On June 30, 2021, the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan broke ground on a new $7.7 million operations center that will house key teams such as operations and communications, dispatch, and a new emergency operations center, or EOC. The 11,600-square-foot facility will streamline daily activities and day-to-day management at the airport, as well as serve as a community safety resource. Stephen Clark, the director of commercial development at Gerald R. Ford International Airport, stated that the new facility will act as the heartbeat and the lifeline for the airport, as it will bring teams that are critical to the airport’s day to day operations together in…
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Made to measure
Theodore Alexander Furniture has become synonymous with widely available, luxury home furnishings for the modern residence, with stockists and showrooms around the world. One of these showrooms is housed in the Michigan Design Center in Troy, Michigan, and together with its series of Ralph Lauren Furniture offerings provides visitors from around the Midwest with the best of the global design brand, including its Made-to-Measure furniture capabilities. “Theodore Alexander is a company with one of the largest in-stock stocking programs. They have a lot of furniture that will ship immediately and then a lot of custom furniture that allows us to make something, especially upholstery, exactly what you want it. We’re…
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Elegant lake charm
A fixture in Traverse City and Northern Michigan’s interior design landscape, Kitchen Choreography LLC is known for its artful orchestrations of a home’s most traveled and functional spaces. The firm offers remodel, restoration, commercial, and new construction services and construction management, transforming numerous residential intangibles into elegant, welcoming spaces for living. For this ability, the team at Kitchen Choreography was recently awarded first place in the 2021 Traditional Master Suite category of the 17th annual Detroit Design Awards for its Northern Style residence on Crystal Lake, an inland lake just off the coast of Lake Michigan’s northeastern shoreline. The competition celebrated the best of the metro Detroit design community, which…
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Merging of vision
Since their founding in 1991 and 2002, respectively, the firm of KTGY Architecture + Planning and the interior design group of Simeone Deary Design Group have built rich project and service portfolios based on their singular approaches to space and experiential design, and comprehensive work ethics that leave no detail unturned. KTGY is a primarily multi-family residential and mixed-use design firm that has worked in 44 states and operates seven offices across the country—garnering more than 600 awards along the way—while the Chicago-based Simeone Deary Design Group has taken its experiential interior design and brand positioning practice to luxury and boutique hospitality projects across country, from the Detroit Foundation Hotel…
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The urban home
In downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, the renovation of the third floor of a historic building transforms a vacant, open space into two individual residences for its owners. Featuring a collaborative design-and-build team, which includes two businesses local to Kalamazoo, Intersect Studio and Buday’s Home Electronics Simplified, the project comprises the restoration of the building while maintaining its charm, as well as tailoring each unit to meet the needs of its resident with the installation of innovative and modern technology. Intersect Studio is a design firm specializing in strategy, architecture, planning, interior design, and experiential branding in Kalamazoo. On this project, the company paired its services and worked alongside Buday’s Home Electronics…
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Ecosystems of design
A current marker of the advancements in sustainability and innovative thinking of modern architecture, the AIA’s COTE® Top Ten program entered its 25th year this year, with a slew of new awards for North America’s most ecologically groundbreaking works of architecture. Projects across typologies, from university libraries and the health sciences to commercial adaptive reuse and deep tech—such as Microsoft’s new Silicon Valley campus—hailed from areas across the continent, with two coming from the portfolio of the Toronto-based studio of the Chicago-headquartered Perkins + Will. An international design studio located in one of the world’s most culturally diverse cities, Perkins + Will envisions architecture as a vehicle for creating healthier…
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Empathy in industry
A reusable epinephrine auto-injector; a minimalist household composter; an eco-friendly and contemporary ceramic and glass toaster: there’s no lack of innovation within University of Cincinnati alum Mary Friedl’s expanding portfolio. The industrial designer graduated from the university’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning last May 2020 and promptly won a competition for designing an eco-friendly toaster as a part of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s Sustainability Deep Dive 2020 conference. With an overarching goal for creating empathetic and impactful design work, Friedl has delved into design research and work that promotes health and sustainability, whether through products purposed for medical environments or those of which simply bring people…
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Tuscan-style villa
Situated in a historic building in downtown Mishawaka, Indiana, Spalding Design Group LLC was founded in 1991 with a mission of capturing moments through design; the focus being the stylistic vision of the client. The firm’s multi-dimensional enthusiasm for personalized design is realized through its broad range of services and clientele. With three core service areas of architecture, interior design, and marketing and branding, Spalding Design Group branches into more intricate facets such as 3D modeling and site animation for a spectrum of typographies from medical and educational to multi-family and warehouse architecture. The assortment of service and flexible stylistic abilities offered by Spalding Design Group are preserved in an…
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Design by tile
Tiles as an interior finish can bring a distinct style to the built environment. Whether through the clean and contemporary aesthetic of lacquered subway tile or in a punch of vibrant color carried on through an untraditional pattern, there are nearly endless possibilities for crafting the personality of a residence using tile as a medium. At the Michigan Design Center in Troy, Michigan, there are several experts in the tile realm ready to help recognize the most creative applications: something becoming more of a reality for stay-at-home workers and homeowners seeking to customize their spaces. As one of the first tile showrooms within the Michigan Design Center, Beaver Tile &…
