Week 11

Industry Visit - ThomsonAdsett

This week we had our industry visit to ThomsonAdsett in Fortitude Valley. ThomsonAdsett is an architecture and design firm that has been operating for half a century located on Australia’s eastern seaboard.

ThomsonAdsett has a care ethos and does work mainly in aged care, retail, education, health, resorts and multi residential, including student accommodation.

Their Brisbane/ Meanjin office has multiple break out spaces and meeting spaces with exceptional attention to private spaces for new mothers and prayer.

Their open boardroom used many acoustic treatments, such as acoustic paneling on the walls, and acoustic ceiling, lights and curtains, something I didn’t know existed. They have placed the boardroom more internally due to the services in the ceiling. This left space for what’s known as the veranda. This space allows for the morning sun to come in and illuminate the boardroom, but also provide an alternate breakout space for employees. With a keen understanding of how the space will be used by staff, the floor to ceiling windows next to the desks are manual, and can be rolled up and down depending on personal preference, while in the communal space, the blinds are electronic.

Accommodating new mothers, people from all faiths and physical ability is a key value of the company. The quiet room has been designed with new mothers in mind to pump, but also provide space for prayer and yoga. The kitchen has accessible space below the island sink to accommodate a wheelchair if necessary.

In talking to Shireen about graduate skills, she defined the use of Revit to be the most important, it’s a skill I definitely need to work on. She also mentioned that creating a portfolio, whether a website, Behance or Instagram and can show out work, design knowledge and personal flair to be important as well.

Materials Board

Because my group partner Rhianna was unwell, I took on the responsibility of collecting the materials for our materials board. This was my main objective for the week. I went to Beaumont Tiles, Highgrove Bathrooms, King Furniture and Bunnings to collect the materials. My biggest struggle was finding a sample for a stone counter-top. As our main objective for the space was to use as many natural materials as possible, our goal was to use an authentic piece of stone. Because it just didn’t seem in the cards, I found a piece of laminate that looked pretty similar to the pattern we wanted.

Material Selection