KRI Architecture & Design is a firm dedicated to it's clients, dedicated to the design process and dedicated to the experience of life through architecture.

Principles & beliefs

As a firm there are three principle beliefs that we follow.  The first is that we are dedicated to our clients - their dreams, demands, resources, aspirations and financial realities.   The second is that we believe in the process of design.  Great design comes from great communication, design development, challenging ideas and creative imagination to solve problems, and truly understanding who you are and what you really want.  The third is we believe that architecture plays a vital role in how we experience the world, and how the world experiences us.  That our environment should support us when we are not strong enough, and inspire us when are at our best.

We understand that almost without exception our job entails more than just design.  "Architecture" is a myriad of issues that can arise from permitting to fire spinklers, WUI codes to financing, and we are there with our clients as they cross each hurdle.  We work with our clients to build their dreams and desires as well as solve their issues and obstacles.  We are a firm that has a reputation for being able to solve some of the most difficult problems.

We believe that the foundation of great design is the comprehensive organization and implementation of a process that starts with the creative and visionary conceptual design phases and moves into the detail and articulation of design development and construction documents.    Once the construction documents have been finalized, the stages of permitting and working with skilled contractors and builders to take idea to conception begins.

As important as the design, is the financial understanding of design decisions, material decisions, and structural and system integration to keep costs within budget.

OUR INFLUENCES AND TEACHERS

Bill Kleinsasser

Synthesis 9

Bill Kleinsasser was a professor of Jim Givens, and later David Madsen and wrote Synthesis 9 - a synthesis of ideas and properties associated with design and global understanding of the principles of complete design.

James Givens

THe Luminous Room

James Givens is a practicing architect across the West Coast and professor at the University of Oregon.  His teachings and beliefs played a major role in the influence and development of design ideas and practices implemented by KRI.

Christopher Alexander

pattern language

253 patterns for towns, buildings, and construction

The language begins with patterns that define towns and communities. These patterns can never be designed or built in one fell swoop—but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these global patterns in it.

The next part of the language gives shape to groups of buildings, and individual buildings, on the land, in three dimensions. These are the patterns which can be "designed" or "built"—the patterns which define the individual buildings and the space between buildings; where we are dealing for the first time with Patterns that are under the control of individuals or small groups of individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once.

The next, and last part of the language tells how to make a buildable building directly from this rough scheme of spaces, and tells you how to build it in detail.

Frank Lloyd Wright

ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE

Frank Lloyd Wright introduced the word ‘organic’ into his philosophy of architecture as early as 1908. It was an extension of the teachings of his mentor Louis Sullivan whose slogan “form follows function” became the mantra of modern architecture. Wright changed this phrase to “form and function are one,” using nature as the best example of this integration. 

Although the word ‘organic’ in common usage refers to something which has the characteristics of animals or plants, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture takes on a new meaning. It is not a style of imitation, because he did not claim to be building forms which were representative of nature. Instead, organic architecture is a reinterpretation of nature’s principles as they had been filtered through the intelligent minds of men and women who could then build forms which are more natural than nature itself.

Organic architecture involves a respect for the properties of the materials—you don’t twist steel into a flower—and a respect for the harmonious relationship between the form/design and the function of the building (for example, Wright rejected the idea of making a bank look like a Greek temple). Organic architecture is also an attempt to integrate the spaces into a coherent whole: a marriage between the site and the structure and a union between the context and the structure.