Thanks!

I wanted to make sure I did a quick shout-out to all the people who've been treating me amazing lately! I have some amazing friends, family, and almost-family (especially considering they've mostly been completely ignored in the last year). I've had cards and gifts and surprise parties and shopping trips! Sooo much more-so than I deserve.So I'm so appreciative of the congrats, even though I still don't feel like it's ended - its just on to the next project!
The monkey card is especially accurate - it says "If you can swing it... take some time to celebrate!" Well, it's been busy. After getting a job the day before the last day of school, I had 4 days to soak up doing nothing, before getting completely back into the swing of things...in real life this time. It's been almost a month now I think... and I'm finally starting to realise how lucky I am. I have an amazing job designing for a very well respected design/build firm in downtown Vancouver. I've been involved with some awesome projects, and (crazily enough) got introduced as "Ayla, a designer at our office" over and over today. (It was client meetings all day! Fun!) And can I just say - totally surreal! The amount of power I have over designs is also awesome (not just a cad monkey after all!) and I'm feeling very needed and appreciated at work (there were small fights over me :P) BUT I don't want to brag at all - this was all big fat plain LUCK! Sooo I'm not going to complain about the workload or the pressure or the fact that client's don't understand space planning when their 'space' is a box drawn on a napkin at a scale of their choosing - I am just going to enjoy and do my absolute best! Oh, and smile lots! Smile and nod. : D

Thanks again for all the support all ya'll - you know who you are! Love you!

Grad Show Display...

Since I never took pictures at my grad show, I knew I wanted to do a little mock-up of what I displayed and take pictures... mom still hasn't seen it!

So I finally did that tonight. In reality, the grad show was in an open-office workstation at the Herman Miller showroom downtown Vancouver. It wasn't such a blank canvas, but anywho, here's what I did:

Portfolio stand on the right made by Ron, the tray held my business card and some take-home notebooks with my card clipped onto the front. And of course them there succulents (fake!)

The portfolio stand worked great for viewing at standing height, and got lots of comments! :)

The card design... on a tile of my favorite colour (I tried sooo hard to get my name to match the bright red/orange I wanted, but wasn't 100% happy.... I am not a graphic designer or photoshop officianado!)

So there's that - over a month later!

Final Material Board

Finally remembered to bring this home from school today; a bunch of people's boards were stolen from the classroom this weekend so I was lucky it wasn't mine - I didn't even have a picture of it! So now I do. Phew.

Back at it with the construction drawings for this - its a luxury skybox for a record label of my own invention ("Moontide Records") which is a label for blues/roots/surfie type artists. Laid back, yet luxurious, with lots of green design thrown in (see recycled corrugated cardboard carved wall/ceiling feature).

Coming up on the final week...

I wanted to do a quick blog post .... seems like yesterday I was counting down at 3 weeks, and now its 1 week (plus a 5 day extension on the major project) until school is done.
I'd wanted to chronicle everything during this intense school process, and enlighten people as to what it is we do as interior designers/design students. I don't know how to do that still, and simply haven't had the time to show a whole lot of stuff.  When I have time I will upload the pages of my portfolio which was prepared for our grad show a week and a half ago... which went really well.... I officially decided I feel ready for the work world!

In this moment, as I think about my final gruelling week of homework and studying, I am:
- amazed at what I've learned to execute and create
- excited to get finished with school forever
- not looking forward to NOT seeing my 20 peers everyday (and so thankful for the amazing friends I've made)
- extremely excited to soon be able to clean my house and trash a whole wack of old work, boards, drawings, etc.! That will be sooo fulfilling and liberating!
- can't wait for the freedom of no school and the lovely summer to play in!
- can't believe how much work I still have to do ... wow. anxiety.
- a little nervous

But anyways, since I really don't feel like I can capture the feelings I have right now, I'll wrap it up.

The REALLY exciting news is that I just got called for an official interview where I had my work week/internship next week! This is like .... my dream job for right now. It's a lot of office planning, some retail, some institutional.... simple basic stuff, but its a large design/build office which means there are lots of resources, learning opportunities, ecological design practices, and the people are amazing, down-to-earth and personable and exactly who I'd like to work with and for. SO let's hope this means I can start work as soon as I graduate - I did not expect to be able to do that AT ALL !!! (I'm cautiously hopeful, as the phone call contained the words "we think we've figured out where to put you...")

