Chris Smith

My name is James Cowan and I work at ThenDesign Architecture as a project designer. What excites me about the projects at TDA is the community involvement and impact that the project has at the end. And I mean, throughout the course of the project, we always try to involve community, and understanding the vision that the community has for the school building. So that’s a really exciting part to me. It’s good to be involved in those visioning sessions and I think TDA does a great job with that. I think it’s just important to bring different experiences to the table. Someone else might not think about the space like you think about the space. So whether they’re, you know, they’re older or younger or security might be something that’s very important to them while connecting with nature may be very important to someone else.

You want to make sure you’re understanding the space and what should happen there from all ranges. We bring those different, different minds to the table, you’re able to develop something as more inclusive. So one of my favorite aspects of the design process is making sure that the exterior responds to its surrounding. Just making sure that it’s not an acontextual building that you can’t just take this building and put it anywhere, is important.

What’s funny is I didn’t know, would be as passionate about educational design until I got to TDA, where they were involved in a mentorship program called ACE. And I started to learn a little more about TDA from the people who were already working here and I thought it was an interesting place. So once I got to TDA, I started to understand the impact that’s happening with the community. So I’m like, that’s something I want to be a part of.

It’s very exciting to see a school opening kids running into the school, or, you know, the groundbreaking and how they excitement for something new, impact someone’s life and that, that keeps me at TDA.

As far as understanding the impact that architecture makes on people’s lives, I’m still understanding that myself. I think that the projects I’ve worked on, seeing how occupants actually use the space will provide some insight to actually student centered learning and not what we think. So I think just, just as buildings remain open, we will see the evolution of the spaces that’s exciting as well. I think that the impact is going to be a positive one. The evolution of the space as technology changes will be the telltale story.

My name is Ken Monsman, I’m a registered architect, I’m a certified construction manager, and I also am a member of the NCARB. Architecture has a profound impact on people, I mean, whether you are just a regular person and not pay attention to it, but regardless it’s having an impact on you. It’s exciting to be part of that and to have such a big influence on people, even without them knowing it. I mean, it’s very fulfilling more recently, being at TDA has been a really good experience for me. Great people, good management, great projects. I’m primarily on in construction administration. Construction administration we’re really not doing the drafting and design, at that point, the building’s designed and we’re working with the contractor or the CM [construction manager] to get the thing built. Typically at the beginning of the job, we’re reviewing bids, you know, helping those CM make, make some of those decisions.

And then, once construction starts, we’re there to periodically site visit, questions that come up, RFI’s, shop drawings, review is a huge part and questions that come from the contractor or CM are all funneled through us. And then we’ll send them to the consultants or our in house staff, for answers, or some of the answers we come up with on our own.

My philosophy is at the end of the job, we should be able to shake hands and walk away and say, I would work with you again. Especially when you get to a market like Cleveland, where, you know, you work with people over and over again and so you’re bound to run into somebody. So that’s why I say never treat anybody badly, including the guy in the mail room. So I try to do that. I try not to be unreasonable when reviewing change orders and stuff and I keep everybody in mind, the owner contractor. So, like I said, just want to be fair with everybody.

TDA is very involved in the, I really enjoy working with the couple of designers that were on the projects at North High School, Longfellow and now I’m working on North Royalton with a different designer. There are little different nuances, but the overall concept is consistent and, they are going with this flexible learning space. And when the space is complete, especially as collaborative spaces with those seated steps in the large areas, like a stadium seating there, the schools love it. And then it’s nice to see once, you know, when school started and it was great to see the kids, not only sitting there during class time, but a lot of times, uh, the, the lunchroom collaborative students were up there eating, sitting with little groups.

It’s a very flexible space and very useful. So construction administration, it’s exciting. You actually see the building come out of the ground. That is very fulfilling. Going all the way through the project and seeing, you know, although it’s not my design work, you know, I feel very much a part of it. And you know, where there’s issues that come up on the project where something doesn’t work, we’ll work together to make it work. Ultimately when the thing’s done it’s, it’s nice to see that thing that came on paper, standing there in three dimensions in front of you.

Going into the interior design field, I knew that my ultimate goal was always to get to architecture eventually. I feel like I started with interior design because I feel like it translated more closely to the 2D art I was focusing on. It’s a lot of colors, it’s a lot of textures and so that kind of created a more seamless transition. The line between interior design and architecture is not necessarily a line it’s, it’s kind of a haze, I guess, because I feel like they’re truly one in the same, you’re just focusing on different parts of the building. And so I feel that in a lot of my projects, the inside is really influenced by the outside. Of course, we do take it to account the site plans and sun studies and things like that, but I find that the inside of the spaces where people are spending the majority of their time are what’s really influencing the shape and the construction of the building.

While engaging for projects, a lot of my work is to facilitate a conversation between TDA and the clients. We’ll work through a space planning, we’ll work through the communication between the inside and the outside of the building, so making sure color palettes work together. They tell me words like “beautiful” or “large” or “open.” I’ll take notes about that, take notes about their needs and their wants, kind of bring that back and TDA as a team, we’ll discuss what best fits that need or that want. My favorite part of the design process is the documentation phase, because I’m a very detail oriented person. So in architecture, the detailed phase of design begins at a DD or Design Development and moves into Construction Documents, where we actually start to really focus on pulling together details that create a building.

TDA does a really great job at providing clients with the team members that best fit the project. It’s not like PM’s are competing for a project as maybe you would in a typical large scale firm. The partners, focus on the project and they look at the clients, who most of the time we’ve worked with them pre-bond or we’ve worked with on previous projects and they kind of look at us then and they say, okay, you would be a really great fit for this project or for this team. It kind of helps to allow us to build these really great relationships with the clients because you’re kind of in one way or another, going to end up tied to this client, it’s going to hopefully be a relationship that continues on even after the project is completed.

So I really enjoy working in the K to 12 education market because I feel it is very “selfless” design. I feel like you’re always putting in your heart and your soul into a building that you will never be able to experience. And you will never know the impact that that building has on its inhabitants until those generations are growing up and going through life just as you are.