Chicago Study Tour

This September, I visited Chicago for a week for a study tour with other WSU students from interior design, architecture, landscape architecture, and construction management. I had a great time seeing sites I had learned about in school and learning more about Chicago while visiting these famous historic sites. The week was packed full of tours, and I want to highlight a few of my favorite parts of the trip.

Before we went to Chicago, four of my peers and I researched the Railway Exchange or Santa Fe Building. Some of the main facts about the building is that it was designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, and it was built in 1903-1904. The Santa Fe Building is covered in white terracotta to fit with the White City theme of the 1893 World Columbian Expo. Once in Chicago, my group members and I were placed into separate tour groups for Urban Classroom tours. Each of us were placed in separate groups and got to tell our other classmates about the Railway Exchange while inside it! It was a lot of fun to see a building I had learned so much about and share my knowledge with other students. While on our tour, I got to learn about buildings like The Rookery and the Harold Washington Library from some of my fellow students.

The Rookery Staircase

Original column in The Rookery designed by Burnham and Root visible beneath Frank Lloyd Wright's remodel

The Monadnock Building, one of the earliest skyscrapers

The Railway Exchange Interior

Another of our Urban Classroom tours was at the Illinois Institute of Technology, or IIT. On this tour, we saw many designs by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as well as the newer McCormick Tribune Campus Center by Rem Koolhaas.

Visiting the Merchandise Mart was another highlight of my trip. I was able to tour a few showrooms like Herman Miller and Designtex.

Herman Miller Showroom

Designtex Showroom

My group and I also visited the Farnsworth House and the John Hancock Observatory.

Van der Rohe's Farnsworth House

View from the John Hancock Observatory during a thunderstorm

Our final Urban Classroom tour was in Millennium Park. Two of my favorite parts of the park were Frank Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavillion and Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain. Crown Fountain features two 50-foot towers with millions of LED lights to show about 1,000 Chicagoans faces spouting water out of the fountain.


Jay Pritzker Pavillion


Crown Fountain

Visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio in Oak Park was extremely informative and inspiring! I love that Frank Lloyd Wright continued to make changes in the house for as long as he lived in it in order to work for his growing family. He customized the house to make it fit his own family's needs rather than simply designing a building and putting his belongings into it.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Home

I also visited the Art Institute of Chicago where I was able to see famous pieces of artwork, such as American Gothic by Grant Wood and Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat-- a painting I have wanted to see for years.

I am thankful that I was able to go on this study tour. I had a blast and learned a lot!


Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate at Millennium Park... The Bean!

Showrooms & House of the Immediate Future

In Seattle, I was able to visit the Seattle Design Center, the Pental Stone showroom, the DalTile showroom, 3Form Light Art Studios, the Knoll showroom, and the Habitat for Humanity's House of the Immediate Future.

By visiting these showrooms, I learned about the relationship between designers and showrooms. I was also acquainted with a lot of new materials and how to go about choosing materials for a client. I enjoyed seeing the warehouses, and learning about molding resin at 3Form. It was impressive and inspiring to hear how 3Form Light Art Studios and Knoll got started, and how they have continued designing on a large scale. As a designer, visiting the showrooms showed me the grand possibilities my future may hold.

I sketched two chairs at the Knoll showroom. I had difficulty with the perspective lines in the first sketch, and ran out of room on the page for the second sketch. I did pretty well with my hatching, but struggled with spacing.

Here is a sketch and a photo of the House of the Immediate Future. The house is very environmentally friendly with net zero energy use, and has a bedroom on the main floor which allows for easier accessibility to elderly residents. After volunteering with Palouse Habitat for Humanity, it was cool to see the organization's work on a larger scale.

Urban Sketchers

Last Saturday, I visited the Olympic Sculpture Park with the Urban Sketchers in Seattle. After about two hours of sketching, we all viewed each other's work. It was really cool to see all the experienced sketchers' drawings as well as drawings of my peers.
Here are two sketches of mine from the Olympic Sculpture Park.

In my sketch of The Eagle, I experimented with a color repeat technique by applying red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet to the entire sketch and concentrating certain colors in each area. I think the sketches turned out pretty well, but I should have focused more on the horizon line in the perspective.

Job Shadow

I spent a day job shadowing with Jennifer from Jennifer Randall and associates. A classmate Miranda and I accompanied Jennifer to a client's home in Seattle, and we watched Jennifer and her client discuss possibilities for remodeling her kitchen and dining room. It was interesting to see the interaction between Jennifer and her client. Since the client's home was pretty old, some of the original designs in the kitchen are no longer up to code. Jennifer used her design knowledge to come up with possible solutions to design problems in the kitchen. Miranda and I also helped Matt, one of Jennifer's coworkers, measure in the kitchen and dining room. After visiting the client's house, Miranda and I went with Jennifer to buy a few items from Builder's Hardware and Supply. I had never seen a big hardware store with so many different pieces before (doorknobs, cabinet knobs, doorbells, etc.), so it was fun to look around at the products.

Here is a photo I took inside the hardware store.

Overall, I really enjoyed the experience of job shadowing. Jennifer was very friendly and offered Miranda and I advice whenever she came across anything we might not know about. She described the differences between life as a residential designer and a commercial designer-- like how a commercial designer might have more freedom when it comes to design decisions since a business is not as personal to the client as a home.