We had our annual offsite at the beginning of this month! It was a 3-day long fully packed itinerary focused on team building, site visits, and fun. To keep the tradition of Kerhonkson offsites going, we all met Wednesday afternoon at the Starlite Motel!
Day 1
Once we all arrived at Starlite, we celebrated Alexa’s birthday! We enjoyed a delicious ice cream cake from Cherries.
After we got some sugar we were off to a surprise offsite project. Every offsite there’s a surprise project – last year we began designing the owl houses for Project Hoot, and in the past we’ve built furniture pieces or birdhouses. This year, we were introduced to a new project to design a guest house for one of our favorite contractors, Maxx, of Cherry Hill Construction. Like with many of our projects, to begin the design process, we went to the site and listened to all of Maxx’s must-haves and visions for the guest home.
Maxx pointed out where his favorite view is, where there’ll be a lot of traffic (need for privacy), how he cares more about a living area than his bedroom…along with many other helpful details!
After seeing the site and speaking with Maxx, we headed to TinkerBox, split into pairs, and started designing.
We then held a charrette to share each design and provide feedback for one another. These presentations were also great practice for when we later explained our designs to Maxx and his team on Day 3.
To close out the night we headed to Mill & Main, which we helped design the interior for, and celebrated the opening of the new restaurant!
Day 2
For the second day of our offsite we kicked it off by visiting Art Fort. Art Fort is currently in the middle of framing, so we had Eleftheria walk us through the project. For each site we visited, the Project Managers talked us through the home including certain details on site, favorite parts of the project, and learning moments in the process.
After Art Fort we went to TinkerBox to participate in some workshops. We began with some self reflection, (“me”) and set out some goals we each wanted for the year using values cards.
We then practiced playing different roles (client or architect) and used fake prompts to work on problem solving and better leadership for our clients.
After talking about different ways to better the firm (“we”) and our clients’ experience working with us we put our boots on and headed off to Saugerties! At Saugerties we visited Fermata, SkyHaus, Rebus, and Saugerties Lake House.
Once we finished visiting all of the sites in Saugerties we headed to Flying Goose to enjoy some wine and pizza. Flying Goose, whcih we helped design with the clients, is a soon to be wine bar in downtown Kerhonkson right next door to Mill & Main. We had a great time getting to know our clients and stuffed our faces with Ollie’s Pizza!
Day 3
We began the final day of our offsite with donuts at Cluster One‘s rooftop deck.
After walking around Cluster One and seeing all of the updates, we went back to TinkerBox to talk as a team about how we lead one another. Whether on projects, office culture, or leading by example, we all shared how we lead.
Next, we met up with Cherry Hill Construction to have lunch and to talk about ways we can better design for construction. We asked how we can improve our sets or provide more details, what challenges they’ve come across building our designs, and where we can adjust out designs to be more efficient or cost effective for construction.
We then presented the schemes for Maxx’s guest house that we worked on during our first day.
After presenting to Maxx he took our designs home to look through them again. We’re looking forward to hearing his full feedback and to continue the design process. We then wrapped up the offsite and wished each other a happy weekend!
Each offsite is a great time for the team to be together, off of our screens, focused on one another, and of course to have some fun! We hope you enjoyed reading about our offsite and getting to know a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes.