Meet the Designers: Cynthia Haight

Meet the Designers: Cynthia Haight
Meet Cynthia, she brings a high level of sophistication and creativity to her role, has a keen eye for detail and passion for educational design.

Cynthia Haight - Interior Designer

Cynthia Haight works as an interior designer for ThenDesign Architecture (TDA) and is driven to provide the best educational environment for students, she integrates, color, texture and detail in all of her projects. Having a background in psychology, Cynthia integrates this understanding into each space she works on to better create comfortable environments that allow users to succeed.

"The design of schools is important. We have to give our youth a place where they can truly learn and give their teachers a place that is easy to teach in."
Cynthia Haight
Interior Designer

Questions for Cynthia Haight

Why did you become an interior designer?
After working in the field of Psychology and then raising my children, I wanted to try something new, something creative. I have had a passion for dance, music, and art. Interior Design addressed my desire to be creative while remaining practical as well. It is not just about aesthetics but also about solving problems and making a building work for the end-users.

What’s your favorite part of a project you’re working on. Why?
My favorite part of a current project is considering the needs of the special education kindergarten students who will be using the building; making the spaces bright and happy as well as considering the effect of the finishes in terms of all the senses. These renovated spaces will also respect the history and original design of the building.

What will be the biggest changes in education interior design (or interior design in general) in the next few years?
School districts are approaching education from a different direction, one that involves learning though engagement and collaboration. This requires a different approach from designers as well in terms of space planning and furniture types. Our design must support the activities in the spaces.

I feel very strongly about how an interior should be laid out.

What I really like about TDA, is the type of work we do, educational design. I’m very idealistic, but my thought has always been, if we do our job well, and we create spaces where teachers and students can thrive, we can affect the future in a positive way. The students can truly learn, and they will take that with them throughout their lives.

Interior design has a big impact on people. It can affect them in positive or negative ways. And when we design the interiors to make them attractive, to make them comfortable, to make them a pleasant place to exist in, it’s going to help the end-users of the building.

Color is very subjective and people’s reaction to color has a lot to do with their life experience. We try to make elementary schools, more playful and high schools, a little more sophisticated, the occasional higher education project, even more so. But to provide enough color so that it’s stimulating without being overwhelming, is a balance just as it is with clutter and detail. You can’t have too much, but you need a little bit to create some interest.

We have attended the “Visioning Sessions” as well, and it’s wonderful to hear what not only the teachers and the students, but also the, the citizens of the community have to say. After the visioning, when we start meeting with the owners, we start asking them what they need exactly, how, precisely, they teach. And we present ideas that have worked in the past, and we’ll present images and layouts so that they can get an idea of some of the options that are possible. Then we’re able to get a better idea of what they truly need.

We have to do an enormous amount of research and we have to put together specifications that meet with the needs of the building. If we are doing our job, right, we should be able to take the small budget and make it look spectacular. It shouldn’t look cheap. It shouldn’t be all gray or beige. It should be an exciting, fun place to be.

The design of schools is important, it’s important. We have to give our youth a place where they can truly learn and give their teachers a place that is easy to teach in.

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Cynthia Haight

Cynthia Haight

Interior Designer

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Cynthia Haight

Cynthia Haight

Cynthia Haight works as an interior designer for ThenDesign Architecture (TDA). Driven to provide the best educational environment for students, she integrates, color, texture and detail in all of her projects. Having a background in psychology, Cynthia integrates this understanding into each space she works on to better create comfortable environments that allow users to succeed.

Citizen Architect – Robert Fiala, AIA

Citizen Architect - Robert Fiala, AIA
Robert Fiala is the founding partner of ThenDesign Architecture (TDA) and the mayor of Willoughby, Ohio. He was recognized as a "Citizen Architect" by the American Institute of Architects and featured in an article detailing his path from architecture to public service.

Citizen Architect - Robert Fiala, AIA

Robert Fiala is the founding partner of ThenDesign Architecture (TDA) and the mayor of Willoughby, Ohio. During his 40-year career in architecture, he has been primarily involved with publicly funded projects, with an emphasis on K-12 educational facilities and civic architecture. Recently he was recognized as a “Citizen Architect” by the American Institute of Architects and featured in an article detailing his path from architecture to public service.

TDA continues to be driven by an “insatiable desire to learn” and the need to improve communities through relationship building, public engagement and design. These principles were the foundations for starting a business with a focus on enriching lives through design. This evolved into a love of public service.

Much of his time was spent designing public works and engaging with communities. This gave him a unique perspective on the positive social and economic impacts of planning and design. This has greatly informed his mayoral role.

“Those opportunities were my testing ground, they showed me that I loved public service and that there are many ways to be a voice and an advocate.”
-Robert Fiala

Recognized as a "Citizen Architect" by the American Institute of Architects

The American Institute of Architects defines a “Citizen Architect” as a member who uses their talent, insight, and experience to make positive contributions to their community. This is done primarily through engaging in the administrative and legislative political process and embodying the ideals of public service.

