to Salt Lake for six months, clean this thing up and then move back to New York.” We moved the family back to Salt Lake, and it took two or three years to clean up the mess and get the business back on track. By then, the economy had changed; it was tough to find work in New York, and the cost of living was significantly higher. So I ended up staying in Salt Lake, building the practice and then I started teaching. