Thinking Outside the Box (Literally)

Deliverables

The Film 

A four-minute documentary capturing the design, engineering, and construction of Somata — a reusable, flat-packable wood pavilion built for Fred Hutch’s Obliteride and redeployed at the Seattle Design Festival one week later.

Production Details

Client: Boulder Associates

Sectors: Architecture, Healthcare Design, Community

Collaborators Featured: Lund Opsahl (Structural Engineering), GLY Construction, Fred Hutch

Deliverable: Documentary short film (4 min)

Production: 2 filming days + post-production

Project Overview

Boulder Associates had never produced a documentary-style video. They’d done photo shoots, written case studies, put together project pages — but never something that tried to capture the feeling of how they work.

Then Somata happened. A pro bono collaboration between Boulder Associates, structural engineers Lund Opsahl, and builder GLY Construction, the project produced something unusual: a sculptural wooden pavilion for Fred Hutch’s Obliteride event — designed to be taken apart, flat-packed, and rebuilt somewhere new. It was a small project with an outsized amount of creative thinking behind it, and the team knew it was a story worth telling.

Ian Stevens, who leads marketing at Boulder Associates, described the challenge:

“How do we get to one really clear message? There’s a lot going on — stewardship around cancer, partnership, design, construction, engineering, thinking outside the box. The most powerful piece is that emotive piece.”

The question wasn’t whether the story was worth telling. It was whether it could be told in a way that felt true — human, not corporate.

The Challenge

In our kickoff conversations, something became clear: this wasn’t really a story about a structure. It was a story about what happens when people approach a small problem with the seriousness of a big one.

Annette Jannotta, Architect and Design Executive at Boulder Associates, put it plainly:

“How you solve the small problems is how you solve the big problems. If you really believe that our environments affect us, then we walk the walk.”

The design team didn’t just build a booth — they studied how Fred Hutch approaches cancer research and asked how that same mindset could shape a physical space. They pulled from origami, nature, the geometry of interlocking hands. A structural engineer at Lund Opsahl described it as a “novel solution” — the kind of creative challenge he rarely gets.

That was the thread. Not the building. The thinking.

The Collaboration

Both sides were clear from the start: this couldn’t feel polished or corporate. Annette’s direction was specific — she wanted it to feel “maker and handmade,” like you were getting a behind-the-scenes look at how creative people actually work.

That meant our process had to match. We structured the project around conversation, not scripts. Interviews were designed to feel like real exchanges — the camera off to the side, no teleprompter, no rehearsed answers. We asked the kinds of questions that take a few minutes to warm up to, and then let people go where the conversation took them.

“I haven’t gone through a process in this way before. I’m excited to experience it.” — Annette Jannotta

We filmed across two production days — one at the Seattle Design Festival capturing Somata in use, and a second at Boulder’s offices for sit-down interviews and B-roll of the design team working with physical models, laser-cut prototypes, and 3D walkthroughs. The interviews spanned the full collaboration: Boulder Associates, Lund Opsahl, GLY Construction, and Fred Hutch.

The result is a four-minute film that moves from the practical challenge — can you build something sculptural that flat-packs? — into the human one: why does it matter to bring this much care to a small project?

“No project is successful unless everybody feels like they’re proud of what they’re doing. At the end of the day, what are we going to remember? I think it’s the relationships and how people make you feel.” — Annette Jannotta

What We Learned

Architecture firms are full of stories worth telling. They rarely tell them. The instinct is to show the finished building — the render, the ribbon cutting — and skip the messy, human, iterative process that actually produced it. But that process is where the differentiation lives. It’s what makes a potential client think I want to work with these people instead of just that’s a nice building.

Boulder Associates knew that. They just hadn’t had a way to show it before.

“I feel like it’s all in the questions that you ask.” — Annette Jannotta

“Everyone felt very positively about the first draft. I’m really excited about it.” — Ian Stevens