We recently enjoyed our second annual SALA Spring Project Tour after a Covid-induced hiatus and I was reminded of the power of experiencing our work together. Not to mention our driver’s delectable deviled eggs.
Our office includes architects and supporting design staff engaged in upwards of one hundred projects a year of varying scales. We are only vaguely familiar with what others are working on, and because most of our work is focused on private residences, rarely do we have the opportunity to experience the results for ourselves.
This year we set out to explore a handful of renovations, additions, and new construction, all of various scales and complexity. As a lifelong home tour-goer, the opportunity to experience a well-designed space in person has never lost its thrill. (Shout out to my parents who, reluctantly but benevolently, drove me from central Minnesota to the west metro to tour Parade homes before I had my driver license! Which, incidentally, was my first experience with SALA-designed homes.)
Thirty-some years later I still learn from these tours. Whatever stage we’re at in our careers, I am confident in saying we all do. As we progressed through our tour, I marveled at the expansiveness of interior volumes of a chapel I’d only seen in plan, and the elegant precision of a highly-considered tuck-under entry detail.
Finding delight in the unexpected is one of the greatest joys of our tours. It is also a reminder of what we can deliver to our clients, who are intimately involved in the design process, but must trust in the design and construction teams to shape it into built form. This is the power of architecture and design.
