DC Trip

In case anyone else is interested in interior design, here's a little more about what we did and saw on our trip to DC...First we visited the Washington Nationals stadium and toured their VIP areas led by the contractors. They recently conducted about 3 or 4 million dollars worth of renovations. Then we took a tour of Fox Architects that works mainly with corporate office space and got to ask a lot of questions about how architects and designers collaborate. After, we visited Steelcase which designs innovative office furniture that is space efficient and multi-functional. There is a big stress in office design now to not have individual cubicles but move toward design that promotes collaboration. In many newly designed spaces, there is about one workspace for every six employees due to research that has shown that people can work from virtually anywhere, not just the office. Here we also had an alumni reception where we were able to speak with over 60 alumni working in the field in DC. Friday, we began with a meeting at Marriott about being LEED certified and sustainability. There is a large movement in the industry towards making conscious decisions about every aspect of the design and not designing space to last a lifetime but rather using renewable sources that can simply be updated 10-20 years down the line. Next, we visited Marriott's international headquarters where we toured their textile library, saw the designs for the next Ritz Carlton, and toured their prototype rooms for each of their brands of hotel. This was interesting to see another side to the design world apart from office space, an industry that is much more geared toward customer satisfaction and aesthetics versus functionality in an office space. Finally, we finished up our trip at Gensler, the number one interior design firm in the world. Here, they talked about how it's typically a team of directors, interior designers, architects, and engineers that work on a space. This trip was motivating to pursue design after seeing a little of how it works in the professional world.