I can't believe I can say I only have 6 weeks of school left after Auburn returns from Spring Break. I've had an amazing college experience and wouldn't change anything about it. I learned so much about myself and life the past four  five years (no I didn't fail!, thank you interior design for that great extra year!) Although I pulled all-nighters and reprinted projects numerous times because I'm a stickler for detail and perfection, although I spent many nights freaking out and crying to my mom and sister about interior design, or venting to my friends about my rapidly approaching real-world and adult life and freaking out about getting an internship or job of my dreams, I can honestly say I picked the perfect major for myself. Stress aside, I feel more than prepared (thanks to Auburn's Interior Design Program and my wonderful professors) to give that firm who takes a chance on me more than they can ask for, an employee who will work her butt off just to prove to them she was worth it, and to prove to the men in the construction world I'm not a dumb blonde. So ending on that note. Below is just a snippet of a collaborative project Meredith Olsen, Laura Sabo, and myself, Jamie Krywicki have been working on since August and ended yesterday with a great Prezi (prezi.com) presentation.

1st Floor Departmental Diagram

2nd Floor Departmental Diagram

3rd Floor Departmental Diagram

Nurses' Station Pre- Perspective

Office Pre-Perspective

Exam Room Pre-Perspective

PLEASE VOTE!

PLEASE GO TO THIS LINK AND VOTE FOR NICK AND I TO WIN! 

VOTE EVERYDAY TILL FEB. 28TH ONCE EVERY 24 HOUR PERIOD ON EVERY CELL PHONE, COMPUTER, AND I PAD! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!

VOTE HERE!

Alright folks, it’s on to the final round. Here’s the deal…the couple with the most votes at the end of Round 2 will win a wedding package worth $10,000! So now it’s up to you. Read through their profiles and then scroll to the bottom to vote. Also ONE LUCKY VOTER will win a GIFT CARD TO SOUTHWEST AIRLINES FOR $250!

Details:

• Voting closes 11:59pm (EST) ON FEBRUARY 28, 2012. Winner will be announced March 1!
• You may only vote once per computer per 24 hour period. There is no limit to how many times or from how many places you can vote.
• Here’s a reminder of what the couples are trying to win.

You can win a FREE PLANE TICKET! There are two ways you can be eligible for the contest:

• Tweet “I voted for a couple to win a $10K wedding from @nathan_peel @fivedot @bluedahliaevent & @brideface! You should too: http://bit.ly/yhw1lW”
• Or shoot me an email at contest@nathanpeelphoto.com with the subject line “I Voted.”
• Only one entry person, so only one email or tweet is needed even if you vote multiple times.
• We’ll throw all the voters into a randomizer and pick one lucky winner to win a $250 Gift Card from Southwest Airlines.

Jamie and Nick

Location: Lowndes Grove Plantation, Charleston, SC

Style Board: http://pinterest.com/jamie_krywicki/nuptials-by-me/

“Our creative concept is that of timelessness. Set in an historic city, classic and trendy will meet amidst an array grays and salmon pink. Our wedding is truly our relationship on display, old fashioned and simple, and with the outdoor setting along with Motown music, the energy of this evening will be undeniably contagious.”

Tree of Hope at Safe Haven Park

Collaboration is huge in the real world and is huge in my healthcare studio. Our professor is treating us as if we were her employees to prepare us for what is to come upon graduation. I have to admit i LOVE it. Our first project was a collaborative effort of myself and 2 other group members to submit an entry to the IDEC international student competition. The premise of the competition was to research a need of The Lost Generation (children who's parents lives were taken away from the AIDS epidemic in South Africa) and find a need to address. My group found the children lacked a childhood. Therefore, we created the Tree of Hope at Safe Haven Park, a community gathering place where children can let loose, have fun, and interact with their peers. Below are our 3 project boards!

Stewardship: healthcare r&r

Simply for me the word stewardship means responsibility, nothing fancy or prophetic. It was engrained in me when I was in 8^th grade a week before I was about to graduate middle school and move onto a bigger and better thing known as high school (what was I thinking). I received the St. Pope Puis X Stewardship Award at my Jr. High’s ‘Award Ceremony’. I can remember I was dumb founded when my name was called to receive it. My thoughts: ‘what did I do to get this? I’m pretty sure it was nothing that I tried to accomplish; I’ve just been doing what I normally do all year’. Turns out I unintentionally took on the most responsibility in the 8^th grade class.

