Four outstanding young graduates of the Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and Design, who completed professional studies at K-State in 1999, have been named 2009 Alumni Honorees.

The Alumni Honorees will visit Manhattan on Thursday and Friday, November 12 and 13, 2009, to meet with students and faculty, as well as to participate in class and studio visits. An exhibition of their professional work will also be displayed in the Chang Gallery of Seaton Hall from November 1-13.

ADAM HERBIG first became interested in architecture while quite young as a frequent viewer of “This Old House.” He was fascinated by how buildings were put together. His seventh grade art class was tasked with designing a house and building it out of cardboard. Adam designed the whole thing to 1/4”=1’ scale and built it to insane detail. When he saw that it worked, he was hooked on architecture!

Adam came to K-State as a graduate of Oak Park High School and resident of Gladstone, Missouri. He was drawn to K-State by the multitude of design course options available within the college and the “down to earth” attitudes of the faculty. Interior architecture perfectly fit his appetite for learning how to do design with creativity and apply it to practical applications.

While at K-State, Adam was a member of the Concert Jazz Ensemble, which helped him keep a balance between work and play. He spent his study-abroad in Prague, experiencing one of the most amazing six months of his life. Adam feels the broad knowledge he gained through the interior architecture curriculum set him on the path for a wide-open career.

Following graduation, Adam accepted a position as an exhibit designer with the Freeman Company in Dallas, Texas. Though he hadn’t had significant experience designing exhibits, the skills he acquired at K-State offered a fresh perspective and ability to translate design to manufacturing. Adam spent two full years at Freeman learning “the ins and outs” of the industry, designing environments for everything from optical instruments to fire trucks and anything in between. 

The pull of family and a desire for new challenges brought Adam back to Kansas City and to Winntech, a design and manufacturing firm. There, Adam brought a new level of exhibit design and manufacturing practices to their consumer electronics clients and retailers. Throughout his tenure as director of industrial design, Adam was privileged to be involved in many innovative and award-winning exhibit and retail projects.

After three years, Adam was brought over to the Kendal King Group by one of his former co-workers. Adam immediately expanded the abilities of the group. The need for exhibit and interior architecture services for many of their major brand clients was a huge draw for Adam to come to this entrepreneurial company. The challenge of growing a business segment within the company has proven to be a tremendous learning opportunity.

Today, as director of environments and events, Adam has built a solid business of exhibit and event services under the umbrella of Kendal King Group. Most of his daily work now encompasses servicing his main client, Nickelodeon/Viacom Consumer Products. He has thoroughly enjoyed producing several focused industry events, assisting them in marketing support, and he especially had fun bringing SpongeBob to life nationally at Walmart this past March.   

Throughout the past 10 years, Adam has always enjoyed coming back to K-State as either a guest lecturer or critic. He is always excited to participate in any forum to help students. He longs to give back, and he finds that he gets so much benefit from the students’ fresh energy. Adam says it’s always great to see what the students are doing.

Adam and his wife, Stephanie, have a loft in a converted historic building near downtown Kansas City. He plays bass in a local band in his spare time and enjoys traveling for fun with Stephanie to the quiet corners of the Canadian Rockies.

JASON JAGGI is from the St. Louis area but spent most of his childhood in Tampa, Florida.  He chose to attend K-State because it was recommended to him by a professor at Missouri State University. 

Jason enrolled at Missouri State University as an undergraduate with the intent to become a cartographer. While in the cartography program at MSU, Jason enrolled in an introductory planning course and an urban geography course. It was these courses that sparked the interest in planning as a discipline that could combine many of his interests in the areas of geography, mapping and cities. After his second year of cartography studies, Jason changed his major to community and regional planning and completed his degree in 1997.

Encouraged by his professor at MSU, Jason began to consider graduate planning programs. After a visit to the K-State campus and meeting with Professor Al Keithley, the program director, Jason realized that the program at K-State would be a great fit.

After his acceptance into K-State’s graduate planning program, Jason was awarded a Community Development Work Study Assistantship, funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. As part of this program, Jason served as an intern at the (former) Big Lakes Regional Council. While at Big Lakes, Jason assisted in the administration of housing rehabilitation projects and wrote grant applications to fund rural economic development projects in the North Central Kansas area.

