For Kei Yamagami, a believer in the perfect circle as the ideal architectural form, flow is everything. She brings an Eastern perspective to Western goals, which made her the right choice, according to R. Joyce, Firefallmedia&#s managing director, to facilitate the company&#s mission, and make it truly expressive in physical form.
The new office complex will include studio space for original film, audio and book production, as well as a research facility in the visual arts for four-color gold-salt photography. At present, Firefallmedia, based in Virginia, maintains satellite facilities in San Francisco and New York. These will be consolidated in a multi-faceted complex in Green River, Wyoming.
Kei Yamagami, former Design Director and Vice President at Gensler & Associates, where she worked on the architectural design of numerous corporate headquarters,is a protegee of Orlando Diaz Ascuy, who taught her simple elegance and strong conceptual design. Last year, with Dowler Gruman Architects, she completed the design of the new additions to Sun Microsystems&# campus in San Carlos, California. There each building is represented by a different color palette, with accent colors to help visitors navigate throughout the large floor plate. Barbara J. Robinson, graphic designer, assisted her, as colorist.
Kei Yamagami is San Francisco based. There, recently, she completed the design for Yoga Magazine&#s new offices. Here her style choices involved color finishes reflecting impressions of the yoga world in its calm and serenity, and its call for daily exercise.
Other of Yamagami’s architectural design commissions include private homes, expressive of traditional values. Wood-shaping carpenters were brought from Japan, for their time-honored skills, to complete the concept.
The architectural challenge at Firefallmedia begins with 100 acres of high red desert, banded up uplifts. The buildings will be connected and blend into the landscape, yet be open to it. An electronic highway will link the facilities and its artful outreach to the media future.
No viewings of the construction in progress are planned. However, on completion, there will be an unveiling rather than a ribbon cutting, as the structure proposed promises to be unique and unexpected, inside and out.
Samples of Yamagami&#s creative work can be seen at
www.design-kei.com. Meanwhile more can be learned about Firefallmedia from its main website:
www.firefallmedia.com &
www.firefallmedia.com/firefall-literary.html. For further info, contact Annie Azoulai, Communications VP at Firefallmedia.
tel: 510-549-2461