However, I don’t believe 8^th grade was the only point in my life where I had a perspective of the value of stewardship. My parents raised my three older siblings and I to be responsible for all our actions, to weigh the consequences and to look at how they would affect not only ourselves, but also those around us and those that would come after us. Having six people, two dogs and a fish under one roof creates three things: high utility bills, outrageous grocery bills and for a mother who LOVES to shop, a lot of clothes. But it also taught me a lot about natural resources. I might have grown up in ‘it always is cloudy in Pennsylvania’, but I couldn’t have asked for a better part to live in; beautiful trees, tons of animals and a gorgeous lake all in my backyard. So how does having high bills and living in the middle of the woods teach me anything about stewardship? Well, energy is expensive so turn off the lights and open the blinds, energy is expensive so turn off the air conditioning and open the windows, energy is expensive so turn off the heat and put on a coat.  Don’t look at hand-me-down clothes as used, look at them as vintage. Leftovers aren’t for the dog, they’re another meal that you don’t have to buy, don’t have to use energy to cook or water to clean up after…or as much as you did the first time around. That’s what I learned from my mom and dad at least.

As an interior designer in furthering and developing the idea of stewardship, I can take these little lessons from my childhood, blow them up into something much larger and incorporate them into all of my future designing. Preserving the worlds’ natural resources can be done with automatic light sensors or faucets. Positioning a building to conform to the landscape in a way natural water flow isn’t interrupted or is hit by the right sunlight at specific times of day can do wonders on lowering energy use. If a hospital is built in Arizona where it never rains, put solar panels to use as one of its energy sources or if it’s in Seattle where it always rains why not collect water on the roof for an h2o source. In healthcare facilities promoting and sustaining good health and curing illness are top ‘to-dos’. As a responsible designer it’s my job to specify materials that don’t contain harmful chemicals, are sustainable in a way that is beneficial not only to sick people, but also to our deteriorating environment. Chronic diseases such as obesity and asthma are becoming more common in industrialized nations because of chemicals, hormones and air quality. Studies have shown that people feel better when they’re in touch with nature, whether it be a vase of flowers on their desk or a breeze from outside, people who are sick aren’t any different than people who are healthy when it comes to nature. Why are so many healthcare facilities packing boxes with no holes? As responsible designers aren’t we suppose to listen to our client? The hospital committee might be the ones funding the project, but we have to remember we’re designing for the patient, so put as many windows in that box that health codes will allow! 

Workspace Design Magazine: Jan.2012

The Technology Behind Relationships

By Jamie Krywicki | January 1, 2012 at 1:25 am | One comment | jan 2012, Technology | Tags: future, workplace

Close your eyes and rewind back to when you were six years old and your imagination was working overtime. When you considered the future, perhaps you thought, “People will have jetpacks, cars will be able to fly, maybe even teleportation!”

Brilliant ideas. How easy life would be if they were true.

Now with some wisdom, we still ask ourselves what the future will be like. And for those of us in A&D, “What will the future workplace look like?” is an all-too-common question.

Some people may answer, “I don’t care, I better be retired by then.” Others may say, “The idea of a headquarters may become extinct, because people will be working from home to save money.” Or for those of us that keep up with new work environments you may say, “It’s already happened, it’s called Google.”

Maybe I’m still trapped at six, but my answer has only two words: The Jetson’s.

The Jetsons

An animated sitcom originally airing in the 60s and again in the 80s, The Jetsons was the image of the future. Robotic contraptions, holograms, whimsical inventions, and supersonic tubes depicted the year 2062.

It’s with visions planted by this program that I now imagine a future workplace as an amusement park for adults. The typical cubical will be for the history books, replaced with coffee shops that can transform into personal offices or meeting rooms simply by pressing a button on a iPhone or iPad.

Instantly the quaint round coffee tables and lounge chairs will transform into executive desks and task chairs. Coffee bars will flip over to reveal copy machines, computers, and various paper supplies. Making copies, running errands and grabbing coffee from Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts will be done by robots called interns.

Telephone conversations and meetings in-person won’t be necessary. Since teleconferencing and email have become so popular, the future will bring advanced videoconferencing and interactive boardrooms. Holograms will include all of our colleagues. Automatic doors that open from floor-to-ceiling will be the entrance to every space possible, if there are physical office buildings, that is.

