Posts by Jessie Whitesides

Asquared is the Architectural Consultant for the Roseland Village Re-Development Team

Asquared Studios Partners Tony Garcia and Jessie Whitesides are proud to be members of the new Roseland Village project in Santa Rosa.  Selected to be the Architectural Consultants in collaboration with Kellogg and Associates, Asquared is excited to be a part of new mixed use re-development project in the heart of the Roseland area of Santa Rosa.  The project is to include a public Plaza, Mercado, Joe Rodota Trail improvements and affordable and market rate housing.

On Wednesday night we participated in the well attended community design workshop at Roseland Community Center.  It was an inspiring evening and a great opportunity to meet the residents that this project will benefit.  We found the evening to be a huge design success!  Kevin Kellogg hosted the evening with MidPen Housing and the Sonoma County CDC with the goal of having the residents get involved with the project design features.  This workshop structure allowed each resident to have a voice in the vision for the features of the outdoor plaza, site circulation, and landscape masterplan.  Each design team member conducted 3 exercises with smaller groups of residents; the exercises included mapping out the current circulation patterns around and through the site, recognizing the current features and destinations in the area as well as defining future destinations they would like to see, and inspirational image recognition and story telling.  The community was overwhelmingly engaged, and the story telling component provided the design team with invaluable feedback for the spirit of the anticipated design and masterplan.

The next community design workshop is scheduled for October.  In the upcoming workshop the development team will be presenting 3 design options for the masterplan that account for all of the information and inspiration gathered from the first workshop.  The residents will have the opportunity to offer comments on each design, helping the design team to develop the final masterplan direction.  We look forward to seeing the Roseland Residents in October!

Designing a MDI Foot Controller For a Professional Musician

One of the things we find so interesting about our profession is that the expertise we have gained over the years to have a critical eye and an exceptional aptitude for attention to detail, can be applied to the “design” of many things outside of the architectural realm.

A couple of months ago my brother Jody Whitesides, approached me to help him realize a vision he developed for a much needed, compact, complete, and technology driven MDI foot controller.  As a professional musician he recognized that the industry was missing a vital piece of integrated equipment that would make the show playing life of a musician much easier.  He had a desire to create it.

When he first reached out to me he described his vision and the research he had completed for manufacturing, expenses, and his expectation for performance.  Knowing very little about the music industry I could offer nothing about the effectiveness about his ideas, but I could lend my expertise to the process of material selection, design, and assembly as well as the development of the shop drawing information for the successful manufacturing of the equipment.  Over the course of a couple of weeks he assembled the precise measurements and information that I requested from him, until finally we were at the point I could give life to his ideas.  For hours we would screen share while he watched me draw his foot pedal.  I completed the plan, sections, and elevations while he decided on a identity and a logo.  The result of our collaboration: “HIVE”

HIVE is an all in one MDI foot controller now used by Jody at his live performances.  It incorporates traditional foot pedals, device switches and buttons, and adds a USB hub and connections, as well as powers a high definition screen set to mirror his computer, to provide live visual feedback, allowing masterful control of the sound coming from his guitars.  We are proud to present the video below of HIVE!  Our first collaboration between Architecture and Music.

Click link below to learn more:

HIVE

Asquared Studios and Mending Wall Winery Install Tesla Charging Station
Napa County
August, 2015

As Architects we are faced with the challenges of meeting all sorts of local and federal codes and regulations while solving the design problems that our clients approach us with in each and every project.  In recent years the number of challenges we face has increased exponentially with the requirements of “green” or “sustainable” design movements.  In California we have incorporated a Green Building Code into our standard level of practice, and at Asquared Studios, we have found that with the growing pains for accepting what these means to design solutions waining, the silver linings are rising.  A whole new world of research, materials, and technology has opened up.  For example, we have been provided the opportunity to become more aware of the trends in the automobile industry to provide alternate fuel vehicles to the market.  One of the largest influences on the industry is Tesla Motors.  With their technology reaching into the future, the accessories and services they offer inspire attractive solutions to the requirements we now face in the design of preferred parking and charging areas at commercial + public building designs.

At our recently completed design for the Mending Wall Winery, we feel proud to have had the opportunity to be introduced to the charging units and services that Tesla provides it’s customers.  The owners of Mending Wall had the foresight to not only move forward with the installation of the now required electric vehicle charging stations in the visitor parking area, but to make one of these stations the modern and attractive Tesla specific charging station.  Now, Tesla driving visitors can find their way to the Mending Wall Winery and enjoy an exceptional tasting experience and all the while charging their vehicle.  See the Tesla website for all available Tesla specific charging stations.

Tesla Motors – Mending Wall Winery

Asquared Studios Explores Living Pictures with Lytro
Sonoma County
June, 2015

A couple of months ago Jessie Whitesides, my partner and Architect, shared a discovery with me about a camera and technology that was new to us. She called with excitement to tell me about a product by the name of LYTRO, exclaiming, “can you image being able to change the focal point after the picture is taken?”. Of course the promise of this sounded great. Because we make every effort to take all of our project photos ourselves, we wondered if this technology might have benefit to manipulate our photos in post production to focus exactly on the features we want to highlight.  We did not necessarily make moves to explore the camera immediately, but on my recent trip to Santa Rosa we decided to give it a try as we were looking to capture new project images.

We headed to Shutterbug Camera and became the first to rent their LYTRO.  The technology is so new that no one in the store was able to give us any advice, in fact they asked us to provide feedback to them when we returned the camera.  The learning curve with this technology is both fast and slow. We spent about an hour watching tutorials on the Lytro website, and began to get a sense of what a LIVING PICTURE is. From there we jumped in head first and started shooting our recently completed project “Richards Grove Pavilion”.  We quickly came to realize that the camera itself does not necessarily function for us the way we anticipated, and may not be the best tool to shoot overall architectural images. The camera does however, allow you to bring the finer details to life; just like as their tagline states, this is an amazing camera to capture people (and the details of those people). They refer to their images as ‘Living Pictures’.

By harnessing the entire light field, the  LYTRO ILLUM, allows you to explore focus, perspective, and depth of field within a single image in post production.

We took the camera to our recently opened winery project, Mending Wall Winery. There we were able to capture a few detail shots. The images with people as part of the context have more impact but we also managed to capture a couple of building angles that worked well. The camera software is intuitive and easy to use and it allows you to export their native file type either as a movie file or a jpeg (picture file).

As Jessie and I considered the possibilities, we imagined that if this technology could be applied to cell phone technology, people would love it. We may not run out and purchase our own LYTRO but we will certainly rent it again when needed. Take a look at some of the images and movies we captured here. You may just be inspired to tap into your inner artist and go capture a few “Living Images” of your own.

Cheers – Tony Garcia, AIA, Architect

Click links below to learn more:

Living Bike Rack

Living Wine Sip

Living Bar Detail