Interior Design « Rogue HAA

Category: Interior Design

DINING BY DESIGN

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Last weekend, the greater Detroit design and culinary communities coalesced in a three day event to benefit the Michigan AIDS Coalition. The Dining by Design tour, which has been visiting six cities a year for the past 13 years, made its debut in Detroit at the Benson and Edith Ford Conference Center at the College for Creative Studies in the recently renovated Argonaut building.

Organized by Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA), the event offers an opportunity for local designers to turn a 150-200 square foot dining area into a work of art. Each installation becomes a unique interpretation of the dining experience limited only by the design team’s creativity. Works ran the gamut from luxurious to theatrical to rustic. One could find a tranquil garden set adjacent to a vibrant typographic environment. One installation was built entirely from cardboard.

The event culminated Saturday night in a dinner for the designers, sponsors, and donors to enjoy a meal, completing the artistic visions. The other cities in this year’s line-up include: Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Columbus, Atlanta and Kansas City, where the event began.

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2010 NAIAS Booth Designs

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

NAIAS. This past week, Detroit hosted the 2010 North American International Auto Show. While automobiles were obviously the main attraction, the individual booths and exhibitions also provided design appeal. While certain companies focused on style and beauty by incorporating fashion models into their displays, others used architectural elements to define space and evoke a sense of innovation and technology. More importantly, each display was very specifically creative, resulting in a physical manifestation of each car company’s identity. (more…)

Tags: Booth, Cars, Design, Detroit Urban Strategy, NAIAS
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PRO BONO : THE HEIDELBERG PROJECT

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

PRO BONO PUBLICO : For the public good or well being, and more commonly understood in the world of professional services as ‘free’.

DEFINING PRO BONO. We all understand disparities in wealth and access to professional services. To some, these disparities compel a moral imperative to provide professional services to under-served communities. Many architects regularly perform pro bono services for a variety of ends. While certain firms focus on needs of the international community, such as Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and his disaster relief housing for Japan, Turkey, and India, others focus on issues specific to the United States. Auburn University’s Rural Studio has been designing and building housing and civic buildings in rural Alabama since 1993, while Yale University has an even longer tradition of volunteering their design/build services to their local community. While globalization has increased the reach and scope of the architect, it has also brought to the forefront the major issues that plague our societies. A great need exists globally and locally, and architects are more capable than ever to affect change.

FOR-PROFIT ENGAGEMENT. Even as a number of non-profit firms work diligently across the country, almost exclusively for other non-profit organizations, the for-profit environment has yet to wholly embrace the social and moral side of architecture. Public Architecture, an organization founded in 2002, has initiated a 1% commitment for all for-profit architecture firms. They strive to commit the resources available within the field of architecture to act as advocates for social justice, thereby improving communities locally and globally. “The 1% program of Public Architecture connects nonprofit organizations in need of design assistance with architecture and design firms willing to donate their time on a pro bono basis.” Public Architecture speculates, “If every architecture professional in the U.S. committed 1% of their time to pro bono service, it would add up to 5,000,000 hours annually – the equivalent of a 2,500-person firm, working full-time for the public good.” (more…)

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LANSING RIVERFRONT

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

QUESTIONS. We began with questions that were simple, physical, and topographic. How do we get down to the River? Can we redefine the City’s relationship with its River? Could water be here, between our toes, as well as headed toward our taps? Can we create joy and utility in the same place?

PROJECT. The project’s landscape, where the Grand River meets downtown Lansing, has been most valued in the City’s history by reserving it for industrial uses. The River has been held away by walls, taken in, distributed, harnessed for power, and measured when necessary to keep us dry.

In a shift of collective thinking mirroring a global trend, Lansing has reevaluated its River-City interface, now reserving it for immediate and intimate public use. As part of that reassessment of values, the City has charged HAA’s team with the task of creating a new public riverfront along both sides of the Grand River between the Shiawassee Street Bridge and Ottawa Street. To the west, the project meets the Accident Fund’s new corporate headquarters. To the east, it interacts with the relocation of Lansing’s City Market. On both sides, it connects to Lansing’s River Trail. (more…)

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DETROIT CHILDREN’S LIBRARY : DESIGN FOR CHILDREN

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Detroit Children's Library Wall Sections

Questions. How should one design for children? Should an architect alter their design approach for projects with a 12 year old (and under) clientele? These simple questions marked the beginning of HAA’s design process for the renovation and expansion of the Detroit Public Library Children’s Library.

