Alumni Spotlight

Program in Environmental Design announces 2020 Alumni Awards

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 07:00:00 +0000

Program in Environmental Design announces 2020 Alumni Awards Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/19/2021 - 00:00

The University of Colorado Boulder Program in Environmental Design has announced the recipients of the 2020 Environmental Design Alumni Awards. This year’s honoree for the Distinguished Alumni Award is Sarah Broughton and The Young Designer Award has been awarded to Mike Blea.

The Environmental Design Alumni Awards honor individuals who have demonstrated leadership and made significant contributions to the design and architectural professions.

Distinguished Alumna Awardee:

“The amazing faculty throughout my time at ENVD, starting with Juana Gomez in my first studio. Her favorite saying was “it is a good start.” That was very motivating for me because it kept me reaching and pushing design. As I have progressed through my career, I am thankful that through the curriculum at ENVD, I honed my critical thinking skills. This has proven invaluable to me as our projects continue to be more complex and challenging.”

Sarah Broughton, AIA, NCIDQ and principal of Rowland+Broughton, brings over two decades of experience in the architecture and interior design industry. She is the champion of R+B’s design philosophy and rigorous quality control standards, as well as a leader to her design staff. In addition, she is a highly respected colleague in the design community and among clients.

Sarah leads the studios in participation and management of all phases of the design process, including client relations and proposals, project programming, conceptual design, design development, architecture and interior design, project budgeting, construction documentation and contract administration. Sarah is very active in her community. She served as Chair of the City of Aspen’s Historic Preservation Commission, is involved with multiple non-profits and is serving her second year as the AIA Colorado West Director. Sarah helped rewrite the Aspen Historic Preservation Commission guidelines and the Aspen Commercial Design Guidelines. R+B frequently provides feedback to the City of Aspen on land use regulation.

R+B has been the recipient of multiple City of Aspen Historic Preservation Commission Awards for its historic preservation work. Both Aspen and Denver studios are located in historic buildings that have been lovingly preserved by R+B. With Sarah’s leadership, the firm has received numerous AIA, ASID and IIDA awards for excellence in design. The team is especially proud to have won AIA Colorado’s 2020 Firm of the Year. Sarah was awarded the Defy Ordinary award from the City of Aspen Chamber and the Aspen community and was named an Outstanding Woman in Business by the Denver Business Journal. Both of these awards recognize Sarah as a champion of the community and a leader to her colleagues.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Sarah attended the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree in architecture, with honors in 1996. Sarah is a licensed architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Sarah is also a licensed interior designer and a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID).

"Sarah Broughton is a great example of the progressive and broad thinking that is leading the architecture profession forward. The design work that she leads at Rowland + Broughton combines the awareness of user needs with the elegance of a design philosophy that captures the natural beauty of Colorado and the progressiveness of the west. I believe Sarah is a great example for the next generation of designers who are looking at bringing the natural environment into a central role in their design solutions. It is an honor for CU Boulder to have played a part in Sarah’s successful career."

–Paul Chinowsky, director, Program in Environmental Design

Young Designer Awardee:

“When I reflect on my time at ENVD, I often remember the feelings of opportunity and excitement that seemed to live inside of the design studios. As someone with no formal or informal design training, I was constantly amazed with the ingenuity & creativity that my peers embodied. Being surrounded by people that were motivated by good design was intoxicating. For me, being exposed to the CINC [Creative Labs Center] put me on a different trajectory than a typical architect and I feel very lucky to have had that opportunity.

While in school I met my wife, my business partner (both of whom were ENVD students), and multiple mentors who I have continued to stay in contact with and who have helped me develop into a better designer/fabricator/builder/architect. I am very thankful for my time at ENVD as it provided a crucial foundation for how I think about design and the built environment.”

Mike Blea, AIA and co-owner of Raw Creative, received his environmental design degree in 2010. He then earned a certificate of construction management from Colorado State University and later pursued a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Colorado Denver. Before Blea established himself as an NCARB-certified architect, a licensed general contractor and a local leader in digital fabrication, he was learning the ropes from his uncles on construction sites across the Denver metro area.

Today, he is regularly welcomed as a featured lecturer in the architectural and design community. Blending years of hands-on site supervision experience with a passion for crafting intentional spaces, Blea’s multi-disciplinary background continues to shape the unique design, build and install capabilities of the Raw Creative studio.

