We are thrilled for the return of First Fridays downtown and will feature artist Lori Mier on Friday, April 1st, 2022 from 5:00pm-8:00pm. Read along to learn a bit more about Lori’s story and the influences on her work.
Lori Mier is the creator and owner of her story. She loves chai tea and sunrise hikes. She owns Blue Mountain Path Coaching LLC where she offers healing experiences as an Ecotherapist Guide, Author, and Photographer. Merin and Her Very Bright Star: A Story of Resiliency is her first children’s book. Lori is on a mission to help normalize grief and healing and hard conversations. Lori has a degree in Social Work and created a not-for-profit hiking program–Through Hiking– along with her husband to offer guided hikes to agencies and youth in foster care. She serves on the Equity Committee for Rockingham County Public Schools and also sits on the Board of Directors for RISE Foundation in Waynesboro, VA where she is committed to education, political action, and racial justice work. Although she is not originally from Virginia, Lori feels the most at home where she lives in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband and son.
It took a couple of years for Lori to call herself an artist. She never set out to be a photographer and only began calling herself one after multiple people asked if she sold the images that she captured on her sunrise and sunset hikes in the Appalachian Mountains. Originally she grew up in Minnesota, a few years on a lake resort, where she began connecting to nature; the northern lights, the great blue heron named Willie that would sit at the end of the dock every morning. What she now believes connects her to the Appalachian mountains is her time living in Oregon when she was a toddler; the place where her parents lost their lives. When she returned in the summer of 2020 to those Oregon mountains she saw how much they resemble what she knows of the Valley. Lori loves to capture the morning and evening light and share her spiritual and therapeutic connection of her hikes with others. She created an Etsy shop, Butterfly and The Storm, to do so. Her work can be seen in a gallery in Staunton, VA, Basement on Byers, and has been featured on the cover of and inside AT Journey’s Magazine and local travel brochures.
“Samuel Mockbee said, ‘Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul.’ That is the architect I want to be, one that helps others through design.” – Charles Hendricks
Our team had the pleasure of spending time with Amelia Schmidt, the creative mind behind the “At Home with” series featuring inside looks into local homes and businesses. As architects and designers, we love what we do and are grateful to Amelia for capturing more of our story and sharing why we believe in the power of design. Led by her curiosity and armed with a camera, Amelia tagged along as we chatted in our office at the Depot and checked in on a project on-site. She asked thoughtful questions and snapped a few pictures of the various stages of the design process.
Below and throughout this week on social media, we will be sharing some of Amelia’s work from our time together. Thank you, Amelia, for capturing us so well and helping tell our story! You can visit her website or follow along on social media to see our series along with many other “at home with” insider views of homes and businesses.
“The design process is at the core, a series of conversations that define a dream and enable me to record it in the form of a design”- Charles Hendricks
We understand residents who are seeking accessible homes already face numerous challenges in their day-to-day lives. Our goal is to design accessible spaces that minimize these challenges and promote the highest quality of life and a sense of independence in everyday living. We prioritize creating both indoor and outdoor spaces that are conducive to varying gathering sizes and movement abilities while minimizing excessive ramping or paved surfaces.
There are a variety of standards that regulate the requirements for designing spaces that promote equal access for varying abilities including Fair Housing regulations, ADA, ANSI 117, Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards (UFAS), and Universal Design standards. Meeting these regulations can often be challenging, but we believe they can be an excellent opportunity to provide housing equality to all residents and visitors. Following and adapting to these regulations inspires our architects to be creative in the design process and deliver solutions that serve all abilities.
The above sink has been lowered in a clubhouse kitchen for increased accessibility.
Although the different classifications of accessible homes can vary within a multifamily community, most homes do not require much more space than a standard kitchen or bathroom. The clearances required for these homes make the space more adaptable for people of all abilities, ensuring a functional arrangement that can be well utilized by everyone. Designing spaces that are adaptable to changing needs allows residents the ability to remain in their homes despite changes in health and mobility.
These are removable cabinets with a shallow roll-under sink. The adjacent cabinet is removable and can be lowered into a work surface.
The biggest challenge in designing for accessibility in multifamily projects is creating accessible routes throughout the community. It is critical to provide easy access for people of all abilities to fully utilize all amenity spaces. One of our team’s favorite challenges is designing a swimming pool that can be used by many different ages and abilities. This is an example in which we consider specific pool depths, layouts, and entry points. In a previous project, the first apartment leased was a fully accessible home because the resident fell in love with the ramp access to the pool!
Accessible pool entrance at the Goose Creek Apartments Project in Fishersville, Virginia.
Please join us as we celebrate Adrienne Stronge, RA, CSI, CDT, in her achievement of passing the Architectural Registration Examination. She is now a fully licensed architect! Adrienne has worked tirelessly to achieve this monumental goal and we are so proud of her achievement. Her story is telling of the dedication it requires to become licensed and how the profession has progressed over the last two decades.
Unlike many other career fields, one is not required to hold a license in order to design some buildings. For instance, houses up to a certain size don’t typically require an architect, and some designers go their entire careers only doing house plans to avoid the liability of being licensed and the complicated process it involves. It is also possible to work under the direction of a licensed architect who takes responsibility for your work allowing you to design larger and more complex projects (for instance working on staff at Gaines Group Architects). Legally, you are not an “architect” until you pass the rigorous exams. Each state controls its own requirements and regulations, but it usually takes an accredited degree, 3,740 experience hours under the supervision of a licensed architect, and passing a series of six exams. To be considered an accredited degree, an architect’s education must be either in a 5-year Bachelor of Architecture program or a 4-year undergraduate program combined with a 2-year Master’s program. Adrienne graduated with her BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 2006 (a 4-year undergraduate program).