The article recounts his path working as an architect and his transition to public service.

The public service bug had bitten Fiala years earlier, however, as his firm worked with leaders in education throughout the state to plan new school projects. “I felt the excitement of engaging with the community,” Fiala said. “I also had an epiphany: I realized that, as architects, we are trained to problem-seek and -solve, then to communicate our solutions. However, with the unique tools that we, as designers, possess, we are rarely at the table in public policy and planning discussions and decisions.”

Through its founding and early years, Fiala made sure tda was built on a different operating model. In fact, under his direction, TDA’s design philosophy—“Think, Design, Act”—had a community- and public policy-oriented feel. The firm is driven by an “insatiable desire to learn” and “to create tailor-made design solutions.” In other words, to accomplish what public officials attempt to accomplish: identifying and executing a shared vision.

Read the full article here.  

To learn more about ThenDesign Architecture and our work, visit our blog and subscribe to the newsletter.

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Ryan Caswell

Ryan Caswell

Ryan is a communications specialist who is passionate about using digital media to further the goals of organizations and communities in Northeast Ohio. With a background in construction and a degree in architecture, he spent over a decade in a corporate video environment and brings a production mindset to videography, editing, photography and content marketing. He is passionate about supporting the arts, and can be found hiking in the Ohio parks system.

Design Collaboration is a Necessity

Design Collaboration is a Necessity
Excellent design ideas can come from the most unlikely places. Throughout TDA’s design process, we engage individuals of all types in our projects. Chris Smith, TDA’s president, shares his insight into our process, the designers, and collaboration in public architecture.

In architecture, design collaboration is a necessity for a project’s outcome. This is especially important when designing buildings such as a school or municipal office. As in virtually every other creative endeavor, combining deep technical experience with a process that identifies challenges and incorporates feedback produces the most successful results.

Chris Smith, the president at ThenDesign Architecture, started in 1998 as a 28-year-old intern. Having come from a large, international design firm, he was drawn to the idea that through thoughtful, insightful and selfless design, architects could improve the lives of students by creating better spaces.

TDA: Why are you passionate about designing educational architecture?

Chris Smith: Architecture can be a very self-focused, egotistical profession. Since there’s artistry to it, the artist’s name rides along with the project and often times is the name of the firm itself. What attracted me to TDA from the beginning was that it wasn’t named after the leadership of the firm, but rather a concept that we were in the “thinking business,” not simply the “drawing business.” So now that I am the president of the company, not having my name on the door continues the legacy for what drew me here in the first place.

Our focus is the design of publicly owned facilities such as schools, municipal buildings, and recreation centers. We’re not charged with designing for one person; we’re tasked with designing for the greater public good. That involves collaborating with the community, with students, with teachers, with parents and the community at large, groups you may not think have a voice in architectural design. Our “client” is ultimately the many generations of students who will learn and thrive in these spaces.

I find that I am most gratified when I can help others succeed. Creating a lasting piece of architecture that improves student’s lives, impacting more people than we ever could touch physically. So that just builds on our core value of always seeking ways to help others succeed.

If you talk to any teacher or educator you find out that 98% of their job is finished if they can inspire a child to learn. If we can help in any small way ... then we're helping our teachers achieve their mission.
-Chris Smith

How does TDA encourage a collaborative design process?

Chris Smith: The design process at TDA is unique in our industry. In a typical firm, often an architect or designer singularly authors the design. However, we believe collaborative design produces a better product for our publicly-owned facilities. We approach our projects as a design team, with several architects working together. This diversity of perspective is what makes our design solutions strong. Even though there is a project manager who leads the group, the end result is never a single person’s idea.

We also engage with our clients and school communities throughout the project and really try to identify design challenges and opportunities early in the project. It’s that “problem-seeking” curiosity which drives our design process. Collaboration is a necessity and identifying where we can improve a district’s curriculum and student engagement through architectural design is the goal of this process. Sometimes that engagement takes a long time. However, it helps us better understand the district while simultaneously improving our designs.

Our philosophy is when your building is finished, you will have authored the design. So that’s why we don’t have our names on our doors or even titles on our business cards. Only through collaborative and selfless design can we truly create spaces for the greater good.

We believe that good ideas can come from anywhere and anybody. We've had the strangest ideas come from the coolest places.
-Chris Smith

How do educators and communities participate in our collaborative design process?

Chris Smith: If you talk to any teacher or educator you find out that 98% of their job is finished if they can inspire a child to learn. If we can help in any small way by creating an inspirational space, something that makes a teacher’s job easier or a student’s job more fun, then we’re helping our teachers achieve their mission.

