. Not only will it yield better results for the individual and society as a whole, but it’s also likely a less costly solution. - Geoff Anderson
Stay tuned for the third installment of Geoff’s reflections, coming next week!