So I am celebrating by eating the whole $5 little bin of raspberries I bought the other day! (they really shouldn't be eaten without an occasion)

expensive raspberries, reflected ceiling plan on stand to get into autocad.... renderings from Seniors housing project

Modernism Week - shops and stuff!

There is such an amazing selection of vintage shops in Palm Springs. You can pick from thrift stores (every other block has one it seems) and vintage/designer shops. These photos start out from the day we walked the design district street and wandered in and out of shops... Some vintage, some not.



Charming Hilary and some outdoor furniture




The beautiful Kristie at Trina Turk's Residential store

  

Vintage shop window





Pretties inside said vintage shop




Another vintage furniture store. Stacks of classics - love the Danish mid century modern teak stuff




A booth in the modernism show called Urban Burp - could have stayed there for hours!




Vintage cowboy fabric...




Kristie looking through the stacks of amazing fabrics




Sarah and I took home a yard of this ship fabric. I'm in love with my 1/2 yard, not sure what it will become yet though!




Best L.B.D EVER! check out that lace! I know it's blurry, but the bottom hem shows it pretty good... just scrumptious




Old posters sporting the most beautiful colours...





More old Classic pieces



This place is amazing. I am going to find it really difficult not to go again next year, but this time do more of the home tours and seminars that our silly school was too lazy to sign up for until it was too late. I HIIIIIGHLY recommend it; both the Modernism Show that runs every February, and Palm Springs itself.

(plus, my aunt has a spectacular place there, good to sleep 6! Anyone else in?!)

Ace Hotel Lunch

It's about time I shared some goodness from my little trip to Palm Springs! (it was already a month ago!)

I'll start with one of my favorite places we went, the Ace Hotel.

We went for lunch after a morning spent walking the street in the Palm Springs Design District, which was breathtakingly lovely, as you can imagine. But stepping into this hotel's restaurant actually made my heart beat a little faster...

and now I'm dying to go stay at The Ace Hotel in Portland!



The little foyer; loved the Navajo-esque rugs and yummy leather chairs... not to mention: Macrame!



Yes, lots and lots of Macrame! I love that Palm Springs doesn't for a second deny it's 1960s celebrity status!

The Lovely Hilary, with her favorite style of print :)

Simple lovely table linens = yum

Buttery leather soft seating, globe lights, natural stone ... all laid back but super sleek at the same time

I fell in love with that tile... it had a pearlescent glow to it and was just pretty in such a simple way.

See the Macrame elephant sculpture on the wall? Now there's a reason to learn macrame!

Big beautiful windows with - get this - SUN streaming in! Not so great for photos like this, but I would never complain!

Cute little menu. Can you see why I took a picture of this page? ;)

I can't explain enough how inspiring it was to be around good, timeless design. Everywhere you looked  there was something to look at and inspire. It just made me so happy.

Anyways, thats where a handful of us ate one day ... I'll try to share more this week as I'm doin' little to nothin' on Spring Break!

PS: 

Here is a facebook album if you want to see lots of photos!

and another one .....

The Glamorous Life of .... me

This is it for another 5 days.
Palm Springs suitcase still not unpacked.
Drawings splayed everywhere.
AutoCAD the only thing I've seen in a week.
But at least the morning sun looks good in here :D

Sidenote: I thought about moving the honeycomb cereal box, but let's be honest here ...
(at least my other 3 cups are out of the frame)

Palm Springs

Modernism week in Palm Springs was amazing and beautiful and inspiring and oh-so-fun!

I want to share it bit by bit, but I don't really know where to start and I am really busy back at school now ...

So for now, a photo of us girls. Add 3 guys to it and you have our whole group. Loved it.

Happy Friday!

I had a pretty so-so day, and by so-so, I mean nothing about it went good. But oddly enough, I'm in a great mood and kinda talkative and hyper and happy!  Don't ask me how it hapenned.

Anyways, I got a mark back today that started with a 5 and ended with a 5 and then a %. yep. Beaut. But I had a good sit-down with the one who wrote those 5s down, and we decided it was a good learning experience! ha! In reality, my design was pretty, but it was also pretty complicated and hard to build, and therefore, with the nature of the drawings, I made it hard on myself. Such is the nature of Interior Design school. But what happenned next was, my good friend Sarah kindly tore the worst comment out of my mark sheet, chewed it up and will *poo it out later. And therefore, it never happenned.

* just kidding, she said she was going to poo it out but really she spat the pink wad into the garbage can.... just in case you wanted more clarity and specifics ...