"Iconic is a word that is often overused. However, iconic is the perfect word to describe the work that Mike completes with Raw Creative. Mike has brought together the concepts of design, the pragmatism of construction, and the innovation of fabrication into a unique vision that is fundamentally changing our perspectives on what design can bring to critical details of projects. Whether it is a restaurant interior, an exterior entrance, or a park, Mike’s distinct voice can be seen in its iconic features. CU Boulder is honored to have Mike as an alumnus and we look forward to watching Mike continue to create new paths in the design industry."

–Paul Chinowsky, director, Program in Environmental Design

The University of Colorado Boulder Program in Environmental Design has announced the recipients of the 2020 Environmental Design Alumni Awards.

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ENVD announces first-ever Distinguished Alumni Award

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:09:31 +0000

ENVD announces first-ever Distinguished Alumni Award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/12/2019 - 16:09

This year, Environmental Design celebrated homecoming 2019 by announcing it's first-ever Distinguished Alumni Award. The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated community leadership and made a significant contribution to the design profession.

This year’s honoree was Harvey Hine, principal architect at HMH Architecture + Interiors, AIA, for his contributions in the field of architecture.

The event was held in the environmental design building, with a welcome from Paul Chinowsky, director of the Program in Environmental Design; introduction of the award by Brandon Anderson, instructor; and a presentation by Harvey Hine.

This year, Environmental Design celebrated homecoming 2019 by announcing it's first-ever Distinguished Alumni Award.

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City installs new skateboard features at Valmont City Park pilot program

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 17:03:09 +0000

City installs new skateboard features at Valmont City Park pilot program Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/21/2019 - 11:03

Environmental design students contribute to new temporary skate features, to the long list of park amenities, at Valmont City Park, in celebration of national "Go Skate Day" on Friday, June 21. Originally posted on bouldercolorado.gov.

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Thinking Forward at Rothschild Downes

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 17:47:50 +0000

Thinking Forward at Rothschild Downes Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/22/2019 - 11:47

As one of the premier national, third-party providers in the Retail Tenant Improvement industry, Rothschild Downes (RD) knows where to find the best talent. As a graduate of Environmental Design with an emphasis in Architecture (ENVD ’89), Principal Owner Mark Meiser believes that the students coming out of the ENVD program are equipped with the skills that help them thrive in his business-minded, full-service design and construction company. From the Denver “Basecamp” office to field offices in all the major markets around the country, Rothschild Downes offers an arsenal of services to clients including in-house design, project management, construction management, and tenant coordination services to the leading developers, owners, and operators of large scale complex mixed-use projects. With the training students receive in school, first-year grads have the design skills to hit the ground running and are immediate assets to the company. Rothschild Downes has hired seven graduates from the ENVD program in the last two years, and their varying skill sets have brought them to every discipline within the company, from Denver office design roles to on-site field roles in project management and tenant coordination.

According to Meiser, it is his company’s ability to provide one-stop retail tenant coordination services that has taken the company to new heights:

“We have doubled the size of the company the past two years and love to marry up young talent with experience and train them up. It is THE RD WAY. It’s a big commitment for us, from a resource-perspective, as a medium-sized firm with principal involvement on all levels. But, with the mindset of Thinking Forward we are going to immediately put these recent graduates front and center with important tasks on billion-dollar development projects or portfolios using their all-around education and passion for the built environment and in particular their computer and design skills in programs including Revit, CAD, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and SketchUp. We see how well they can take direction with their assigned responsibilities and the firm provides the checks & balances to expedite their learning while cranking out great product. Our employees have an immediate impact at the company; we want high energy motivated individuals to shape them as future stewards for our specialized niche in the industry. We are extremely proud of our culture.”

Anthony Jones (ENVD ’17) has worked for RD for nearly two years as a CAD Services Manager and understands how useful his ENVD education was in making an immediate impact at RD:

“The variety of programs that we used in ENVD helped a lot. When you can take a PDF and bring it into Illustrator and make edits, it blows people’s minds. It’s crazy how Illustrator and InDesign are like foreign languages to a lot of people, but in ENVD you use them on every project. For example, we make resumes for all our employees when they are moving to the next project, and we make those in Illustrator sometimes, but without ENVD graduates as employees, this wouldn’t be possible. ENVD teaches you what looks good, as well as composition. You don’t find that in other programs. If you can bring that to a company who before didn’t have that line of thought, it’s a really big contribution to the company.”

