The Dividends of Giving Back to our Community

Schemata Workshop was selected as a finalist for the King County Small Business Awards.  We would like to offer their deep felt thanks to our clients who have demonstrated their confidence in us by consistently returning to us for architectural services on successive projects. Whether it’s our public and non-profit clients who serve the low and moderate income families and seniors of our region, or our private clients who ask us to help to reconfigure their homes or their offices, we appreciate their confidence in our work and the shared mission of bettering our communities that we can help them achieve.

Grace and Mike also would like to thank the staff of Schemata Workshop.  This group of dedicated individuals has shared values of social equity, good design, and community engagement.  We are proud to work alongside each and everyone at Schemata Workshop.  It is due to their hard work and amazing talent that we can produce the high quality work our clients have come to expect.

We were a finalist in this inaugural awards program because we believe in giving back to our community.  Not only have we been actively engaged in our immediate Capitol Hill community, Grace Kim has developed unique mentorship models for the architectural profession that are replicated nationally.   Schemata Workshop was the first Seattle architectural firm to pledge architectural services through the 1% solution (a national program to direct pro-bono architectural services to non-profits and underserved communities).    And Schemata Workshop is deeply entrenched in the Capitol Hill community – as residents, business and property owners, neighborhood advocates, and community activists.

Our nominator for this award (King County LEAP Project) first contacted Schemata Workshop last year with a request to provide a job training opportunity for a high school student in the juvenile corrections system.  We were happy to offer a young man an opportunity to work in a professional office environment and share with him the expectations and responsibilities of such a position.  We are honored to be recognized as a finalist in this awards program and dedicate this honor to the memory of the young man who made it possible - Dean Shumway.

Schemata Workshop is winner of AARP Livable Communities Award

[caption id="attachment_938" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Daybreak Cohousing"][/caption] Last Friday, Schemata Workshop was recognized by AARP and the National Association of Home Builders for thedesign of Daybreak Cohousing.  We received the Livable Communities Award in the Architect category and we are thrilled to receive this honor.

[caption id="attachment_941" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Daybreak Cohousing Private Home"][/caption]

Daybreak is an intergenerational cohousing development of 30 homes in Portland, OR.  Construction was completed in late in 2009.  The 1, 2, and 3-bedroom homes are fully independent, but they also share 7,000sf of common area (called the Common House) that includes a commercial kitchen, large dining room, childrens play room, library, laundry facilities, workshop, indoor bike parking for 90 bikes, 2 guest rooms, yoga studio, and craft room.  From the window of each kitchen residents have direct sight lines to this Common House.  All the homes are connected to one another via an exterior walkway that allows the life of the community to be seen and experienced daily.  The walkway also serves as sun shading for the south facing windows.

[caption id="attachment_939" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Daybreak Cohousing"][/caption]

A description of the project as well as photos and a video can be found at http://www.aarp.org/home-garden/livable-communities/info-12-2010/lca_portland_1.html

It is notable that 2 of the 5 awards were granted to cohousing projects.  I wonder if this is a tipping point for cohousing - will it truly inform a new paradigm for the American Dream?  One that is not defined by the single family house with 2-car garage and white picket fence, but instead a dream that is depicting seniors and kids working in community gardens, or unrelated adults preparing a community meal, or helping one another with errands in a physical setting that reinforces community interactions and shared resources...all the while enabling residents to maintain the privacy of their individual homes.  Now that's an American Dream that I could aspire to!  (And I know there are still a few homes available for sale if it appeals to you as well!)

Thanks to our design team (noted in previous blog post about Daybreak, but bears repeating)!  Swenson Say Faget Structural Engineers, Lando Associates Landscape Architects, MGH Civil Engineers, Urbsworks, Maria Cahill, Melissa Medeiros, and Liz Fekete!  And to our most excellent General Contractor - Gabe Genauer of B&G Builders.

related articles:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/boomerconsumer/archives/235746.asp?from=blog_last3

http://www.lakestevensjournal.com/county-state/article.exm/2011-01-19_cohousing__best_of_both_worlds_for_wa_boomers_

http://seniorhousingnews.com/2011/01/17/aarp-and-nahb-announce-2010-livable-communities-awards-winners/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SeniorHousingDaily+%28Senior+Housing+News%29#

http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/17945-1

http://www.kugn.com/newsstory.php?id=1617&type=localnews

(We know that an interview was aired on a number of Oregon and Washington radio stations, but if you find more links for news articles, please let us know!)

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here's a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2010. That's about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 54 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 244 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 792mb. That's about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 3rd with 75 views. The most popular post that day was National Parking Day Capitol Hill.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were schemataworkshop.com, twitter.com, capitolhillseattle.com, facebook.com, and linkedin.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for melrose market, montreal library, bakhita gardens, golconde pondicherry, and montreal waterfront.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

National Parking Day Capitol HillSeptember 2010

2

Golconde Dormitory in Pondicherry, IndiaSeptember 2010

1 comment

3

Montreal's Grand BibliothequeAugust 2010

1 comment

4

Volunteer Park CafeSeptember 2010

7 comments

5

Capitol Hill's first TOD project - open 6 years in advance of Broadway StationJuly 2010

2 comments

Networking - Womens Business Exchange

WBE Featured Member - Grace Kim

Almost 2 years ago, I attended a networking breakfast.  I didn't think it would be for me, but to humor a professional contact I'd made at a party, I went.  And I was blown away by the speaker.   And I've been back ever since.   Past speakers have been Jensine Larsen of World Pulse, Jennifer Jefferies - author of 7 Steps to Sanity, Jan Levy of Leadership Tomorrow, and Sally Jewell - CEO of REI.

Women's Business Exchange is a great organization that supports women in business.  True to their website:

"Life is not just about work, or running a business. You also have to find a way to balance spending time with your family and making time for yourself.

That’s why WBE is much more than just a business networking organization—though plenty of that goes on here too. It’s about making connections, creating a sense of community, supporting each other, and learning to be the best you can be."

I am proud to be their featured Member of the Month.  Check it out!  http://wbex.org/www.wbex.org/wbex/featured .  And if you want to come to a breakfast (1st Thursday of each month), I'll see you there!

Thanks to all our friends!

[caption id="attachment_783" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Holiday Party at Schemata World Headquarters"][/caption] Last Friday, Schemata Workshop celebrated our 6th anniversary.  Thanks to all the friends, clients, consultants that joined us.  We appreciate your support and confidence. 

In 2010, we won some competitive public contracts with the Renton Housing Authority and the City of Lacey.  And we added Salvation Army to our list of clients with whom we have a shared mission.  We hope the resulting Community Buildings we are producing for these clients will have a lasting impact on the residents and seniors who will utilize them. 

We also appreciate the work we've completed this year for our long standing clients such as the Multi-Service Center, Shelter Resources, King County Housing Authority, ET Environmental, and Waste Management, Sound Transit, the Capitol Hill Chamber, as well as the myriad of single family homeowners we've completed projects with this year.  And of course the team of fantastic collaborators - PAO Structural, SvR Design Company, BCE Engineers, Greenbusch Group, Cierra Electrical, Harriot SmithValentine Engineers, ORB Architects, Frank Company, B2 Structural Engineers, and Wool-Zee Company.

2011 looks to be a very exciting year ahead!