There is a symbiotic relationship that inherently exists between a school district and their community. The community trusts the district to educate their children in a safe, effective, and efficient manner. The district trusts the community to provide the funding and support to do so. In the design process, we believe this trust between the school district and the community plays a large role in a successful project. It is incumbent upon the community to trust the professional educators to drive the layout of the spaces within the building. Likewise, the district must trust the community to provide valuable feedback on the exterior aesthetics of the building–how the site could best integrate with pedestrians, bicyclists and motor vehicles, location of playgrounds and ball fields. Only through the recognition, promotion and incorporation of this trust can a project involve all stakeholders in the design of a new school facility.

Our philosophy is when your building is finished, you will have authored the design.
-Chris Smith

What is an example of an unlikely design idea and where did it come from?

Chris Smith: We believe that good ideas can come from anywhere and anybody. So when we conduct “in-house charrettes” and collaborative design sessions, we don’t limit these to just the architects and administrators. Anybody is welcome to participate. We’ve had the strangest ideas come from the coolest places.

Some years back, we were investigating school security [the potential of armed intruders] and we were on the forefront of designing security guidelines for school buildings in Ohio. During one of our Educational Visioning Sessions, we received a brilliant idea from a young student. The student came up with an idea to color code the building so that if there was an intruder in their elementary school, they could call the authorities and state, “The bad person is in the red part of the building and moving into the blue part of the building.” That led to some very intuitive design standards that are still employed today. That wonderful idea came from a third-grade student. So, the educational design process surrounding school buildings is a very collaborative process, not only between our professional architects and designers, but amongst all stakeholders.

TDA, as a group of creative professionals, work to design and build the “next generation” educational and municipal facilities that are environmentally friendly, contextually rooted and inspiring to inhabit. Understanding that collaboration is a necessity, we look forward to working together with school districts, educators, and communities to design the educational facilities of the future.

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Chris Smith

Chris Smith

Chris Smith serves as President of ThenDesign Architecture, providing strategic direction for the firm, executive oversight on projects and fostering culture for staff. For over 20 years, he’s cultivated a passion for educational design. He participated in the 2000 and 2004 US Olympic Trials, serves as a coach and mentor for athletes and is dedicated to lifelong learning.

Meet the Designers: James Cowan

Meet the Designers: James Cowan
James Cowan works as an architectural associate for ThenDesign Architecture (TDA). James is passionate about architectural design and it's impact on educational design. Harnessing a "diversity in opinion" is a design principle driving his projects, as he incorporates feedback from many stakeholders into building design.

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.

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

James Cowan

James Cowan

James Cowan works as an architectural associate for ThenDesign Architecture (TDA). James is passionate about architectural design and it's impact on educational design. Having been introduced to architecture at an early age through magazine publications, he takes part in the ACE mentorship program, exposing high school students to the Architecture, Construction and Engineering fields. Harnessing a "diversity in opinion" is a design principle driving his projects, as he incorporates feedback from many stakeholders into the buildings.

Meet the Designers: Ken Monsman, RA, NCARB, CCM, LEED AP, BD+C

Meet the Designers: Ken Monsman, RA, NCARB, CCM, LEED AP BD+C
Ken Monsman is a registered architect working as a construction administrator for ThenDesign Architecture TDA. Ken works with contractors, architects and designers to ensure the client's vision for the building is met.

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.

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Ken Monsman

Ken Monsman

Construction Administrator

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Ken Monsman

Ken Monsman

Ken Monsman is a registered architect working as a construction administrator for ThenDesign Architecture TDA. Ken works with contractors, architects and designers to ensure the client's vision for the building is met. He is an amusement park aficionado, with a particular love for roller coasters.

Meet the Designers: Lydia Harrison

Meet the Designers: Lydia Harrison
Lydia Harrison is an architectural associate at TDA. Starting her design career in interior design, she brings the same careful materials based approach to her architectural work.

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.

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Lydia Harrison

Lydia Harrison

Architectural Associate

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Lydia Harrison

Lydia Harrison

Lydia is an architectural associate with TDA who works between architectural and interior design. Before architecture, she was an concert pianist who enjoys the challenge that design problems pose.

Architect for a Week: Student Designed Softball Field

Architecture for a Week: Student Designed Softball Field
A Mentor school student's summer experience shadowing our design team and making an impact on her high school for years to come.

ThenDesign Architecture has a longstanding relationship with the Mentor School District. We understand their vision for the future of education in their region and continue to support them through a variety of construction projects over sixty years. One such project was the completion of a new softball field adjacent to the Mentor high school in 2020. This was a part of a larger project in revitalizing the high school campus, in 2015.

Recognizing the need to train the next generation of architectural designers, TDA seeks to provide internships and other opportunities for students to work with us and see the challenges and opportunities presented in a design firm. Anselma Panic was a Mentor High School student and experienced the new additions developed by the school district and TDA.