Annee Cooper (ENVD ’18) likewise appreciates the skills she learned as an architecture student at CU in preparation for her eventual job at RD as a CAD Services Manager:

“My job is fairly architecture focused, so my architecture emphasis along with Marcel de Lange’s materials class has been very useful. With the Tenant Design Manuals that we create, I have to go through construction drawing sets for each project and extract the necessary information in order to relay design guidelines to the tenants, so learning how to understand construction documents in ENVD has also been very helpful. I have also used my Adobe skills at RD to clean up renderings and other drawings that are used in our Tenant Design Manuals.”

Based on his track record with the Program in Environmental Design, Meiser has a lot of confidence in the alumni he hires and counts on them to represent his company well. From the most recent round of hiring, Meiser has sent three ENVD alumni to join the Hudson Yards Tenant Coordination Team as integral team members on the largest private real estate development project ever attempted in the country – the $26B campus of Hudson Yards in New York City. RD was assigned with the crown jewel of the development over five years ago, the $2B Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards, with 80 stores and restaurants successfully delivered at the recent March 15, 2019 Grand Opening. Kurt Gravit (ENVD ’17), one of the three ENVD graduates who were on site this past year in New York, said that the scale of the project is larger than anything he ever imagined he would be involved with as a professional, especially in his first post-grad job. Regarding his duties at Hudson Yards, Gravit says:

“I work in the Retail Podium which is part of the Hudson Yards campus. There are currently five towers that are under construction and the retail podium is a seven-story shopping center that sits between the two towers along 10^th Avenue. I’m basically a project manager here. I work with two construction management companies, I utilize BIM [architectural design software] coordination and manage installation of utilities and provisioning for the tenant spaces; everything involved in preparing the tenant’s units and providing landlord work is what I manage in the field.”

Bradley Miller (ENVD ’18), who works alongside Gravit in New York, is amazed by all the pieces of a construction project he manages in his role as a Retail Tenant Coordinator:

“As a Tenant Coordinator, I am heavily involved in the tenant improvement process which includes coordinating tenant building systems to tie into base building MEP systems. I also provide design, mechanical, electrical and plumbing reviews to ensure that tenant spaces are being constructed correctly and abide by the Hudson Yards Design Criteria which was generated by the RD Basecamp Denver office. I am fully involved in the constructions process from A to Z.”

Chad McOuat (ENVD ’13) began his career at RD in 2013 and has been all over the country with the company, acting as “boots on the ground” for projects in places like New Orleans, San Mateo, and Atlanta. As part of his role in the company, Chad works hand in hand with the Principals of RD to oversee the Tenant drawing Design Review as well as the creation of the Tenant Design Criteria Manuals for most of the projects the company does.

“In Atlanta, I worked on a luxury shopping center called The Shops Buckhead Atlanta. It was already an operating shopping district prior to me taking over, but I managed the build-out of a steakhouse and a few other retail shops. We also picked up Mill Creek Residential as a client, who develop large mixed-use apartment complexes. There are five different Mill Creek Locations around Atlanta, and I manage the retail portion for them - everything from leasing through construction. I am behind the scenes on everything involving those tenants, whether it’s making sure that all of the design is complementary to the project aesthetic or that their contractors are adhering to our Rules and Regulations."

Back at Basecamp, several ENVD alumni employ their design skills to support these construction projects in New York, Nashville, Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco, Tampa and other projects around the country. Annee Cooper relishes her role in contributing designs for tenant manuals that RD’s clients use. She explains:

“I am currently making a Tenant Design Manual for a project in Gainesville, Florida. The manual lays out the criteria and vision the landlord has for storefront design and is given to the tenant when they sign their lease to move into the retail space. That is what I have been working on for the past couple of months. Prior to that, I was doing more CAD work, lease plans and lease outline drawings for all of our projects, both of which lay out the lease line of the space which shows the rentable square footage that the tenant has to work with. The project we just started is a similar Tenant Criteria Manual for a shopping center in Honolulu, Hawaii!”

