A Day in Seattle with Westbank's Luisa Bustamante

Luisa Bustamante is the Head of Design for Westbank’s Seattle office, where she is working on three large mixed-use projects. She has lived in five countries and traveled to twenty-two and moved to Seattle just recently after a decade in New York City. Luisa is also the creator of Architecture In the City, a recently-launched publication centered around architecture and design in various cities around the globe. She earned her B.Arch from the University of Tennessee. Her day involves a morning walk, countless meetings, and a post-dinner side hustle working session.

7:00am: I wake up before hearing my alarm go off, but I quickly drift back into sleep. A few minutes later birds wake me up…I love waking up to the sound of birds chirping so I’ve set this as my alarm.

As I fight to keep my eyes open, I run through what I’ve just dreamt. I started writing down my dreams at the beginning of this year as I’ve always had very involved dreams and want to keep track of them. I jump out of bed and rush to brush my teeth; I won’t talk or do anything until that’s done. I then come back into the bedroom to give my husband a face squeeze and a kiss and head to the living room to sit down by the window to write and sketch my dreams in my little sketchbook.

8:30am: I walk to work as it’s a beautiful eight-minute walk. My husband works from home and always goes up to the window to wave bye as I cross the street. I call my mother on my walk to say good morning and then get ready for my 9am meeting that I take in a conference room. As soon as the meeting ends, I run to my desk to answer emails as I have an on-site meeting at 11am and have lots of emails to get through in the one hour in between.

10:30am: I grab Malena, our design coordinator, and bring her to the site with me. She recently graduated and has been working closely with me so I try to include her as much as I can in meetings so she can learn. We make a quick stop at Pike Place Market for a coffee and continue to power through the steep Seattle hills and summer heat in our construction boots.

3:00pm: It’s time to head over to our other project on 3rd and Virginia. As we walk to get lunch, I answer a few calls and then some send some emails while we eat. When we arrive at the contractor’s office after our quick lunch I grab our architect, Murl with MG2. We head down to see a mockup of one of the units that we have had our contractors create in the garage so we can all go through details and get ahead of any issues that may arise. I look at materials and how the details were constructed and notice a few things that I point out to the architect and Malena to note and comment on. I like to consider myself a team player and someone who appreciates collaboration, so I include the team and hear their thoughts to see other points of view. After the site review, we head back into the contractor’s office, and I discuss a few more questions and details with our architect.

5:00pm: The site team invites the architect and me for drinks. Even with a heavy workload, I feel like getting to know the people you work with and putting some time in is also very important to creating a good working relationship. Usually, I would be in meetings most of the day and work until 7pm, but today I decide to nurture the social side and get drinks with the guys.

Luisa talking to Brett with the construction company and Murl the architect with MG2

6:30pm: I leave the bar quickly to make it home in time for dinner with my husband. I love getting home as Steve usually makes dinner — he’s a great chef — and the smell and warmth of his cooking happily welcome me home.

8:00pm: Right after dinner I get into my very Zen cleaning-up-after-dinner routine, where I think about the day and what I need to do tomorrow.

8:30pm: While Steve and I chat about the day, I devote some time to working on my recently launched website. It’s a publication on architects in different cities called Architecture in the City. I’m a huge perfectionist so I lay out all my social media posts on InDesign and carefully select the pictures that I add to Instagram and the website. I love cities and believe there’s so much magic to traveling and getting to know what makes a city unique. I’ve had this idea for twelve years and it gives me joy to put it together and read about all these beautiful places through the eyes of other fellow architects and designers from around the world.

10:30pm: I begin my nightly routine and turn all the lights off; I can’t get in the mood for sleep if all the lights are on. Once finished, I tell my husband good night as I walk into the bedroom; he is often still on the couch. He always resists going to bed early but then gives in and rushes to give me a hug and gets ready for bed as well.