Being impressed by the collaborative nature of the spaces and how they transformed her educational environment, Anselma reached out to us and inquire about additional learning opportunities. At that time, TDA was in the process of designing new softball fields for her former school and we thought it would be an excellent project for this recent graduate!

Anselma is now attending Notre Dame University to study architecture and she reflects on her first experiences in a professional design environment.

TDA: How did you come in contact with ThenDesign Architecture (TDA) and what was your initial experience like?

Anselma: TDA does a lot of work with Mentor high school, I knew they did the renovation when we were designing more modern work. So that’s how I heard about TDA and I just thought it’d be really interesting to work with them since they worked on my high school and I liked the things they did. They really made our environment much nicer. I came into contact with Angie [Staedt] and I emailed her asking if there were any senior projects and she got back to me. At the time, the only thing I really knew about, TDA was what they had done at my school. They built this thing called “The Paradigm,” [a professional development center] and “the Hub” [a renovated media center inside the high school] and it changed the whole dynamic of our high school, which I thought was really interesting. Before we always had old desks, old seating and kind of boring old classrooms, but once they started to work on my school, they utilized simple things like rolling chairs and just those made it a lot easier to be more collaborative, it changed the whole dynamic to be more collaborative. The ball field project was just beginning when I started working with TDA. They just threw that idea at me and I ran with it.

"Before we always had old desks, old seating and kind of boring old classrooms, but once they started to work on my school...it changed the whole dynamic to be more collaborative."
-Anselma Panic

TDA: Tell me about the Mentor Schools Softball Field design project you worked on. What was that project specifically and as a high school student how did you feed into the design process?

Anselma: I’ve always wanted to be an architect. Art is a passion of mine and I’m really good at math, so I felt like the two just combined for me and that’s why I wanted to study architecture, and I love ThenDesign’s work. All I knew coming into it was that I would be working on a design project and would be shadowing an architect. When I came in, I learned about this softball project for my high school. The first day, I researched what goes into a field, like the materials, necessary dimensions, and I calculated how much everything would cost. Then I started using AutoCAD for the first time to design the layout for the field. I learned to communicate with people around the office about different parts of a project. Even with something as simple as a fence–I had to talk to someone that had specialized knowledge of that! There’s a lot behind it and everything has to be considered. They gave me workspace with a computer and everything. Every once in a while, I would check in with the project architect and everyone was super friendly. It was really great. I even saw their little office dog Casey! She was always around. It was so nice.

Ryan Schmit showed me how to help design the whole project. He showed me how to do program research, and explained what went into that, as well as what the client wants to see, and how to exactly lay out the whole field. I would be at my desk and he would come around to check up on me, which was good because I was usually confused with AutoCAD. He would help me out, but I was working very independently, this was really unique. Every day I had a different focus but feel I really was able to experience the firm and work.

Ryan really encouraged me to talk to the other people who were knowledgeable about the project and I was considering their opinions while making my design. He was really helpful I learned a lot about program research.

"You have to become a master at everything in order to make the best product."
-Anselma Panic

TDA: In what ways did this experience change your perception of working in the architecture field?

Anselma: It was actually similar to the architectural studio environment at college where I am in my first year of architecture school at Notre Dame University. It was where everyone is working together, and you can always go to the person next to you and they could help you. It’s great!

I remember I was surprised with how much of the day that you just spend sitting down [laughs]. Seriously though, I really loved the office environment. Everyone at TDA was easy to talk to and were willing to discuss what they were working on. I learned a lot about the design process and drafting with AutoCAD. I was really surprised with just how much time you spend familiarizing yourself with everything that goes into a project. You have to become a master at everything in order to make the best product.

TDA: You helped with the design of this project for five days in the summer, then were off to college. What was it like returning to Mentor High School and seeing the finished project?

Anselma: I just drove past it one day and I’m like, “That’s my field.” It was a great feeling to see it all there. Before that, it was just an AutoCAD drawing and on these [cost] spreadsheets. Seeing it there, I took a bunch of pictures and said to myself: “Look at it!” It was really cool, and I felt so blessed to be a part of it and to see it come together.

"I just drove past it one day and I'm like, "That's my field."
It was a great feeling to see it all there."
-Anselma Panic

TDA is always on the lookout for talent and for those who are as passionate as we are about designing 21st century educational spaces. If you are interested in connecting to see if there are opportunities for you, please reach out to Angie Staedt at AStaedt@thendesign.com

Let’s work together to make education better. Interested in speaking with us? Get in touch!

Ryan Caswell

Ryan Caswell

Ryan is a communications specialist who is passionate about using digital media to further the goals of organizations and communities in Northeast Ohio. With a background in construction and a degree in architecture, he spent over a decade in corporate video production and brings this mindset to videography, editing, photography and content marketing. He is passionate about supporting the arts, and can be found hiking in the parks system.