MAC Design Group

Kathaleen Maclean on Design, Comfort

773 Alder Avenue Sherwood Park, AB T8A 1V1 780-974-4016 • kmaclean@macdesigngroup.ca www.macdesigngroup.ca

By Mark Kandborg

I

f you work in an office, bank or restaurant, chances are you haven’t given much thought to your surroundings – but someone has. That floor plan, the front desk, even the way the morning sunlight plays across the wall behind you, or the number of steps it takes to reach the water cooler all existed in the mind of a designer long before the first employee, client or customer walked through the front doors. While it may be that the final result has never pierced your workaday consciousness, if you are lucky enough to be spending your time in a space designed by Kathaleen Maclean and MAC Design Group, it’s extremely likely that it has.

A Maclean-designed space is much like the woman herself – impressive without being showy, impeccably put together and exuding a certain je ne sais quoi that immediately puts you at ease. Her passion for her profession is palpable, as is the clarity of her vision. Her standards are second to none. “When it’s done and you walk in, I want you to say ‘wow.’ It couldn’t possibly have been any better. There couldn’t have been one more thing.”

Maclean has been a design technologist for nearly 15 years, and if the ‘technologist’ element seems out of place, it shouldn’t.

“What I do is very technically based,” she explains. “Maybe 10 per cent is making things pretty. The rest is making it work. It has to be highly functional and safe. Codes have to be followed and you have to think five years ahead.” For Maclean, a space is something you can grow into, not out of.

Which isn’t to say that Maclean doesn’t bring a singular sense of art and style to her designs. One look at any of her work will

Zones and the ‘Blow Your Mind Option’

immediately tell you that. “I’ve been artistic all my life,” she says.

“I love to paint, and picking finishes, colours, floors, all the little details - that’s the fun part.” The real work is in what she calls “the assemblies”: the walls, the doors. A whole lot besides that make a space efficient and workable.

“I’m not designing for me,” she says, “I’m designing for the client and for their clients. If it’s a law firm, the partners need to be happy, but the 20 other lawyers in the office should be too.” It’s not just a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. Or the Jones, Smith and Tannenbaums, in this case. The overall impression has to be taken into account. “You don’t necessarily want your clients to walk in and say, ‘So this is what my fees are paying for’.”

The MAC Design Group approach to each job, however unique, is the same. “I never look at one of my clients as a number or a project. I get to know them personally. Everything they tell me matters, so you have to be a good listener.” Nonetheless, Maclean has no misconceptions about who the expert is, or why she was hired. “I’ve been doing this for years, and there isn’t a project that hasn’t taught me something. I’ve learned what makes it work.” Although, she admits, sometimes it takes some pushing and pulling to get her client to see it. “People get locked into an idea very quickly,” Maclean says. “But once you gain an element of trust, you can pull them outside of their comfort zone, and that’s necessary to get the best space.”

To take them from where they might think they want to be to where they realize they really want to be, Maclean gets her clients to make a ‘needs’ list and a ‘wants’ list. “Tell me both. I’ll go away and come back with three options.” One of those options will be utilitarian, she says. “The second will be a little different, and the third will be one you hadn’t ever thought of. I call it a ‘blow your mind’ option.”

While we’ve covered the technical, artistic and interpersonal skills that make Maclean and MAC Design Group a force to be reckoned with, there’s one ability that has yet to be discussed, and it may be the most powerful of them all. It is, simply, the ability to get things done. She is not just a designer, she’s a project manager, developing AutoCAD drawings, coordinating with contractors, keeping things on schedule, dealing with the paperwork, inspections, and regulations. She also makes sure the proper government authorities get the drawings and issue the necessary permits, putting together the whole package. “It’s not just imagining a pretty space. It’s work. If I have to get into it with a snarky carpet layer, I will,” she says. “Or more likely, we’ll sit down for lunch and work out the issue.”

Then there are the ever present client-imposed deadlines. “If it’s 12 weeks, I have to make that happen,” she says. “You work backwards. If it takes eight weeks to build, that gives you two weeks to design, a week of approvals and a week of flex.” As she said, a design technologist. The perfect pairing of art and science.

As the saying goes, if it was easy, everyone would do it. Maclean spent some years teaching design, and although she loved the interaction with her students, watching them develop and tap into their creative energy, she found that many of them were less than enthusiastic about the amount of hands-on work that would be required of them when they entered the workplace. “It was frustrating at times,” she admits. “The last thing I wanted was to send them out there to fail.”

But Maclean and MAC Design Group are thriving and neither she, nor her clients, could be happier. “I never want to do anything else,” she says. “I’m completely and utterly devoted to this. I can’t imagine anything else that would make me want to jump out of bed every morning and work every day for as many hours as I do.” macdesigngroup.ca