Following completion of the Master of Regional and Community Planning in 1999, Jason accepted the newly created planner position for the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri. While at Kirkwood, his duties included developing strategies to revitalize the city’s downtown area, carrying out development agreements for a redevelopment area with significant funding allocated to housing improvements, and assisting with the preservation of the city’s historic preservation assets.

Jason accepted a position with the St. Louis County Planning Department in 2000. As a planner in the comprehensive planning division, Jason participated in several initiatives including an innovative tax-supported community development initiative called Community Comeback, housing and neighborhood plans and community-wide comprehensive plans.

In 2004, Jason accepted the position of planner with the City of Clayton, Missouri. While Clayton is a large city in terms of its physical form, it has a small planning department. Being in a small department has allowed Jason the opportunity to work in several areas of current planning and long-range planning. In this position, Jason’s daily tasks are to oversee the city’s zoning and subdivision ordinances, review complex development proposals and prepare recommendations to the city’s plan commission. In addition, Jason reviews proposed exterior changes to buildings and provides recommendations to the city’s architectural review board.  Earlier this year, Jason was promoted to senior planner. Taking on a new role within city government, Jason has served as the point person for the city’s sustainability efforts in addition to his normal planning role. As a tribute to Clayton’s sustainability efforts, the city was recently awarded a Growing Green Award by the St. Louis Chapter of the US Green Building Council. One of his favorite on-going projects is the master planning process for the city’s central business district (CBD). The city is looking to expand on its successful CBD in order to attract additional residential and retail uses.

For the past two years, Jason has served on the advisory committee for the Missouri State University Department of Geography, Geology and Planning. He is also the past treasurer of the St. Louis metro section of the American Planning Association.

Jason is married to Nicole Jaggi and they have two children, Andrew and Benjamin. Outside of work, Jason enjoys traveling, playing golf and spending time with his family.

As the daughter of a National Park Service park ranger, HEIDI (BIELENBERG) POLLMANN moved frequently during her childhood, affording her a variety of experiences including life in large cities and small towns and an early appreciation for the environment.

Heidi attended Burke High School in Omaha, Nebraska, where a job at a landscape nursery and position on the golf team peaked her interest in golf course design and ultimately led to her enrollment in K-State’s landscape architecture program. 

While at K-State, Heidi was a member of the Dean’s Student Advisory Council, the Landscape Architecture Student Advisory Board, the KSU Foundation student board, and vice president for development for her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. Perhaps the most formative college experience for Heidi was participating in the Santa Chiara Italian Studies program in Castiglion Fiorentino during her fourth year. Here, she developed a passion for walkable communities, public transit and good food. 

Heidi interned with Gage Davis Associates, a multi-disciplinary firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, for two summers and, upon graduating, returned to Scottsdale to pursue her dream of designing golf courses. While with Asmundson and Company, Inc., Heidi was involved with an historic renovation of Haggin Oaks, an Alister Mackenzie designed course in Sacramento, and the design of The Home Course (selected as the assisting course for the 2010 US Amateur Championship) in DuPont, Washington. 

Desiring to diversify her experience, in 2002 Heidi moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and joined Patti Banks Associates. During four years at PBA, Heidi worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from large highway projects and trail masterplans to regional transit studies.

Since 2007, Heidi has been a project manager at Confluence (formerly Brian Clark + Associates) where  Heidi oversaw the renovation of the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivor’s Park on the west edge of the Country Club Plaza and is currently managing the design and implementation of corridor aesthetics associated with MoDOT’s kcICON project and the new Christopher S. Bond Bridge. 

Heidi continues to be involved at K-State, serving on the Landscape Architecture Advisory Board and as a guest critic and mentor both at KSU and the joint KSU/KU interdisciplinary program at the Kansas City Design Center. She also remains active in Kappa Alpha Theta, having served as a college chapter advisor and president of the Greater Kansas City Alumnae Chapter.

Heidi has served on the executive board of the Prairie Gateway Chapter of ASLA and currently chairs the LINKS (Leadership, Ideas, Networking, Knowledge, Solutions) continuing education program and is a member of the Mark D. Moore Golf Tournament committee. In 2007 Heidi was selected to serve on the Kansas City Mayor’s Citizens Light Rail Task Force. 

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Heidi has completed four marathons and numerous half marathon and shorter distance races.  Heidi is married to Mike, a 1999 K-State architecture graduate, and both enjoy travel, cooking and golf.

RYAN ROBINETT says his curiosity about architecture didn’t come about from any pivotal poignant moment that he knowingly remembers. He just always sensed that architecture combined all his interests and passions and was the only thing he ever considered doing professionally.

