Last Spring we were honored to have Elizabeth Graziolo join us as a mentor and share the story of starting her own practice, Yellow House Architects (YHA), after a successful career and partnership at Peter Pennoyer Architects. Yellow House Architects was only a few months old at the time, but from the time YHA opened its doors the practice has been busy with work, has stayed busy, and has even expanded through the pandemic.

This Fall Madame Architect featured Elizabeth in a wonderful article exploring her interests, inspiration, career path and words for the younger generation of women architects.

Agile and Unhindered: Yellow House Architects' Elizabeth Graziolo on Working All Over the World and Venturing Off on Her Own

by Julia Gamolina

We are pleased to announce a new feature on our forum: the Design Excellence Feature will highlight projects from mentors in our community. Projects will showcase notable design that has often been recognized in publications and/or with awards.

We want you to get to know even more about our mentors through their impressive portfolios of work.

We are kicking off the Design Excellence Feature with Desai Chia Architecture, who has been recognized in Dwell and Interior Design this year for their design of the Ledge House, and have received the Honor Award in the 2020 Residential Design Architecture Awards for their collaboration with Environment Architects on the Michigan Lake House.

Desai Chia is run by Katherine Chia, FAIA and Arjun Desai, AIA. Together they have established the firm’s reputation for authentic design, creating inspiring environments expressive of their use and materials. We recently spoke with Katherine about the designs of the Ledge House and Michigan Lake House as well as the recent recognition and accolades these projects have received. Katherine shared,

“The designs for both the Michigan Lake House and the Ledge House evolved from a study of the local ecology, natural and vernacular features embedded in the region, and the client’s lifestyle and aspirations for the project. Each project had a “muse” that influenced the relationship of the architecture to the surrounding environment.”

In the Ledge House, the muse was an existing boulder- a prehistoric “glacial erratic” that was deposited along the ledge hundreds of thousands of years ago when the glaciers formed the Appalachian Mountains. The Ledge House was built tight to the boulder which became a rugged companion to the house and presides over the uphill forest views.

In the Michigan Lake House, the muse was the property’s steep bluff overlooking Lake Michigan-- we designed the form of the roof to capture and divert stormwater away from the bluff, preventing erosion along this vulnerable precipice.

Katherine will lead the discussion, along with Nadia Jarrett, in our January 21, 2021 Mentoring Seminar, where Katherine will discuss how work in the field is the best teacher.

If you haven’t already registered, you can register here.

Irina Schneid, AIA, Founder & Design Director of the Impact Wrkshp, and the Summer 2019 fellows working on the 2019 Impact Project: Hammock Room. Learn more about the Hammock Room project.

In the Fall 2019/Spring 2020 season so many of you expressed an interest in doing more impactful design work and inquired about what opportunities are available to do this type of work. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Irina Schneid, AIA, Founder & Design Director of the Impact Wrkshp, a program that is creating those opportunities.

Impact Wrkshp is a social impact organization for women in design. The program connects design students with local communities and helps them bring participatory art projects to life within those communities. Irina, with the help of her all-woman, interdisciplinary team of leadership and advisors, has created a summer program that offers recent graduates mentorship, while giving them the opportunity to sharpen design skills with community based social impact projects.

The Impact Wrkshp mantra is:

We believe that every student, of every age, in every community, is entitled to question and create. When provided with the tools and mentorship to harness design as a catalyst for learning, students are empowered to both imagine a more equitable world and to build one.

Irina also shared a bit about the most recent project completed by the program.

This year our virtual fellowship project, Covid:KIT, addresses the social and emotional toll of prolonged isolation and re-occupation of public space. We propose a series of sidewalk installations which deploy social distancing guidelines as tools for bringing people together (safely) rather than keeping them apart.  Our kit includes the design of outdoor gaming circles, artistic rest spots and sensible spacers which activate the sidewalk as a space of joy and celebration amidst uncertainty and isolation.     

Applications for the Summer 2021 program will go live in February. We will make an announcement once applications are live. For now, we are excited to share the program with all of you so it’s on your radar for next year. We are also happy to shine a light on Irina and the amazing crew of women that make the Impact Wrkshp program possible!

Learn more about the Impact Wrkshp at impactwrkshp.com and follow their work on Instagram @impact_wrkshp.

If you don’t already know, Move Over Bob (@moveoverbob) is a platform that highlights the exceptional work of women in the construction and design industries. They have expanded the content they are offering with a shiny new and robust website that officially launched this week!

We love the work that they are doing as it falls in line with our mission to promote the exceptional work of women in our industry - bringing the work, and these practitioners, to the forefront of larger conversations about what is great design, who is making it, and what is possible for young women in construction and design.

Check out the Official Move Over Bob Website at www.moveoverbob.com.

Also, check out our feature, here!

We had a lot of fun working with Maile Pingel and Angela Cacace to make this happen. It’s no secret that we want the Mentoring Seminar Series to continue to grow and reach larger audiences. Teaming up with initiatives like Move Over Bob, and other like minded practitioners, allows us to connect more mentors and mentees in our field. We are changing the conversation!

Here’s a great article we found with some lessons to implement in your careers. Our mentors have touched on each of these lessons, but there’s nothing like a good article to put all of the lessons in one place for you to save/bookmark and easily reference on those days you need a reminder.

Check out the article here:

https://www.evolvingarchitect.com/blog/10-valuable-lessons-learned-in-my-first-10-years-working-in-the-profession-of-architecture

We hope you find it as useful as we did!