By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Being a one-man architecture company can be a pretty solitary endeavor, but architect David Maxam circumvented that problem last April. That’s when he launched Maxam Architecture and jumped at an invitation to share Suite 303 at 25 Ottawa Ave. SW with other creative-types — Mark Bird of Bird Design and Craig Clark of Clark Communications.
“I knew I didn’t want to be that guy working out of his house,” Maxam says. “This office presents the right image, and there’s some cross mentoring that goes on around here.”
Maxam, 35, designs residential, commercial and industrial buildings with a focus on the message the building projects: traditional, high tech, retreat. He uses ArchiCAD software, creating 3-D on-screen models his clients can “walk” through like a video game, providing 360-degree views of the space.
“When looking at a blueprint they don’t know what a space feels like until the project is built, and it may not be what they want,” Maxam says. “Viewing the 3-D models build consensus and certainty and helps you catch problems way further upstream.”
Maxam’s collaborative office environment brings him in contact with a variety of ideas, and that gets the creative juices flowing.
“The synergy between us gets me thinking outside of just architecture as spaces,” he says. “It gets me thinking of what an architecture project can communicate to the city.”
The East Grand Rapids native came back to Grand Rapids after graduate school at Miami University in Cincinnati.
“I love Grand Rapids,” he says. “It’s the right combination of big city and small town. It’s an environment where I’m most valuable and effective. In Chicago or L.A. I’d be just a number in the field of architects.”
Source: David Maxam, Maxam Architecture
Photograph by JD Hage/Green Frog Photo
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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