The studio redesign was definitely an interesting project to undertake especially through the lens of an environmental designer. Through this project I noticed the incredible amount of opportunities where a touch of the future could be added while also deciding whether these smart technologies were necessary or if they were just overbearing.

There is an aspect of understanding what I need to add into the space, how in the world we could accomplish this task, and understanding when to integrate these aspects into the design. I learned about myself a bit and analyzed the way I typically use the studio in order to understand how to better design the bike situation and redesign the flow a biker might use.

In regards to planning, I might go about the project just slightly different. Lia brought up an interesting point to me and that is the fact that I need to start by completely understanding the bicycle. I did this to some extent. I studied the way that the bicycle is shaped (the fact that the handlebars stick out and so do the pedals) and how that might pose as a problem for the current layout of the studio considering the large swinging door and the desk that acts as a barrier when trying to get to the bike rack’s current location.

I also had to face the problem of “how far do I take this?” That really is a difficult question. The reason I became interested in design is because I loved watching HGTV as a kid. I really hated all the shows when they had a budget of only a few thousand dollars and could basically buy a few new pieces of furniture, rearrange the room, and add some new paint to the walls. What interested me was when architects got to work with wealthy clients who were ripping down their entire house to build something new and beautiful. For this assignment, I had to decide between whether I was going for the million dollar budget, or the space redesign where I tried to better optimize the space that we already had without adding an all new tech upgrade. I did added a few features I thought were interesting and I did think of any wild ideas that I could that would be interesting to integrated considering that I had the resources, but I did the best I could to think about things from a more reasonable perspective.

I believe that if I could really build in most of what I designed for the space that the bike problem would definitely be less of a problem and more of a unique feature in the studio. I have never really appreciated bicycles as much as I do now considering that without one my life would be incredibly difficult at school. I believe that I explored most avenues and took account for the user (myself and the few other bike riders).

One thing that I might do differently is go around and ask about people’s opinion of the bike rack and how it affects their experience in the studio environment. I currently am one of the few bike riders in the class that hangs their bike on the rack so I used my own experience as a vehicle to understand the space. Having other input would definitely be interesting and I’m sure would lead to more ways to better design how people use the space.