Congratulations Arianna!!

Arianna Smith, CID

A great big Shout-Out for our very own Arianna Smith who is now a Certified Interior Designer!! 

Arianna recently passed the NCIDQ exam, all that hard work has definitely paid off!!! 

Well Done Arianna!

‪#‎IIDA‬ ‪#‎NCIDQ‬  @williamspluspaddon @williams_paddon 

Read More

Introducing: Healthcare Environments Group

Read More

We are W+P!

After a short hiatus the W+P blog is back! 

...what better topic to reignite Sketchbook than to introduce you to our new W+P people.

Willams + Paddon places great value in the power of the individual. We are a company that is strong because of the diverse set of skills each person brings to the table. So without further delay, introducing........... 

Kevin Young came to us from Oregon about a year ago and he immediately fit in (even though he is a Seahawks fan!). His enthusiasm for architecture is only matched by his passion for cooking (and eating). When asked what his favorite food was he said: "I wouldn't even be able to decide if it was my last meal!" That enthusiasm comes across when talking to him, as he is the primary cook in his household and knows his way around the kitchen!

Kevin has been a great addition to the W+P team, contributing to all project types from design to construction details. His proudest work accomplishment to date has been in his role as job captain on Star Academy for Natomas Charter School. It's his first major large project and it's going really well (whew!). Kevin enjoyed working with a very strong team with great collaboration within W+P as well as with the client and consultants. He's excited to see the project through to its completion and will take on any other task that we throw at him.

Cody Carpino joined W+P just after Kevin and has been a fantastic addition to our Learning Environments team as Project Manager. Cody has also added new elements to our culture by establishing a tradition of lunch time Pecha Kucha presentations that inspire creativity within the office. 

While we like to keep him as busy as possible, when he's not in the office you can probably catch him on the golf course or riding down the face of a rock on his mountain bike. Cody is passionate about community involvement, and he is most proud of  his involvement with Leadership Auburn. Cody is a great guy to have around, especially in a golf tournament or if you need someone to reach that window submittal on the tallest bookcase shelf. If you are trying to butter him up to play on your team, take him out for some Cioppino.

We have two Jasons that came to W+P within days of one another. Confusing as it is for them to have the same name, we thought it would make it even more difficult for everyone by having them sit next to each other! Jason Coate (left) and Jason Larsen (right) are both great sports in taking on many nicknames so that we can distinguish between the two. Both are outdoors-men at heart and would rather not spend the day in an office. Jason Coate is an avid fly fisherman, spending any free time waist-deep in a stream. Jason Larsen on the other hand might be seen driving down a windy road on his Harley. Jason C has been busy working on John Adams Academy and various Kuni Car Dealerships. Jason L has been involved in some retail projects as well as the SAFE Credit Union TI and Keller Williams Folsom TI.  

We can't wait for this year's Halloween party with these two. We asked them each the question, "if you were a superhero designer, what would your costume be?" Their responses were very different but equally intriguing. Jason Coate  would be a 6ft tall HB pencil, while Jason Larsen said he would grow out his sideburns and don the leather jacket as Wolverine (the designer).

Carina Abella Huang is our newest team member, she joined us the end of May. She is a Design Architect and is accomplished in her background in Learning Environments, helping her previous company win a SCUP award for the Mission College master plan. Even in the short time since she has been with W+P her contributions have been significant. Star Academy is just one of the projects that has benefited from her skill set, as she made the project come alive with a beautiful walk-through animation. 

Though she does claim that being a mom is her first job, when she's on the job we feel like her number one priority. Balancing her role as a mom and as a Project Architect, she still finds time to rock climb at the gym and sample cuisine from various local restaurants. Love of food is a commonality among the new recruits but with Carina, anything with chocolate or pork belly stands at the top of her list. 

We are thrilled our (relatively) new recruits are part of the W+P team. No doubt you will hear more about them as they immerse themselves in projects. 

Read More

Supporting the Placer Community Foundation

This article was taken from the Placer Community Foundation (PCF) "Cause for Applause" Newsletter (Winter 2014)

Right: PCF's "Cause for Applause" Newsletter (Winter 2014) included photos of W+P's Jim Williams, his mother Ruth, his wife Diane, and other family members. Left: W+P's Dan Richards supporting PCF at a recent event, featured on the cover of the PCF Technical Assistance Program (TAP) Report.