Immediately drawn to K-State after a visit to the campus, Ryan found the tranquility of the campus and Manhattan the perfect place to be consumed by creative exploration. His major influences at K-State were amazing professors and many, many outstanding peers. He’s certain his introspection of design comes from the voice, pace and attentiveness of Professor Vladimir Krstic’s questioning. And in a subtle way, Professor James Jones made Ryan much, much more unafraid than he had been. But it was the dedication and obsessiveness of his classmates that taught Ryan how to stay inspired.

Ryan was part of the first group of K-State architecture students to study abroad in the Czech Republic. From a small town in Missouri, Ryan had rarely left the state except for an occasional visit to Kansas or Arkansas. The flight to Prague was his first time on an airplane. Being out of his element was a great learning experience. The immersion in a different culture was a huge boost to his creativity and self-confidence as a designer.

During his fifth year of architecture studies, Ryan was the co-winner of the prestigious Skidmore Owings Merrill (SOM) Fellowship which he used to travel to France, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. He spent the majority of his journey studying the work of the Wiener Werkstatte and the drawings of Egon Schiele, both of which are a big inspiration.

After college, Ryan headed straight for Seattle-he knew he wanted to try living on the west coast but swore he would never live in California. He met his wife, Megan Histand, a few weeks after moving to Seattle. They were married in 2002 and have a two-year old son, Cole.

From 1999 through 2004, Ryan was employed at LMN Architects, starting as a model maker. In fact, he had never used a computer drafting program, so making models was about the only way he could be productive at first. With his background of model making at K-State, he quickly became a model specialist and produced dozens of models with all sorts of materials for competitions, design studies and client fund-raising efforts. Over his years at LMN, Ryan dabbled with multiple project types including convention centers, performing arts, research laboratories and museums, but most of his experience was obtained working on higher education projects.

As a counterpoint to those large-scale buildings, Ryan began to crave smaller, more intimate projects. His wife was a theater stage manager at the time, so he did set design for several low-budget live theaters. The experience of solving design problems with no resources and no time gave Ryan confidence dealing with design issues during construction. He also helped a friend who was a professional wood worker to build his own shop. They spent every weekend one summer, designing, permitting and building a workshop. They built everything themselves, from the excavation to custom wood windows. Ryan didn’t get paid for this work, but he learned a massive amount about how difficult construction is and how to think about constructability creatively.

Eventually the pace of being singularly focused in his paid work on a single large public building for multiple years made him feel uninspired. Ryan wanted a faster pace and greater project diversity. He also became interested in design-build firms and wanted more involvement in the execution of the designs he was working on. Those emotions mixed with five years of Seattle weather led to relocation.

Despite his earlier proclamation of never living in California, Ryan moved to Santa Monica in 2004 after a resume send-out to every modern design/build architectural firm across the US got him a job offer from MarmolRadziner and Associates. While there, he was the project architect for the Vienna Way residence. This was the personal residence of an MRA partner, the first project in the firm to use BIM, and later a selection by Architectural Record as a “Record House 2009.” After the Vienna Way project was complete, he transferred to MRA’s prefab team where he was a designer and factory job captain during the production of a large private residence in Las Vegas. Working directly with all the construction trades simultaneously as the prefab modules were being built, shipped and craned into place was an incredible hands-on learning experience.

From July of 2007 through May of 2009, Ryan was employed by Rafael Vinoly Architects (RVA) as part of the new Los Angeles affiliate office. He designed and built the office furniture including workstations, conference tables and materials library. While there, he worked on a research facility in San Antonio, Texas, and a new classroom/student center at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. RVA was hit extremely hard by the economic downturn when many of their projects across the globe were put on hold. The Los Angeles affiliate office was closed earlier this year as a result.

Ryan was lucky to quickly find a position with WWCOT. He was hired as a designer who could mentor junior team members in BIM as the firm transitions all new projects to Revit by 2010. In the brief time he has been at the firm, he has designed two projects and is looking forward to construction beginning on both next year.

The 2009 Alumni Honorees pursue their careers in diverse professional settings and capacities for which their education from the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design helped them prepare.  Through these Honorees, the College celebrates the vital contributions its alumni make to environmental, social, and economic preservation and enhancement.

For more information, contact: 
Diane Potts, Assistant to the Dean, 785.532.1090