Lo and Behold! A Hidden Message in Erik Hagen's Architecture! / October 27, 2020 by Erik Hagen

Do you know where the internet was started? Or when the first internet connection was made?

Well, neither did I until I started doing research for a new Student Creativity Center in a palm court breezeway underneath the Henry Samueli School of Engineering & Applied Sciences Boelter Hall in 2011. And what I found out inspired me to sneak a hidden message into the project.

When the campus architect at the time, Jeffrey Averill FAIA rejected my idea for an undulating facade with a strange mixture of punched openings, I pushed the idea to the bottom of a drawer and almost forgot about it. But I held on to if for some reason. And when the opportunity came last minute to try and tie in new floor tile within a decades old existing pattern (hint, it can’t be done, they’ll never match!), I dug down and pulled out my idea and was able to implement it into the floor tile pattern. And then I got busy on the next project and promptly forgot about it. Until several years later, the phone rang and there was a reporter from the UCLA Newsroom.

http://magazine.ucla.edu/exclusives/boelters-buried-secret/

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/a-coded-message-hidden-in-floor-247232

Video of the discovery by a curious computer science major: https://youtu.be/fiVOr-SqeN8

Pandemic at the Office! / October 6, 2020 by Erik Hagen

How is COVID changing the practice of business.

Toxic black mold, something that we have been trying to address in our buildings for years. Trying to accommodate an aerosolized virus is not unlike trying to accommodate toxic mold. A lot of the same measures, air control, containment, etc. come into play.

In a reversal of environmental concerns, we’re seeing reusables being denied and single-serving utensils, flatware and disposal items are now sadly overflowing our garbage cans and gutters. This as an opportunity for that sector to fully embrace biodegradables. And maybe, once and for all, the US and Idaho in particular will learn how to recycle ALL the recyclables.

This is all leading to a downsizing of office space or readjusting offices into a more of a shared, traveling desk scenarios allowing for more hiring and expansion without expanding office space.

In 2017 when we won the interview for the Middle Earth Housing design/build project at UC Irvine, it was all we could do to contain our excitement and finally gush about how much of a Tolkien geek we were. I mean come on, the project was Two Towers on a Hobbit Hole landform base and we had hid images of Gandalf in our renderings.

As is customary, I always like to sneak in a little gem within willing client’s projects. In this case, the design team was skeptical, but the client loved it. Prominently shown in the image above (it will soon be hidden behind the cascading terraced water feature and landscaping).

One would definitely have to be a bit of a Tolkien folklorist to make the connection upon finding it anyway. But, my hopes, perhaps like the binary code I snuck into the Boelter Hall Student Creativity Center, these weird characters cast into the concrete planter wall will peek the curiosity of enough visitors to research the characters and find the meaning behind them.

It is Middle Earth after all. So, speak friend, and enter.

Erik Hagen Architecture Gets Fired Up! / October 1, 2020 by Erik Hagen

My design aesthetic is firmly rooted in Scandinavian simplicity, warm woods with hard concrete, plain lines, logical masses. My main focus is to mix a little modern with a little traditional and always try to hide a little gem in each project. Capture the daylight and accentuate the views. Add in some industrial and farmhouse and you are starting to fill out the edges and see the type of architecture that also brought me to Boise.