Today we got the chance to visit Urban Works and meet with founding partner of the firm Patricia Saldaña Natke and her business partner and husband Robert E. Natke. Although it’s a firm that is socially focused in terms of its work and supports the designing of schools, libraries and public facilities, it has expanded its scope through designing offices and retail-commercial spaces. The passion in their projects was seen through their achievements and the awards displayed in their office.
On learning about her journey that started out in the South of Chicago and her desires of reaching out to neighborhoods that are not as developed as the city, her concerns were majorly with peoples voices not being heard. With this, she took up an initiative of supporting not for profit projects in her firm and has been the only Latino-woman-run firm in Chicago since the past 25 years.
We were introduced to two of their projects in detail. The student housing project in Pilsen, Chicago was initiated with a motive of increasing the Latino college graduation rate. They interviewed the students as to gaining their perspective on the design of the dormitory. The project design aligned with the idea of the house - with the dorms around the kitchen. The second project was a nursing unit in the basement of the building which had its existing grid laid out. They were able to derive the design solution with the fulfillment of the clients design requirements and involvement of the users of the space. It was interesting to learn that both their projects involved their users opinions.
I learnt two important things through this meeting - her first project as a firm, after her work experience with Carol Ross Barney, was not the type of project she wanted to work on. But she made her way through working it out. And today she has been successful in working on the projects she has always been interested in pursuing. Secondly, it was the type of work that Ross Barney Architects was doing, which drove her to take a decision to part and start her own practice - starting out at 28 after attaining a license was surely an inspiration to me!
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