Author: kmarieclark

Visiting Ancient Roma

The arch of Constantine, it’s 1700 years old. There is a lump in my throat as my small feet move, my legs stretch to step along the 1′ square stones, marking the ancient Roman road. The stones are glossy after all of the rain. We are in the forum, a place we can walk around.

Most of Rome’s ruins are below the street, to the enjoyment of my companion. She is from Mexico City, and this ancient city reminds her of Aztec ruins, temples and pyramids hidden below the modern city she knows.

The Pantheon doors don’t tell you about what’s about to happen. My soul is taken, uplifted below the moon disk looming, hovering, suspended and heavy am I, just left standing and staring until someone comes along to accidently brush my shoulder. The Pantheon is even older, built 1900 years ago, remaining as a backdrop to the many movements of people, for a new history.

Architecture Travel

Architectural Trips ~ A Italia

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date May 11, 2016
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Gloss-lipped sun, over the road that carries morning back to Italy. I love going to a place that’s in my blood. The rays lay down, everyone else moving with me is pale and excited.

Once in the air, we fly along with the barrier islands of the states before heading eastward.

Once in Rome we enter the city through one of the fourteen gates, and bow down before the sunken oval entrance. A mosaic of Jesus greets us, and then we are allowed to sleep.

It isn’t long before we need to draw the Colosseum. The historic mass that takes up the end of a city block. The figure that is recalled so easily in the mind, stands before me in a way that pushes back.

Tags To Italy with Fairmont State's Architecture Class in March

Architecture

The Health Plan – Wheeling, WV

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date May 6, 2016
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A new building is proposed for downtown Wheeling, WV and it leaves the architect’s desk today.

Read about Mills Group‘s involvement as the architect, and all of the consultants it took to prepare documents in the ground breaking coverage of The Intelligencer.

Architecture

Time for Coffee – Morgantown Marriott

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date March 28, 2016
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It’s always difficult to finish. It’s even more difficult to finish a project as large (70,000 sf), out of masonry and through two winters in a little over a year! The Grand Opening party is scheduled for June, but the hotel will open its doors before that. The contractors who have seen that every joint is caulked, ever louver installed, and that each fan is drawing the required air, have been a blessing to the architect. I am thankful that each member of the team cared as much about providing the owners and the Marriott brand with a hotel that is of the utmost quality. Not only were things finished the right way, but they were finished the best way. Thank you, thank you. Come and visit the hotel for yourself soon!

Architecture

Morgantown Marriott – Punch List

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date March 6, 2016
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Look at the hotel now! A year ago today the Marriott site looked like this:

The drawings weren’t even complete. They looked like this, without bathrooms in the guest rooms, because we were determining the pod geometry with Oldcastle.

The first week of March 2015 was spent preparing specifications and the Marriott Courtyard prototype drawings for compliance, selecting finishes and fixtures from the options and coordinating those with our MEP trades. Structural coordination and structural detailing went on simultaneously. Mills Group had the fortunate experience of working with great owners, West Place LLC. Throughout the project we coordinated with A LOT of consultants including: the general contractor, Waller Corporation, Oldcastle for bathroom pods, our MEP and Structural consultants at Allegheny Design Services, Cheat Road Engineering for the site, Marriott of course, Mack Industries who provided our precast floor plans, Concrete Fabricators on the stairs and small details surrounding the outside, Fairfield Landscaping, Gilliana Pools, REDI Kitchen Consultants, Mongiovi, Morgantown Security and Fire, and Schindler to name a few. On the sub-contractor side, Elk Electric, Pine Hollow Mechanical, Inc., JMJ who built the cabinetry and Daniel W’s FF&E team who installed it have all worked alongside Waller’s tireless team to be where we are today with a space that is finishing beautifully.

Our architectural firm uses many technologies to complete our work. Revit was used to draft this project during the production drawing phase and during our most recent punch list efforts we’ve used Blue Beam Revu. More on that program to come. For now, enjoy the final few stages of construction and FF&E setup as the Mills Group team sees the progress during the punch list process. Enjoy the images below!

And then, two weeks later, photos by Mariah:

Architecture

Marriott Update December 2015

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date December 21, 2015
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Foundations began less than a year ago for the Morgantown Courtyard by Marriott, and now a few months before opening, the building is standing with a real presence.

Mills Group made it on OldCastle’s blog recently for this project in Morgantown! Check it out here. December has been unseasonably warm. As of today concrete and asphalt surround the building awaiting the winter opening. Winter sod will be installed soon as the finishing touches from floor five down are complete. At the start of December I walked the building with my colleague and we marveled as we watched sixty drywall finishers, some on stilts, move through level three to mud, sand and paint the drywall. The top two floors look like white boxes awaiting their finishes. Soon the Marriott Sign will arrive, and the building will have a name to the public. The collage of photos below were taken by Waller Construction.

