Architecture Never Tasted So Sweet

After 3 days of intermittent baking and decorating...it is complete! Well, it may be complete. I haven't completely decided to make it snowy or not. If I do add snow, it will just be a dusting of powdered sugar but not sure how to keep it in place. This house (which I think Rainbow Brite would love to live in) will be delivered Sunday at the East Tennessee Children's Hospital Fantasy of Trees event. This is my first attempt at a from scratch gingerbread house. I love watching the documentaries about gingerbread house competitions and think the people doing the best ones must be a little neurotic. I am not quite as neurotic and so my house isn't perfect. I do think I did a passable job for my first time. I really like that it was fun, creative and helps ETCH by being auctioned off. I hope it goes for a good price.

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It is that time of year again...

Every year that Ivan Allen has held it, I have participated in it...the annual East Tennessee Children's Hospital Pumpkin Decorating Contest. This year I have gone on a little different track than I normally do and have done one that might be considered creepy. I saw the idea last year for spider sacks as home decoration but interpreted with a pumpkin for this year's entry. The intent was for the pumpkin to remain very prominent in the final design. I think I did an ok hybrid. The purpose of all of this is that all the pumpkins decorated for the event are taken to Children's Hospital the next day and put on display for the kids areas. I have never gone to track them down in the hospital but maybe I will investigate this year. It is a great event that Ivan Allen puts together for architects and interior designers in the area. It allows us to be creative for a cause.

Job Sign #1

The first Perspective Architecture job signs are placed. Drive by Bearden Hill on Kingston Pike and hopefully you won't miss them.

Workin' on the website

Rumor has it that perspectivearchitecture.com is being worked on as I type. Yippee! Once it is up and running there will be a full press release...by me via twitter and facebook.

Shaping young minds?

This week I am co-teaching a class at the Knoxville Museum of Art as part of their Summer Art Academy program. The class is made up of 8 girls and 2 boys. It covers both architecture and interior design and I am working with another architect on the "architecture" section. We have 3 days to work with them for a couple of hours each day. We taught them about architecture and what architects do at the begining and then threw them right into a project after that...sort of like real life. We gave them a program of designing a house for the New Orleans area that had been a design competition and had them draw a floor plan and elevation of their designs. To give inspiration, my co-teacher (Richard Allen Foster) had cards made of different furniture pieces and told them to pick out one that they liked and try to incorporate the shape, style, colors and/or materials into their project.

It has been fun to try to explain scale and lingo like "plan view" and "elevations" to them. I have been impressed with how fast they have picked up on it and what they are able to accomplish. One kid brought in legos to build a model of his design. It did degrade to the building of cars by the time class was half way through today but he was back on track after snack.

We were a little mean and gave them homework the first night. They had to draw a room in their house to scale so that they could get a sense of how it would translate from real life to paper. These are some smart kids and most seem to enjoy the class for the architecture part as well as the interior design portion. I think we may have a few future architects sitting at these tables. Should I warn them now about what they are in for? ...nah.

I forgot to wax the mustache before the meeting!

So there I was in the conference room trying to convince a potential big company client on why they should invest in a long term relationship with my little architecture firm when the client says, "I am trying to figure out the mustache". Crap, I am so use to the mustache on my laptop to make me smile when my screensaver comes on that I don't think about it.

I explained that I have a screen saver that has old timey portraits that come on and the mustache matches up with the portraits. ...really...

I mentioned that I was quirky but I don't have that necessarily come across in my architecture...unless the client wants quirky, then I am all over it. If nothing else maybe it will set me apart from countless other firms...like over in the corner to play by myself.

What this blog is about

This blog is to track the start up of Perspective Architecture as well as other random bits and pieces of information along the way. I am sure there will be lessons to pass along, good and bad. There will also be useful information gathered from other sources (credited of course) and posted here concerning architecture and the construction industry.

This blog will officially start when Perspective Architecture officially starts. Hopefully it will be informative as well as entertaining. Only time will tell.