Fashion's Night Out

 
Tonight, the newly opened AK Rikks will be hosting their Grand Opening and Fashion's Night Out.  So if you haven't stopped by this retail gem yet, tonight is the night!  Fashion's Night Out is one of fashion's most iconic extravaganzas celebrated in over 18 countries and 4,500 US cities nationwide.  This year's bash is themed "A Night of Mad Fashion," and will include specialty drinks, deals and live mannequins, among other things, at the 60+ retail locations that are participating in Grand Rapids.  Trolleys will be providing door to door service, so grab your friends and head out on the town from 6:00pm-10:00pm!  Just don't forget to start or end your evening at AK Rikks to check out their "dark carnival," the latest fall fashions, and innovations in the retail design of this amazing space!

For more details, check out AK Rikk's facebook page, or Fashion's Night Out's website or facebook page.

Architectural Tutorial: Boathouses

On this Labor Day, we have water on the brain.  Waterfront living, boating, the beach, sandcastles, sunsets - all those summer experiences most of us are trying to squeeze in to this final weekend of the season.  Why not turn that thought into an opportunity for learning!  Okay, I know school doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but I promise, there won't be a quiz at the end.

I'm sure you are all familiar with the variety of residences Visbeen Architects has designed over the years and if you've been following this blog, you have seen that we have customized many of those homes to fit a plethora of homeowner needs - pets, work, pools, wine and other hobbies galore.  One type of architecture specialized around a particular homeowner hobby centered around waterfront living is the boathouse.  For hundreds of years, water lovers from coast to coast dream of cover, quiet and calm for their families and their watercrafts, and the boathouse can be a perfect marriage of the two.  Three general categories of boathouse designs include canopies, sheds and residential boathouses (our personal favorite).  Canopies are a more open home for watercrafts, often consisting of just a peaked roof with columns.  Sheds can be built on shorelines, but often don't include living quarters within.  They are more of a "garage" for boats and water toys.  Residential boathouses are exactly as they sound - structures that have living space as well as slips for watercrafts.

Here are a few fun boathouses designs by Visbeen Architects....

 This is a conceptual design for a boathouse we did for Indian Trail Club in New Jersey

I'm sure you recognize this one - this is our Tupper Camp design complete with a lower level boat house.  For more details check out our posts on Michigan Blue Magazine and Cabin Life's publication of this design.

As part of the master planning we did for Ravenswood Resort on White Lake, we designed a boathouse for the residents.

Here is a fun conceptual design we did of a boathouse with watercraft storage access from both the water and the street.



Sources:
http://realestate.msn.com/10-bodacious-boathouses
http://www.home-plans-advisor.com/boat-house-plans.html

Satisfaction

Our main goal outside of creating beautiful architecture is to have happy clients.  We can tell you all day long about the services we provide, our philosophies and our process, but nothing quite beats the words of someone on the other side of things who has gone through the experience of designing a home with us.  Here are thoughts from one such client....

"We had a great experience working with Wayne and the entire crew at Visbeen Architects. We had a very narrow lot to work with, so when we decided to tear down our small existing cottage and build a new lake home, we knew we needed professional help to make the most of our space. In our initial meeting, Wayne listened carefully to what we were trying to accomplish, and started drawing out ideas even as we spoke. At the end of a very interactive three hour session, we had an initial floor plan concept and renderings of both the front and back elevations. It was really exciting as we literally watched our vision becoming a reality right before our eyes.

With Wayne's original drawings in hand, the team at Visbeen took it to the next level; creating the detailed drawings and engineering specifications needed to actually build our home. Once we had agreement on the floor plans and exterior elevations, we went back to Visbeen Associates with our builder for several sessions where we worked out the particulars of the interior architecture. Those sessions were also very interactive and Wayne's drawings were extremely helpful to us, our builder and our interior designer. They helped us visualize what the interior spaces could end up looking like, and begin to see how we would actually live in the space.

I would highly recommend Visbeen Associates to anyone, and, in fact, I already have. We had an altogether wonderful experience working with Wayne and his team, and we couldn't be happier with the end product. We simply love our new home. It's everything we dared to hope it might be." 