Tags Construction of Morgantown Marriott

Travel

Ostia Antica, Italy

Ostia Antica is the site of an ancient Roma civilization. Our family spent the first night we arrived on the back porch of Ostia Antica Park Hotel, the site of our worst Italian experience. The first communion celebration extravaganza should have tipped us off. This place was an in-between place, convenient for travelers to the nearby airport with nothing more of the community to be shared. I would have to pay to swim, pay to sit on the front patio, pay to stay too long at breakfast. So, we eventually figured out other places to spend time while staying at the hotel. Walking around downtown wasn’t so bad, considering the well maintained private drives.

This place was beautiful but I wouldn’t recommend our hotel for many more reasons by the end of our stay. The first being the common ‘misunderstanding’ of many restaurants serving American tourists. They loved to give us 5-times the portion of appetizers. I tried out all of my verbs, condividere – to share, or the simple word for divide, dividere. But, none of them worked. The waiters all wanted to see our faces when what was meant as an order to share was way too large for any group to split.

We had to say goodbye to my brother who would be flying back to the States earlier than the rest of us. We’d also have to say goodbye to my Mom’s camera and all of her beautiful pictures that was lost or taken somewhere in the lobby of this hotel or as we boarded the bus out from the front door. The hotel staff, with access to the security camera, refused to watch the tapes for us as we called and called back for help. That is, they refused or saw something they didn’t want to share with us. It was difficult to understand either way. Even a year later it is hard to digest the faces and scenes my Mom had captured with her creative eye, then lost.

We’d spend the day my brother left playing in the ruins around an erie feeling of a spirit returning.

Architecture Travel

The Annunciation of Mary – Florence

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date December 16, 2015
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Italy is the place I always go back to. While my husband explains, and I realize, that there is an entire other world out there, there is something about the Mediterranean climate and the exuberant expressions in the way Italians do everything from eat to talk that I want to keep coming back to. Of course, my family is from there too. While I committed to learning the language with my mother a few years ago, since moving to Morgantown I have not had the same opportunity to continue on with Italian language classes. I am hopeful that my opportunity at Fairmont State University will expand to include travel abroad, and perhaps sitting in a classroom with an Italian professor again. But, for now, a few more photos from our trip April of 2014.

The Santissima Annunziata Chiesa di Firenze, the most decadent and bronzed church I’ve ever been to.

Tags Visiting Florence

Architecture Travel

Studying Historic Italian Architecture

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date December 11, 2015
2 Comments on Studying Historic Italian Architecture

Sometimes it takes hearing things three times before they click. I traveled to Italy for the first time as a student at Virginia Tech. That was in 2002. Now, thirteen years later, I am taking a class by a professor who is an astute historian. It’s enjoyable to learn from someone who can sight off exact building dates from architecture built in the 1400’s to now, and probably earlier depending on the structure. The history theory class I’ve taken this semester has offered that third opportunity to learn about the same thing. I’m hopeful that this time I’m retaining the information.

Michelangelo’s square, the venetian library of Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana on San Marco and Bramante’s forced perspective at the altar of Santa Maria presso San Satiro church are among many works that I’ve learned more about this semester.

(The photographs above were found online.)

Learning about these again prompted me to pull out photographs from my 2002 study abroad, and define the places that I’ve spent the years since wondering again about what it was that I visited.

About Me Architecture

What should Architecture be?

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date December 9, 2015
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What should architecture be? What should I be as an architect? The class discussion about Le Corbusier required that I define something for myself!

The more I learn about how to be a better person, the more I believe everything I do should relate back to the same thing. When my family traveled in Italy in 2014 we took an 11 o’clock taxi ride to our hotel outside of Venice. The three miles was something like 30 euros, a rip-off, of course. My mother was upset and when she demanded an explanation the cab driver simply handed over his laminated ‘terms and conditions’ sheet. My family then decided that we all needed terms and conditions of ourselves and that declaration has been with me ever since.

So, with the task inspired by Le Corbusier from an architect’s perspective and my belief that all things in life relate, I’ve drafted the following.

I must try to write every day. Language relates my actions to my beliefs. Sometimes not until I write, do I fully understand what I think.

Help others.

Reading and writing influence my work.

Everything is better with a good cup of coffee.

Authentic experiences must evolve.

In architecture, there exist inner and outer forces, meaning that there is the way people want to use a space, and the conditions of the site, culture and area in which the project exists. I’ve started a chain letter to a colleague that describes how I start a project, and I believe the next step to understanding the conditions of project is to evaluate the materials with which one is to be working with. Then, the structure, something holds up and together a project, and then the infill may be allowed to be more fluid.

Homes are for eating, cleaning, sleeping. Beyond the home there is work, social interactions, and commerce, everyone sharing their work. I need to develop my thoughts architecture beyond the home.

All things great or distressing become better when they are shared with someone else.

Live life how you believe you should be living. (What you identify with, you become. – from the Deepak Chopra meditations.)

What are your ‘rules’ of life?