Position. After working through the project, HAA answered these questions with a modern design solution that empowers the intelligence of its primary users, the children. The proposed space allows for introspective investigations; each child initiates vastly different experiences in various parts of the library. Conversely, the proposed Detroit Children’s Library is also a social space, an armature for discovery that does not dictate specific responses, but provides opportunities for a wide range of collaboration and interaction. In effect, the proposed environment encourages the journey, where learning and social developments are associated with a thoughtful, compelling design.

Project. The Detroit Public Library (DPL) Main Branch is located along Woodward Avenue just north of Warren and centered in the cultural core of the city. The building was designed by the renowned Beaux-Arts architect, Cass Gilbert, and completed in 1921. Two subsequent wings were added in 1963. Housed within the first floor of the DPL north wing, the existing 3500 SF Children’s Library is outdated, outgrown, and happily over-utilized. The renovated area increases to occupy approximately 15,000 SF, providing the flexible space necessary for the expanding programs of the DPL. Working with the client, two innovative concepts emerged for the proposed Detroit Children’s Library. (more…)

Tags: Add new tag, Detroit Urban Strategies
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Downtown Detroit Storefront Design Competition – Part 1

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

CONTEXT. Through great effort, Detroit’s sports venues and related organizations have attracted several highly desirable sports championship events. Detroit recently hosted both the 2006 Superbowl XL and the 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four Championship. These types of events create tremendous opportunities for their host cities to generate revenue and gain positive publicity. Hotels, restaurants, and retail stores all benefit greatly from the influx of spending, and while revenue estimates vary widely, the simple fact is that for cities such as Detroit, these are exceptional opportunities. Publicity is another asset to event hosting. According to one estimate, during the Final Four, Ford received as much as $22.5 million in publicity by having naming rights to the venue that hosted both events. Additionally, on a national scale, positive Detroit publicity is invaluable.

During both events, Detroit created a staged idealization of its urban experience; temporary bars opened in abandoned storefronts and the city lights blazed for one weekend. The riverfront and streetscapes were further animated by city-sponsored entertainment, including free concerts. The spectacle strategy is applied in many other host cities, in part, to provide comfortable urban environments for non-urban visitors. Alive with people, the city appeared occupied and marketable. Detroit excels at hosting such affairs, as evidenced by the success of these events, as well as the The Detroit International Auto Show, The Red Bull Air Race and The Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix.

But every other day of the year, Detroit struggles. There is great need for viable, creative solutions to the many issues that face the city. While greater investment, public safety, and schools are obvious long term objectives, as a starting point, street activity and beautification are critical components of a day to day urban vitality.

Accordingly, in preparation for the Final Four, the Downtown Detroit Partnership initiated a storefront design competition. Designers were charged with the creation of temporary installations in designated abandoned or unoccupied storefronts in downtown Detroit. The competition’s goals are generally understood as providing engagement, activating the street, and attempting to beautify abandoned buildings. (more…)

Tags: Detroit Urban Strategies
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CRISS ANGEL PROJECT PUBLISHED IN CONTRACT

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

PROJECT. The Criss Angel BeLIEve project has been published in the March edition of CONTRACT magazine. The project is a re-design of the entry sequence into the theatre at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in conjunction with the debut of the newest permanent Cirque du Soleil show, Criss Angel BeLIEve. Its opening in September 2008 provided a sneak-peak into the major renovations that will occur at The Luxor through 2009. The 2.1M project began in October 2007 and opened for the public in October 2008. Project scope includes a Box Office & Retail space of 6000 square feet and Bar/Lounge of 14,500 square feet.

CONCEPT. By reflecting the enigmatic characters of Criss Angel and Cirque du Soleil, the architect’s call to action was to redesign the Box Office, Entrance, Retail Space and Theatre Bar/Lounge for the new dramatic experience. This scope allowed a concept which considers the emotional mind-set of the audience as it approaches, spatially and temporally, the theatrical event. The narrative of BeLIEve parallels Lewis Carroll’s classic literary work, “Through the Looking Glass,” as both pieces follow a protagonist’s journey into a whimsically absurd alternate reality. In each piece, access to this other world is gained only through a very specific, yet different, threshold; one tangible (the looking glass), one experiential (an accident induced dream). Thresholds between levels of certainty, as literary premise inspired the architect to consider a similar perception when designing the tangible space of (sub)conscious journey. The architectural realization of this journey provides a sequence of spatial thresholds (stages) through which BeLIEvers are slowly submerged. Passing through each stage means passing into progressive levels of engagement with the artist’s warped perception, the ultimate destination. (more…)

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