Friday, May 8, 2020

Off Topic - '97 Doghouse Design at BWBR

Many years ago, while I was working at BWBR Architects in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, I was part of an internal 'young architects' group, called Momentum, that designed and built a doghouse for a local Humane Society fundraiser... this is today's 'off topic' post!


keep reading to learn more...


BWBR was a great place to work and has always been a designed-focused, forward thinking firm. Honestly, the only reason I left was to move back home to raise our children. Although we did not work there together, some of you many know my friend Dave Plumb who is their current BIM Manager.

Here is a photo I took of our built doghouse at the event. Originally, the goal was to gather found elements at an architectural salvage yard and formulate a design from them. After a couple ours of searching and not finding ANYTHING worth using, we changed our plan and built what you see here. Most of the work was done at home of one of the firm's lead designers at the time, Chuck Knight FAIA.


The doghouse eventually ended up getting published in a book about custom designed doghouses! The book is titled Barkitecture by Fred Albert. Not the best picture of our doghouse, but still cool that is was published.


Not bad for a design/build project mostly done over a single weekend:)

Fun stuff!




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