Michigan Blue Magazine: Fall 2012

It's hard to believe, but fall is around the corner.  It is the final few days of August, the air each morning now has a crispness to it and trees have a hint of color change on the horizon.  Michigan Blue Magazine has captured the essence of the season in their fall issue.  From a pictorial tour traveling up US Heritage Route 23, to waterfront rustic cabins, it's an entire issue filled with autumn places to visit across the state.  Don't miss our Lakestyle Cottage called the Miramar as well as our back cover ad.  As our "Vision" cover suggests, visit our website gallery for a pictorial tour of the Highfield, the perfect party pad for any season.

Brooklyn Museum Shop Wins Best Store Design

We are proud to announce that the Brooklyn Museum Shop, designed by Visbeen Architects, just won Best Store Design at the 61st Annual Gift & Decorative Accessories Magazine's Retail Excellence Awards!  Members from across all aspects of the industry assembled to applaud the finalists, winners and other honorees at the Retailer Excellence Awards Gala on Sunday evening.  The Awards program's mission since day one has been "to honor outstanding creative retailers, showcase their achievements and provide inspiration to other retailers just like them," and according to GDA's editor-in-chief, Caroline Kennedy, they have not wavered from that goal in 61 years.  The Brooklyn Museum Shop was one of five winners of the evening, with Mxyplyzyk of New Jersey awarded as the runner up in Gift Store Design/Redesign.

Congratulations to everyone involved in making this shop an award-winner!

Our friend Sallie Stutz, Vice Director for Merchandising, holding the award!

Check out our blog post from April to see more photos of this renovated retail space.

Cabin Life: Dreams on Paper: Whistling Cove

Have you ever wondered if we design small cottages in addition to some of the beautiful estates you have seen?  The answer is YES!  The October issue of Cabin Life Magazine is out and features one of our favorite cozy abodes, Whistling Cove, in their Dreams on Paper section.

For ease of reading, click here to visit the full article on our website.

A NEW company retreat

This past Tuesday, the newly joined companies of GMB A+E and Visbeen Architects had a retreat, held at the Frederik Meijer Gardens.  It was a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of introduction, a little bit of rejuvenation, a little bit of team building and a lot of fun!  Here is a recap of our day....

Held at the always beautiful Frederik Meijer Gardens, it was an exceptionally beautiful summer day!

 Harm Perdok, GMB's president, gave a little "state of the union" address.  2012 has been a great year and with all of the new and exciting changes / additions to the company, the year ahead is lookin' good!

 Wayne Visbeen gave an introduction to our little sector of the organization, Visbeen Architects.

GMB has been generous enough to support an organization called VOX United over the last year.  They are a non-profit Christian organization that works to bring accessible clean water sources to remote areas of Southern Africa by repairing existing and installing new water wells.  They also work to train the residents of those areas how to repair the wells so that they can maintain them even after VOX leaves.  VOX's goal is to never touch the wells they install more than once. We received a little demonstration on how the wells work and what goes into the installation.

We had a few team-building exercises throughout the day.  This was exercise #1.  Relating to the presentation we had just seen from VOX, we had to filter some dirty water and try to remove as much of the contaminants from it as possible, using only the supplies given to each of the eight teams.  Supplies included larger stones, smaller stones, two types of sand, three pop bottles, string, cotton balls, a bag of carbon, coffee filters, a razor blade, plastic bags, electrical tape, a straw and a plastic cup.

The final filtered products - some looked a little more filtered than others!

The judging included a taste test?  Yikes, glad I wasn't the judge!

This was my team (team 7) and we just happened to win 2nd place, the silver medal!

Team-building challenge #2: This little lego number sat in the hallway outside of the room where we met and was called "the client."  Each team had to divide into communicators and designers.  The communicators had to go to the client and study it, then go back to the designers of their team and just verbally communicate how to rebuilt it with the legos we were given.  Trust me, it's harder than it looks!

Team-building challenge #3: One communicator of each group had a picture in front of them.  They had to describe only verbally how the designers needed to recreate it on the paper in front of them, only the communicator was not allowed to see what the designers were drawing.

It turned out that each of the images the nine teams drew made up a larger picture....the London Olympics 2012 logo!

A few lessons learned...
1.  Communicating is key to success
2.  A team with a clear vision on how to accomplish their goals is a stronger team
3.  We have to know WHY we are doing what we do
4.  Most importantly, GO TEAM GMB + VISBEEN ARCHITECTS!!