Beginnings

Early in my career, I first experienced one of the strangest emotions related to my work. I had been doing CA on a hospital project for about 2 ½ years, and spent the last 4 months of construction on site every day. I was very attached to the project, and was excited to see it completed. However, I went to the opening party, and then it was done. The harsh reality set in quickly that even though I’d devoted 2 ½ years of my life to it, this wasn’t my building. I didn’t own it. I didn’t work in it. In fact, I had to make an appointment to even visit it. I felt a little lost.



This won’t be the case with our new office. While I don’t own it, I will visit it every day, work in it, hear the comments of my colleagues, and live with the design decisions that were made. It’s a much scarier thought than feeling a little lost!


How do I even begin to put this project into perspective? Lots of surprises - some good, some bad, some… well, just surprising. It seems to be a running theme, but I guess it comes with the territory on a project like this. Just stay flexible and roll with it – I think we understood this from the beginning. We never tried to achieve “exactness.” Instead, we came up with a set of goals and guiding principles for ourselves, and have used these as we’ve moved through the design and construction processes.


What we did know is that the project had to perform well on three completely separate, though completely related, fronts:


1. Connection to the community
2. Support of the way we work and the culture of the firm
3. Sustainability


The first two were set from a programming exercise that took place in 2006, long before we found a building. The third grew out of studies into what the first two meant to us as a firm.


It’s also probably worth mentioning here that the fundamental design concept for the project, The Black Box Gallery, came out of this same programming exercise in 2006, and became a filter to test available buildings. First surprise - the most unlikely candidate for new office space floated quickly to the top of the list.


An unlikely candidate:
You guys are really going to work in that?!?


In the early 1940’s, Sears built a below-grade maintenance bay across the alley from their 4th Street store in downtown Bremerton. The roof of the maintenance bay was a surface parking lot that accessed from 5th Street. In 1948, they came back and put a building on top of it. This served as the Sears Annex until the early ‘80’s when Sears moved out of downtown Bremerton to the newly constructed Kitsap Mall in Silverdale. The Sears Annex has sat vacant, with the exception of some pigeons, ever since.


So, what attracted us to such a place?
- Well, the location is ideal. We were insistent upon finding space in downtown Bremerton. The firm was born here, and it just wouldn’t be right not to be here.


- The building is ideal from a sustainability standpoint. Most people interested in purchasing it would immediately demolish it. By re-using it, we’re able to give a new life to an old building, and keep it from going into a landfill.


- The layout of the building is conducive to the way we work. There are two full floor levels and a mezzanine between. The upper floor is large enough to house our entire design studio, leaving the ground floor for reception, admin and meeting space, with plenty of room along 5th street for retail lease space.


- The floor-to-floor height between the two full levels allows for a dynamic central flexible space called the “Forum” – one of the key spaces that came out of the 2006 programming exercise.


- We fell in love with light at the upper floor coming in through large south-facing windows and dropping in through a raised roof area running down the center of the space.


- We’re an architecture firm – we prefer spaces with character and design with challenges. And this one has plenty of both.


Ironically, when the Partners made the decision to purchase the building last year, I was working on a project in Minneapolis and had temporarily relocated there for the spring. When I returned, a selective demolition had been completed. I regret that I didn’t get to see first-hand the condition of the building the way they did. But, I immediately fell in love with the space and saw a ton of opportunity waiting.

The view of our building as the old, deteriorated roof was removed.

After a little over a year in design, we’re finally about two weeks into construction. I find myself distracted as I look out the window at my desk to the back of the Sears Annex. It’s amazing how quickly the building changes, even throughout each day. It’s a good thing that I’m moving desks next week or I might not get any work done between now and next April.

- Jeremy Southerland is project manager and lead project designer of the Rice Fergus Miller New Office and Studio project.