Caresa Atencio (ENVD ’18) describes her position at RD as the perfect setting to experience unique design opportunities and acquire new skills, but also to use what she learned at CU:

“I work alongside our in-house architect, Sera. I’ve assisted mainly with white box tenant improvement work for Hudson Yards. This includes some preliminary CAD work, construction document review, signage shop drawing review, etc. In the beginning, I was able to assist with some interior design work by creating a library of finishes for tenants to choose from which included flooring options, wall finishes, and lighting.”

Meiser truly values the contributions of his young workforce.

“If you come to work for Rothschild Downes, we are going to train you to be Owner’s Rep’s and business people first; use your skills as an architect, train you in construction management, blend it all together and hopefully you will become a long-term employee that is sustainable based on your ability to provide all, multi-faceted services to our clients,” Meiser said.

Rothschild Downes has hired seven graduates from the ENVD program in the last two years, and their varying skill sets have brought them to every discipline within the company, from Denver office design roles to on-site field roles in project management and tenant coordination.

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Recent Grad Joins WORKSHOP8 Team

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Oct 2018 16:08:02 +0000

Recent Grad Joins WORKSHOP8 Team Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/19/2018 - 10:08

Matthew Murray, B.EnvD '18, is now an architectural designer at WORKSHOP8 in Boulder. Learn more in WORKSHOP8's blog post.

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Designing for Sustainable Communities

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 22:43:59 +0000

Designing for Sustainable Communities Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 16:43

Emily Lawrence

Immediately after graduating from Environmental Design in May 2018, Claire Derr found herself designing and supporting sustainable communities with Pyatt Studio and the Building Cooperative. Pyatt Studio is an architecture and planning firm based in Boulder that focuses on community-based projects. The Building Cooperative is a non-profit organization that the leadership team of Pyatt Studio started this year to “expand upon Pyatt Studio’s programs in education, job training, and affordable housing to help more people around the globe transition out of poverty - and stay out of poverty.” A primary focus of the Building Cooperative’s current projects is to improve upon access to affordable housing in Rural and Native American Communities.

Derr’s work with the Building Cooperative began during her senior year while interning with Pyatt Studio. Her initial assignment was to create a database for grants and other funding opportunities necessary to start realizing the vision of the Building Cooperative. Upon graduation, Derr joined the team at Pyatt Studio. “After graduation, Claire’s communication about what she wanted in terms of an opportunity with Pyatt studio was very clear. I had a lot of confidence in her because she knew what she wanted to do,” said Rob Pyatt, Principal & Design Director of Pyatt Studio.

Derr’s favorite work so far has been helping with the design of a new facility for the Walatowa High Charter School, located in the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico. Derr likes that the school’s emphasis on experiential learning is reflected in the design that Pyatt Studio has created in collaboration with the students, faculty, and administration. “The design is really strategic with incorporating natural systems like natural ventilation, daylighting and thermal massing which makes it an environmentally and culturally appropriate building that really fits into the site.” The Building Cooperative is now working with the school to create a design-build curriculum so that students can participate in the construction of the new campus over the next year.

Pyatt Studio and The Building Cooperative are also working with the Taos Pueblo Housing Authority to create a master plan for a 50-acre housing development. In July, Derr helped to facilitate one of many design charrettes at the Taos Pueblo, where community members are involved in the ongoing process to design the new housing development. "It was an honor to be a part of conversations with tribal elders and learn about their culture, life, and land." The community members’ vision has been integrated into the design in many ways, including the addition of an expansive trail network and community greenspace. “By reducing lot sizes and designing with the site’s natural topography, we were able to achieve a higher density, while preserving open space,” said Pyatt.

As an Environmental Design Alum, Pyatt emphasizes the importance of student portfolios in evaluating internship or job candidates. “ENVD students can follow their interests, they can have a very broad education or a very focused education. For our studio, the hiring process is portfolio-based since any given student can have a different experience in ENVD.” Derr encourages students to look for an internship or job at an organization that aligns with their individual and professional values. “The work Pyatt Studio does is work that I truly believe in because it’s part of a larger conversation around using design to provide housing and communities that are beautiful, functional, environmentally sustainable and culturally appropriate.”

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