Business is booming, according to Michael Sherer, principal of J. Miller Associates, an architectural lighting design and consulting firm. "However, the challenges remain immense - how to attract and recognize the right people, how to maintain enough staff to do the work and enough work to occupy the staff."

"Technology - the means by which a small firm can hope to perform to expectations - is also an ongoing challenge," said Sherer. "The bar is always being raised, and quickly too. While we welcome advances that will give us more flexibility and higher quality output, financing these upgrades continues to be a challenge to a small firm."

J. Miller has offices in Seattle and an affiliate office in Hong Kong, and project types include large-scale retail centers in both urban and mall settings, and hotel and resort projects around the world. J. Miller also provides services to corporate clients for headquarters facilities, tenant developments and mixed-use projects. In the public realm, projects include libraries, airports, mass transit and urban streetscapes as well as healthcare and educational facilities. In addition to lighting design work, the firm offers catalog and web design services for lighting fixture manufacturers.

The firm has grown steadily since 1992 to a size of 13 in Seattle and six in Hong Kong. Recent hires will bring the Seattle office to 15 by January 2000.

"The scale of projects has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, with entire city blocks being razed to make way for progress," Sherer said. Dollars are plentiful, he said, but leveraged for all they're worth to fuel start-ups, and expand established businesses. "Seattle is booming."

"The design professions are being asked to have more information, work faster and make faster decisions. We all have heard the apocryphal stories of firm orders being placed for various building materials when the plans are still at 30 percent design," he said.

"The danger here is of raising new structures that will not wear well over time, structures that will become urban blight, as some of the hasty structures of the mid-60s have proven to be. With so many explosive growth opportunities available, not everyone cares for the complexity of actually building buildings. .. It rests in the hands of the design community to advocate for quality environments for our citizens and to safeguard against unwise and unhealthy design practices," he said. "So let's be careful out there."