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Mentoring the design professionals of tomorrow


The Seattle ACE mentorship program is wrapping up for another year. ACE is a national program with the mission to engage and encourage high school students to pursue careers in architecture, engineering and construction. The Miller Hull team is one of nine Seattle teams from high schools throughout the entire Puget Sound area (1,300 students total), pairing high school students with building industry professionals to teach them how buildings and spaces are designed, engineered and constructed. Throughout the school year, teams meet about every other week to learn about the design, engineering and construction professions, as well as to work on a common design problem. Groups of students interested in a specific discipline work with industry professionals to get a sense of what they do. Along with learning about a main area of interest, students are also exposed to related fields, for a complete picture of design and construction roles.

This year we have a large mentoring team of 16 professionals working with 21 students. The students are immersed into design problems, construction schedules and budgets at a level of exposure equal to upper-level college courses. The mix of students from different schools and classes gives participants the opportunity to learn from others and to work together much like an actual design and construction team would work on its projects.
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Bullitt Center: A prototype for urban green buildings


With the official opening of the Bullitt Center this week on Earth Day, we wanted to share perspective about what this project means for us as a firm and for the design industry, as a whole — as it signifies a shift in the actual process of how buildings are designed and demonstrates the range of opportunities for inventiveness and creativity that are possible when integrated design teams target aggressive efficiency goals.

As architects we often find ourselves trying to coax clients into pursuing more efficient, environmentally responsible buildings.

With the Bullitt Foundation and its president, Denis Hayes, that clearly wasn’t the case, as the Bullitt Center was envisioned as a landmark prototype for green, urban buildings. Targeting the rigorous requirements of the Living Building Challenge green-building certification program, the Bullitt Center was projected to be twice as efficient as any building our firm had designed to date, at least on paper.
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Having Visions


At Miller Hull, searching for the right project vision is important. We see each others projects in our weekly design panels and are committed to lecturing and being a part of design juries. We host design charrettes and promote travel through our our trip awards to employees for milestone years of service. We encourage each other to take a look at the environment around us and understand there are many visions of what architecture should be, and that occasionally one has to step outside of one’s own office / project / region to look for inspiration.

Mac's house

Recently I was fortunate to be invited by Steve Badanesand Linda Beaumont to travel to the Rural Studio in Hale County Alabama and be part of the review team for the annual Soup Roast. There I got to see a vision of architecture of service, poetry, and hands-on community engagement and creation. I visited past projects, saw the status of current projects, and critiqued several future projects. The student work, and faculty attitude and dedication to explorations of design and community engagement was completely inspiring, refreshing and invigorating.
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Integral Parts: A Building for the Park


Situated in the lightly wooded and gentle sloping landscape of Lakewood Park in White Center, the recently completed Bethaday Community Learning Space (BCLS) is the new home of the Technology Access Foundation (TAF) – a nonprofit that partners with local school districts to provide underserved students with skills for future careers in math, science and technology. Founded by former Microsoft employee Trish Millines Dziko, the initial vision of the organization launched ten years ago has experienced phenomenal success with consistently more than 80% of students completing the program pursuing higher education. In an effort to accommodate the organization’s growth and desire to more permanently root itself near the communities it serves, a partnership was formed with King County Parks & Recreation Department, allowing TAF to lease a small portion of the northeast corner of the park to build its new headquarters. The project site uniquely positioned TAF as stewards of one of the neighborhood’s only public spaces and as such, afforded an opportunity to introduce public amenities currently lacking in the community.
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