Jim and Diane are proud Placer County residents who wanted to give something back to their place of home. Both sets of Jim's grandparents moved here to start a new life; his mother's side, the Ruhkalas, emigrated from Finland, and his father's side came west in a wagon train. Jim's grandfather, William S. Williams, was Loomis Postmaster in the 1930s and his wife, Mary, was on the Board of Trustees for Loomis School. Jim explained, "They found a community that welcomed them and helped them find their way."

Jim and Diane have had a similar experience living here, and they made the decision to open the Williams Family Fund in honor of James T. & Ruth Ruhkala Williams as a way to acknowledge their community while preserving their rich family legacy. At the Placer Community Foundation donor appreciation event in January, Jim shared, "Diane and I wanted to honor my parents, their families, and the heritage they gave us. This is a nurturing community where we built our home, raised our family, and started a business and we feel privileged to live here. This fund is in gratitude for the privilege of living in a place like this that offers so much to its residents."

Placer Community Foundation is grateful for the Williams' generous gift which will provide permanent resources to seize current, critical opportunities to make a difference. Sadly, Ruth passed away in early February and will be missed by many.

Read More

Autodesk Enlightenment : How to Go from BIM Manager to Autodesk Superhero in 3 Days

What happens in Vegas, stays in Las Vegas... But this time, I have to break that rule!

 

I made my annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the gods of BIM at Autodesk University 2013 (AU 2013) a couple of months ago. This 3-day annual software conference was held at the Venetian Hotel and Conference Center. Thousands of attendees from all over the world came to share professional experiences, learn from peers and other industries, and to see what Autodesk has in store for the future. Hundreds of classes and forums—ranging from Revit and CAD how-to’s for architects, to rapid prototyping techniques for industrial designers, to infrastructure and resource management for cities or municipalities. The diverse crowd included everyone from CAD drafters to Principals and CEO’s, representing all areas of design, entertainment and manufacturing.

The amazing things others accomplished with limited resources, or conversely, on an enormous scale, fascinated me. These innovations help improve quality of life, or bring communities closer together. These technologies save lives, or address our biggest challenges like climate change. Who wouldn’t get fired up? It triggers questions like, “How does this apply to my profession?” and, perhaps more poignantly...

“How can I make a difference like that, when I’m just a [insert title here]?"

In my case, that would be a BIM manager. But in these three short days, I received a massive dose of inspiration to think differently and find solutions… to not be just a BIM manager, but an Autodesk superhero, helping to make Williams + Paddon a better place, one workstation at a time!

I attended the “how-to” classes for Revit and CAD in past years, so this time I tried something different: a few classes directed at the entertainment industry. They did not disappoint! The CG industry has been managing vast amounts of content, complicated software workflows, and intense computing requirements for years; and some of their tools and insight definitely applies to our day-to-day project work, especially in the design and schematic phases.

One particularly cool application was an iPhone app created by Allegorithmic called “Bitmap 2 Material,” which allows you to take a picture of a material or pattern sample and turn it into a series of images you can use in your Revit, Sketchup and 3ds Max materials—a fantastic tool for reducing online material image searches. It allows you to effectively utilize a physical sample you have on hand or something you see around town. The image can be set to tile seamlessly, with special effects that might take hours to reproduce in Photoshop.

Typical buzz words were bandied about—“cloud”, “crowd”, “infinite computing”, “simulation”, “BIM to save the world”—but the truth behind those words became a little more real to me. The Autodesk-verse that is the Autodesk 360 cloud has been integrated into their AEC software products to provide a useful digital collaborative environment and cloud resource. Williams + Paddon currently uses these resources, but I will endeavor to implement more of the collaborative tools both in our office and out in the field, to improve the quality of our work and turnaround time.

Will my experiences at AU 2013 help cure a disease or reach past the limits of the human imagination? Who knows? But I do know it will make a difference to everyone I interact with. To see a co-worker smile when introduced to a new tool that shaves hours off an arduous task, or hear the “wow’s” after a presentation that far exceeded client expectations… that’s enough reward for me!

Read More

New Construction Starts On Kuni Chevrolet Cadillac

Construction on a new free standing Chevrolet and Cadillac dealership by Kuni Automotive Group has started.