Upon graduating, Adrienne was working multiple jobs, including ecoMOD where she designed and helped build a house that was transported to Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She was recruited to Gaines Group Architects when they heard of her passion for doing good in the community. She joined the Gaines Group team to gain experience before beginning a Master’s degree. All within her first few years of graduating from UVA, Adrienne got married and bought a house. The recession hit in 2008 and the architectural industry was hit hard. As fellow architectural firms laid-off employees, Gaines Group Architects was able to avoid layoffs making it through by shortening team members’ hours on occasion and the three partners giving up paychecks for almost a year. During this time, Adrienne and her husband became extremely resourceful and managed to stay afloat via hard work and sheer determination. As you can imagine, graduate school was the last thing on Adrienne’s mind and the idea of adding more student loan payments was daunting.
The economy eventually recovered, and the architectural industry improved. The firm established a strong track record for multi-family design where Adrienne excelled as a project manager. She unquestionably loved her job but continued to feel the pull to be a licensed architect. Feeling a bit stuck, she saw fellow colleagues tackling this achievement while she danced around the official title. She felt confident in her skill set and was performing at a high level within the industry, so she began taking the steps to apply to graduate programs and research licensing requirements in different states. Knowing this was a goal she wanted to achieve, it was difficult to envision taking the next steps as her husband was in the process of starting a business. Adrienne and her husband’s lives then dramatically changed as they welcomed their son, Allister to their family.
At the beginning of 2021, a partner at Gaines Group Architects encouraged Adrienne to attend the Young Architect virtual conference (the firm supported 5 people to attend this amazing conference). It was during this enlightening experience that Adrienne met fellow professionals in the field who pursued licensure through alternate means. She learned there are numerous states in which licensure can be granted through logged experience in lieu of an accredited degree, but this is not an option in Virginia. Inspired by these colleagues, Adrienne activated her records and began documenting years of back hours.
By late September of that year, Adrienne had filed her hours, secured professional references, and was approved by the State of Tennessee to pursue architectural licensure. This opened the door to allowing Adrienne to sit for the six exams required to pass before officially becoming “an architect”. The series of exams are anywhere from 3-4 hours in length and are extremely challenging. To understand the level of difficulty, these exams had an average pass rate ranging from 47%-63% in 2021 compared to the BAR exam’s average of just under 75% in Virginia.
Adrienne buckled down and worked tirelessly to pass all the exams in only a few short months (something rarely done). She completed all of this on top of excelling professionally and balancing her family responsibilities. She credits so much of her success to her husband, Andrew. In reference to him, she said, “I studied roughly 35 hours a week on top of my job, and he sacrificed a lot to allow that to happen. I am so thankful to be married to someone who is so invested in my success.”
She is now waiting on the paperwork to make it all official, but we are not waiting to celebrate her achievement of officially being “Adrienne, Registered Architect.” She is pursuing a certificate that may allow her to earn reciprocity in Virginia in a few years. Adrienne’s story is inspiring as she balanced tremendous responsibilities and overcame numerous obstacles to fulfill a goal she set for herself 20 years ago.
In Adrienne’s words, “I’m thankful to work for a supportive firm who helped me through this process and has already questioned how we can secure work in Tennessee. Kudos to all of you who are working hard to make your goals and dreams happen. It is so tough, but so rewarding!”
Construction is wrapping up on another successful, multi-family community project designed for our incredible clients at Denstock Management. The Knoll at Stone View, a luxurious apartment community located in Ruckersville, Virginia, exemplifies the quality of design we want to deliver to all of our clients. Known as “The Knoll”, this community is designed for people who want to experience a well-designed, comfortable home with the convenience of resort-like amenities.
The Knoll boasts many modern and luxurious features that allowed our architects to get creative in the design process. The 200 apartment homes are centered around a large, community clubhouse that houses top-notch amenities. Both the clubhouse and apartments have an open feel with large windows that maximize incoming natural light and capture the surrounding mountain views. The openness of the grand clubhouse is matched with equally large barn doors that give way to a game room, a place you will want to hang out with family and friends. Also accessible from the clubhouse is a fitness center, a fully outfitted theater, a modern and inviting kitchen, and an expansive patio raised over a community pool. These spaces are an entertainer’s delight!
Natural light floods the clubhouse through grand windows.
No matter the scale of the project, our design goals are focused on how life will be lived in the spaces created. Each of the 200 apartments is carefully thought through and outfitted with quality building materials and layouts suited for the modern adult. Ample storage, elevator-accessibility, walk-out closets, 9-foot ceilings, and tough granite countertops are just a few design features we incorporated into the apartments. We love refining our designs with the smallest of considerations and especially love how the modern steel accentuates the balcony experience.
Our commitment to designing for the future was not compromised as the Knoll is on track to become EarthCraft Certified. This certification not only focuses on energy-efficiency, but also health and durability for buildings. The finishing touches are being crafted and we are delighted to hear the enormous community interest for those who want to call The Knoll home. To learn more about this project, visit their website https://www.theknollatstoneview.com/.
