Study Tour Visits

One of the first stops on our study tour of Seattle was Knoll. Knoll specializes in office design, such as office chairs, desks, filing cabinets, meeting rooms, and so on. I absolutely loved this firm. My mom works in insurance, so my whole life I've been visiting her in different offices around the city and every last one of them sucks. To be honest. My mom has been crammed in the middle of tall cubicles, which no one likes. She has been put in a private cubicle with a nice view, but it was so large and walled off that it felt depressing. Currently, she has a beautiful office, but you can barely fit one person in the hallway leading to her door. So when I visited with my boyfriend, the three of us standing in the doorway did not feel comfortable at all. Why is it that offices are so hard for designers to create?
At Knoll they showed us a thousand and one different ways I could improve all these offices for my mom. I loved the chairs they were designing specifically for how people work, not how diagrams say we sit at desks. They designed all the walls lower so you can see across the room while standing, but also feel like you have private space when sitting and working. They also designed several open desks, for collaborative work, which I find extremely important for my mom since she has an assistant who is currently stuck in a cubicle that is walled off from my mom's office. Knoll really understood how people work and how they want to function, rather than how we're told to. Designing for people is huge to me. If an item is technically correct but doesn't function in a way that people use it for, then it can never be considered a success.

 

Another site we visited was the Home of the Immediate Future, presented by Habitat for Humanity. I already know a LOT about the organization since I've volunteered for them and studied them so many times. So I didn't really learn much here. We also weren't allowed to tour the second floor which was really disappointing to me. I found the building interesting nonetheless and I loved that they considered how to move around functions of the house in case a family has different needs. Many of the rooms of the house could swap with each other. What I disliked the most about this house was the fact that the fridge was under the stairs. It was a clever use of the space but did not work very well for the future function of the home. I also tried opening and closing the fridge to see how it would take up space and I cut my finger open pretty badly. Of course, the home was not finished at the time, so the untreated wood was not the nicest material. But even then, when they finish the walls, people are still at risk of crushing their fingers with this odd set up. May not get a nasty cut, but not fun either way. Habitat for Humanity has done some wonderful things as far as providing affordable, lasting homes, but they still have a way to go with creating a space that understands the function of people.