 That's us at the IDS West show, back in October. That's super motivating and insiring Caitrina on the right, who I also thank for this photo stolen from Fbook. And we are relaxing on the most beautiful Montauk sofa (I want) in between hauling free design loot around. Tiring. note: good lighting for making sofa look pretty, bad lighting for making people look pretty!




Oh Sarah, how I love you. I cried of laughter slash real crying, because then a few other classmates got all sympathetic and made me realise how much I needed sympathy for such a crap mark which made me feel worse... but at least Sarah took the worste part away. I shall love her forever.

Paula, sitting in Sarah's beautiful and comfy denim palette chair. Sarah's awesome at stuff, and since I love her, I dedicate this post to all kinds of awesomeness she has up her sleaves.

So, the weekend is here, and one week from right now I will be sitting in the sunshine of Palm Springs... Oh boy, do I ever need a lil' vitamin D. (I mean, I bought the capsules, but it's just not the same!)

Thanks for listening, have a good weekend internet!





Didn't think so. ;)

whats breaking my back today:

it's a dental office reception desk. This is what I have to do to get my design built (in theory) - 20 hours and counting, even though you can't tell by what it looks like! I only have the specs left, haleluja, then onto (in no particular order):

a) building the floor of my wood frame house model

b) building a light fixture

c) drawing a 3D model on cad for design projects

d) drawing a bathroom in vectorworks

Arbutus House: Centre for Eating Disorders and Depression

The final product. . . and then we had enough time to sigh with relief and do a little happy dance for about 4.8 seconds. . .

On the plus side - only one big submission and 2 exams left!

Healthcare Facilities Research!

Today marks the start of a new project.
An international student competition sort of project. And this year's differs from others because it has pretty well no parametres other than being a healthcare facility. we have this week to research and find out what our community needs, where a good location would be, and how we plan to implement our solution. They are giving us such a broad topic to make us think about helping others and the need for doing pro-bono work at times and what that might entail. So I definitely have a lot of research to do (yay for living with a nurse!) to find out what our healthcare system is lacking at the moment and how we can offer something different in the form of a facility.
We will be judged on :
- Quality of Research & Sources
- Support of goals and design concepts in the executed design
- expression of the clients needs expressed in project
- space planning: functionality/flexibility/accessibility
- aesthetics: imagination/creativity
- life safety, health and welafre issues successfully addressed
- sustainable decision making
- presentation & craftsmanship
All sections are worth 10% (with a grand total of 80% - ok so math isn't our strong suite?!)

And you thought interior design was all vases and cushions :)

now to finish up all the assignments we kindly got extensions on ... : P

If you can, please pass along any info you may have or contacts that I could talk to about what other healthcare services/facilities we need in the lower mainland!

2 DOWN!

3D Rendering - Art Gallery

Here is a project I just completed. Literally JUST. So I'm celebrating a little by blogging. :)

Just 3 views of an art gallery we were given the plans for. All I designed is the finishes and lighting; and I picked the lovely artwork :) I have become infatuated with sketchy portraits. Its a new love. Anyways, I hope you like it! I seemed to have troubles with every step along the way in this drawing, but the end result looks a lot better than I thought it would. Still annoyed about the colour of the big chandelier though, I wanted it to be deep mossy green but no matter how dark I made it, it kept looking yellow when I added the lights...

Oh boy are my shoulders sore from doing autocad autocad autocad... and 2 more projects to go for Monday....

Thats all for now!

PS - I just noticed the last banister floating off the ground! Haha - woops!

Tomorrow....

 I am going to a talk by Demetrios Eames. He is the grandson of none other than Charles and Ray Eames. So yes, a tad bit excited I am.

And for those of you who haven't heard of the husband and wife design duo, maybe these mid-century modern iconic beauties will spark your memory...

Uh, yes.

I predict we will get to hear a bit about the Eame's design process and philosphy, indoor spaces, design and .... design!

I will take notes.

Oh and, yes I have been really busy and not blogging. I assure you, the busy-ness has been far less glamorous than what I have on tomorrow. Tomorrow will look like the following:
6am - wake up
6:45 - get to the gym at school, work out...
7:45 - shower and get ready
8:15 - have a pancake breakfast in the construction shop for United Way (mmmmm...)
8:30 - 3D rendering class
12:00 - head to BCIT's downtown campus for Eames seminar (did I mention it is just my class he is speaking to?!)
3:30 - head to HOK's Vancouver Office on Homer St. for another interesting talk
4:30 - go home and finish a biiiiig AutoCAD assignment for Friday morning!