Exploring order and chaos in design and the creative process.
The creative process requires a certain amount of introspection, and general navel-gazing. We are certainly not above that sort of thing here at the studio. Like the quote from Kuhn suggests, how you start a project has certain unavoidable consequences. It becomes important at a certain point to foil your own plans, and indeed question the notion of plan making in general for some more nimble notions like strategic anticipation, or improvisation. Like many designers, when loo
Introducing Red Mountain Bikes | Birmingham Architects Blog
Have you heard of a business called Red Mountain Bikes? If not, it’s okay – it’s not a real business. One day, we noticed a large group of cyclists congregating in a parking lot across from our bDot 29th Street Studio. Seeing such a large and vibrant gathering – a community, really – inspired us to create a business out of thin air, one that would cater to the needs of Birmingham’s growing bicycling community. We decided that Red Mountain Bikes would be a bicycle repair shop
The bDot Bus Stop | Birmingham Architects Blog
What is a bus stop? Besides the obvious, of course (a place for people to wait for the bus). As Birmingham architects, we see public transportation all around us. We see people waiting on the side of the road next to blue and white markers, all throughout the year, whether it’s hot, cold, rainy or dry. And as we contemplated this question, and observed how people interact with their bus stops, we started to see that bus stops are a combination of marker, shelter, transportati
The Relationship between Designing Furniture and Designing Buildings
As architects, we are primarily tasked with designing buildings. That doesn’t mean we can’t direct our talents elsewhere, as we do with our custom furniture design. One may wonder what designing furniture could possibly have in common with designing a structure. After all, they’re on two completely different scales of human interaction. But there is a link between designing for one and designing for the other, of creating furniture and also creating buildings in which furnitu
How a Law Firm’s Office Bridges the Gap between Traditional and Modern in the South
In architecture, there is a divide of sorts between two styles: the pull of the traditional – a retelling of a storied past, based on preconceptions and rooted in culture – and the alluring progressiveness of modern. Bridging that gap – or chasm, at times – can be difficult, especially if the client itself is divided between the two sides, wanting two different looks and environments for the project. If some involved want traditional, and some want contemporary, how do you fi
The Humanity of Southern Architecture: Our Work with American Family Care
It can be easy to think of architecture as a field obsessed with aesthetics – almost solely with how a building looks and appears inside and out. While aesthetics are important, so is function. Even more important is how the function serves its primary purpose: meeting the user’s needs each day. In other words, we at bDot Architecture focus on the humanity of Southern architecture – of how the design relates to people and what it communicates to them. Our work with American F