A small-headquartered future.

The way trends are happening now with working from home, ruling out the extinction of headquarters isn’t impossible. The saying goes, history repeats itself, and when the first computer was invented, it was the size of an entire room and now it can fit in the palm of your hand.

Much like the reduction in the size of the computer, the concept of a company’s headquarters is bound to be minimized as well. Rather than the advancements in technology being directed to suit companies as a whole, I imagine they will be focused to suit each individual at their own respective homes.

Small Headquarters

Although the future of the workplace is exciting to imagine, not every aspect of the future is foreseen as positive. While email, videoconferencing and working from home may be convenient and less expensive, there is an aspect of the social workplace that is becoming extinct. This aspect is one we long for since we were children.

Personal interaction, much like making friends on the playground when you were younger, parallels discovering potential employees in face-to-face interviews rather than solely on paper. This individual’s potential is displayed through walking the job site, collaborating with colleagues and solving problems. The interview is crucial. How you present yourself as in individual, your background, upbringing, the weakness you’ve overcome and the strengths you’ve developed aren’t portrayed in an 8.5” x 11” space.

Much like on your resume, the social skills, ethics and values parents have instilled in their children are almost invisible in an email today. Anyone can be trained to use correct grammar, punctuation, and flattery.

Open Office

While we dream up the workplace of the future, why don’t we dream up how to keep personal experience for the employee as well? Dream up how to form new, and strengthen existing networks and how to form loyal relationships with clients. Imagine how the futuristic workplace will be with both the latest and greatest technology and the best people out there.

Technology advances each and every day. Personal interactions are dwindling by the minute.

The future workplace we all dream of should not exist of holograms or hovercrafts, but rather the perfect balance between real technology and real relationships.

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vacation

I'm almost a week into my winter break from Auburn, but I'm still in Auburn and not really taking a break. I have to admit there isn't a part of me that can do absolutely nothing. I have to be on the go, doing something with my time. I'm trying to get in some extra hours at work this week for Christmas shopping money, research firms in Atlanta and tweak my portfolio and resume for my upcoming job search in January (which makes me scared/anxious/excited/nervous all at the same time).
I'm dedicating most of my break to reading, an activity I've recently taking up. I wasn't ever much of a reader, probably because any free time I've had in the past few years I've spent with my family and friends never with the desire to pick up a book, but I really do love it!
In a way it has become a competition (like most things in my life) with my fiancé to see who can read more books. Reading is one of those things to keep your mind working even if it's reading a fiction series about vampires written for 13 year olds...guilty.  I'm currently reading, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It really makes you think and has you on the edge of your seat the entire time ( I recommend it to everyone). The rest of my break involves a lot of traveling in airplanes and cars so I plan to add to my tally on the chalkboard wall.

Christmas: my favorite time of year

Like most, Christmas has been my favorite time of the year since I was a little girl. Not because of the presents or the long break from school, but because of tradition, family and those hilarious stories told every year around the dinner table that never getting old. Christmas to me marks the end of a year that may have had both good and bad times, adventures and unforgettable memories. Christmas marks the end of one chapter in the book of life and the start of a new one. 

For me 2011 had its' ups and downs, but for me the ups are what stay with me. 2011 began with a New 

Year's in Nashville, TN and a January in Auburn preparing for a Spring Semester aboard in Italy. 7 countries later, a million pictures, thousands of frequent flyer miles, an abroad check-list complete, and 19 new friends made up my Spring 2011. The summer was spent making up the classes and a studio I missed during my vacation study abroad semester, visiting family and making many many trips to Atlanta. But the most important thing to happen to both my family and me this summer was the birth of the 3rd grandchild/niece. With this Fall I've stumbled upon many opportunities to build my resume which will hopefully aid with future job opportunities. Auburn football weekends spent with my family and an engagement ring and proposal. As 2011 comes to a close I can say there hasn't been a dull moment. As my Mom says, "there's always something." Whether that something is good or bad it's done. I know 2012 will bring more memories, laughter and tears. A new addition to my family (another puppy Fritz, yes we already picked a name out and we don't get him till February) and a move to Atlanta in May (job or no job). 

Christmas pictures are never easy.