 

The Fifty Three Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty (53,730) square foot facility will be located on the corner of Fulton Ave. and El Camino Ave. in Sacramento, California, which will be another giant step forward in the redevelopment of the Fulton Avenue redevelopment program. The new dealership will be comprised of a combined Chevrolet/Cadillac showroom of approximately 20,810 square feet, a three-lane drive-through service drop-off area of approximately 5,750 square feet, and an automated car wash, parts and service department area containing approximately 24,270 square feet. It will house Twenty Seven (27) service bays and two “express service” lanes with underground pits that will service up to four vehicles at one time. The dealership’s development of the approximately 5.04 acre site includes all new utility services, paved parking areas, automotive display areas, fully landscaped grounds, and both Brand and Historic Clock Tower signage.

The facility is being designed and developed by Michael Graves of Autotainment Ventures LLC, who retained Williams + Paddon as lead architect and project designers overseeing a consultant team of KPFF (structural engineers), LP Consulting  Engineers (mechanical, plumbing & electrical engineers), Warren Consulting Engineers (civil engineers), and Yamasaki Landscape Architecture. Wells Construction has been selected as the general contractor, and the project’s groundbreaking was on September 23, 2013.  The County of Sacramento has also been an integral part of development throughout the entire process, without whose assistance this project could not have happened.

Read More

Hidden Valley Lake Golf & Country Club : Off to a Great Start!

There's nothing more satisfying than knowing we've done right by our client and, more importantly, they get real value in working with us. Our ongoing involvement with the Hidden Valley Lake Golf & Country Club is an excellent example of this fulfilling experience.
 
W+P was privileged to be mentioned in the Hidden Valley Lake Association's October 2013 Special Report. Here's an excerpt from the newsletter:

"Late last year, the Board realized that we could go no further with facilities planning and design without the assistance of professionals. Thus, we developed a Request for Qualifications and distributed it to six architectural firms with relevant experience. Five firms submitted proposals after visiting Hidden Valley Lake and viewing our facilities. After reviewing all the proposals in detail, the Board chose Williams + Paddon. [Williams + Paddon] has designed golf clubhouses all over the west, including many projects for Trilogy. Some of their work includes [Yocha Dehe Golf Club at] Cache Creek Casino, Whitney Oaks in Rocklin, Catta Verdera in Lincoln, and Trilogy projects in La Quinta, Nipomo, and Brentwood.
 
Another strength of this company is its extensive work on community centers and public facilities. A sampling of this work includes Lincoln Crossing Aquatic Center, Fairway Canyons in Beaumont, Avalon in Palm Springs Village, a community center in Citrus Heights, and Trilogy projects in Brentwood, Corona, La Quinta and Rio Vista.
 
Two talented and experienced architects, both graduates of Cal Poly, are leading the work on this project. Terry Green is a principal of the firm and serves as lead designer. He has been with Williams + Paddon for [29] years. Greg Tonello has been with the firm for [29] years. He is a principal of the firm and serves as its project manager.
 
One of the tasks the Association asked of Williams + Paddon was to verify the 2007 Gentry Engineering reports dealing with code-required building upgrades. Terry and Greg assembled an experienced team to complete this work and to advise them on technical issues as their design work evolves.
 
This team includes Bill Rader of Buehler & Buehler, Structural Engineers. Josh Pirkl, Mechanical Engineer, and Ryan Cartwright, Electrical Engineer, both with Glumac. Lastly, Robert Boucher of Ascent Builders is providing construction expertise."

Read More

Dan Penick : The Latest Recruit of Team W+P

We didn’t forget about welcoming Dan…

...even if it’s taken three months since he joined our firm for this post to come out!

Dan Penick was added to W+P’s roster in September and thrown into the fire early, as we immediately inserted him into a few key projects with tight deadlines. He has not disappointed… this design savvy Autodesk Revit® Certified Professional has helped boost both our deliverables and office dynamic. Dan isn’t fazed by tight deadlines or challenging design ideas. A real trooper, he even put up with getting a can of Spam for his first ever W+P Holiday white elephant gift exchange!

 

 

Dan infuses his work with an interesting sense of style—sort of a mashup of the Bay Area and SoCal vibe. The former is where he grew up, and the latter is where he went to architecture school and worked prior to W+P. His creativity isn’t limited to his design and 3D modeling capabilities, either... W+P awarded him “Most Likely to Scare the Dog” for his Halloween costume—a full-on Frankenstein, complete with face paint, creepy stare and shuffling walk. We’ve also been hearing about some wondrous delights coming out of his kitchen… as you can imagine, we can’t wait till our next office potluck!

Dan spent some of his high school life in Sacramento, his fiancé was living in Midtown while he was working in Los Angeles, and both of their families are in the area… so in many ways, coming to W+P is like coming home. We’re glad to have helped make that happen for Dan!

Read More