Each year around Valentines Day, we spend some time thinking about the people who help to make WORKSHOP8 great—those of you who trust us with your business, consultants who collaborate with us to help us imagine and design great projects, and those of you we still haven’t had a chance to work with but hope to.
The past twelve months have been especially terrific for WORKSHOP8 and we have all of you—clients, contractors, consultants, and fans—to thank, we can’t do what we do without you!
2014 was a year full of excitement and growth as we welcomed a lot of new faces into the office. Adam Meis started on as our new student intern while Graham Bowman transitioned from part-time to full-time onto the WORKSHOP8 team. When Ulla moved back to her native Finland, Kate Van Sluyter took over the interiors department and boy has it been growing! In fact, just a few months ago, Chelsea Semelka came on board to share the interiors duties. In early fall, I (Melissa McGinley) got to join the WORKSHOP8 team to take over the studio and marketing manager role to free Brandy up to focus on being our creative director. One week earlier, Marcel van Garderen started as a designer/production manager. Two weeks after that, Kasia Kubiak-Smulka came on for a short-term stint as a designer/production manager. We enjoyed having Oscar Saucedo on the team as our fall semester student intern through the Designers Without Boundaries (DWB) program and in January Ivan Patino became our new DWB intern. Next week Shawn Berry will join us as designer/production manager. . . and we are looking for more great people to join the team.
So, from all of us WORKSHOP8 team members, we love you!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
About the Art
This year’s valentines were designed by Adam Meis. He did a terrific job coming up with architectural puns using the names of historic architects and creating graphic icons for each one. If you are a complete geek, you may be interested in reading the bios of Aalto, Wright, Kahn and Mies below.
Alvar Aalto
(3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer, as well as a sculptor and painter. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware. His style changed during the span of his career, ranging from Nordic Classicism in his early work during the 1920’s, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930’s then a more organic modernist style from the 1940’s onwards.
Frank Lloyd Wright
(June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called “the best all-time work of American architecture.”
Louis Kahn
(March 5, 1901 – March 17, 1974) was an American architect, he created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. Louis Kahn’s works are considered as monumental beyond modernism. Kahn was famous for his meticulously built works and his provocative proposals that remained unbuilt.
Mies van der Rohe
(March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. Along with Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture. Mies sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times. He created an influential twentieth-century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity.
