Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2012 - (Page 6)

in my own words building great Places MARIANNE CUSATO Designer In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Marianne Cusato was among a small group of designers and architects summoned to Louisiana. Their charge: design an alternative to the trailers provided as temporary housing to disaster-stricken communities. In 2006, her 308-square-foot Katrina Cottage won the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s People’s Choice Award. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, Cusato is the author of two books, Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use and Avoid and The Value of Design. She is now writing a third book to help people decide where to move, as well as working on a new series of houses called New Economy Homes. grade-school architect even as a kid in grade school, i was very interested in buildings. i’m from alaska, and my family would always visit my grandmother in California over spring break. my parents were planning to retire there, so they took us when they looked at houses they were considering. that’s when i started drawing up little plans of condos on golf courses. it was fun, and i kept at it over the years. When i was in junior high, my parents gave me the floor plans for our house so i could see the wall thicknesses and what sizes different elements were in a home. that same year for Christmas, i got a t-square set with a scale and triangles. it was at this time, when i was in seventh grade, that i decided i wanted to be an architect. i’m very fortunate that i’ve always known what i was interested in doing. the very few schools that teaches about forms and cities as they relate to pedestrians and a mix of uses and all the things that make great thriving places. they teach about designing community. for me, that is the heart of architecture. it’s amazing to see the social benefits that come from building a great place: people walking, eating at sidewalk cafes, engaging, meeting others. great places create the framework of great communities and great societies. training into practice my first job was at a very small firm called greenfell architecture in Charlotte, north Carolina. i chose a firm where i knew i would be able to work on everything. a lot of times, the young person out of school gets sent off to draw the bathrooms and all the other stuff that no one wants to do. But because i was in a small firm, i was able to go to all the client meetings with my boss. i saw how everything happens and was involved in all of it. that firm also did consulting work for duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, a miami-based firm that did urban planning and traditional town plans. they would have “charettes,” big workshops where they bring in architecture planners, traffic consultants—everybody that you would need to do a master plan for a new neighborhood or a town. so for my regular job, i got to design buildings; and through our consulting work, i helped design communities. disaster and opportunity Later, in new York, i worked for fairfax & sammons, a firm that does exclusively high-end single-family residential designs. they were meticulously crafted projects that took years from conceptual design to full-scale drawings to building. it was beautiful work, but my heart wasn’t in it. i’ve always had an interest in affordable housing, so after learning all the principles that were applied to multi-million-dollar homes, i wanted to apply them to affordable houses. in the beginning of 2005, i started my own business. one of my first phone calls was to andrès duany, the planner i’d worked with in Charlotte, and he started sending some of his developers my way. then, in august of 2005, hurricane Katrina hit. i was among 200 people who duany invited to a big the heart of architecture What i really loved about notre dame was that they teach traditional architecture and urbanism; it’s one of 6 imagine may/Jun 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2012

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/june 2012
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Building Green
Learn and Build
Tinkerer’s Dream
The Healing Touch
From Jupiter to the Moon
Building a Better Landmine Detector
Designing the Future
27 Pipes
Better Than Wikinotes
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Exploring Our Political Legacy
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2012