By Kirsten Staloch, Assoc. AIA, LEED Green Associate, EDAC
I have been working in a professional architecture firm for just over two years now. After school, I started in a healthcare studio bright-eyed and ready to apply every nugget of education crammed into my brain from the past years in architecture school. Clemson's Architecture+Health graduate program propelled me to this point in the profession where I am now working in a firm figuring out lean processes for staff and combining design with functional medical needs.
Working fulltime in a firm really brought reality to the forefront as I moved from graduate school into the healthcare design world. Working on projects and getting acquainted with this profession has been a wonderful, yet daunting experience. I enjoy applying wellness into projects and working with different stakeholders. I have the opportunity to work on a wider range of projects, from regional clinics through a large-scale campus renewal medical center; each of them have unique lessons and challenges.
I appreciate the phenomenal network of individuals and volunteers who lead healthcare within the greater architecture profession. Many of the AIA members and ACHA certified architects are inspiration for what my peers and I can achieve in the profession. I learned there is more to the healthcare design life than conferences and networks. It is about sharing ideas, learning and affirming our passion to work for the greater good in health and wellness.
Opportunities to develop my interests were carved from work with the AAH and greater profession, from being introduced to the surplus of educational opportunities at HealthcareDesign as a Herman Miller scholar, to continuing to study at Clemson with the Tuttle Fellowship, to working with the Summer Leadership Summit planning committee as a recipient of the Next Generation Scholarship. This profession has great possibilities for young professionals. Thank you to all who support these fellowships and the additional opportunities for emerging professionals.
As I began my professional career, I was awakened by all the additional architecture "stuff" that was part of life. It was intriguing to attend emerging professional gatherings to learn about the different projects my colleagues were working on outside of the healthcare field, and then share my own experience about how healthcare design includes its own unique qualities. I learned about the real "stuff" including how the firm operates and that studying for those AREs is not as fun as reading health policy.
The biggest take-a-ways I have learned from my beginning include
- the honor it is to be a part of building environments for healing
- balancing the knowledge about wellness, technology, policy and research as we work in architecture
- merging the concepts of functional medical planning and superior design
- the foundation of a successful project is quality teamwork
Some of my favorite tools: Bravo! Pilot Sketch pen, BlueBeam, Revit, HERD, trace paper and Caribou coffee
Kirsten received her Master of Science in Architecture+Health from Clemson University in May 2015. She is a senior design coordinator in the healthcare studio at HGA Architects & Engineers in Minneapolis, MN. Kirsten earned her Master of Architecture degree from North Dakota State University.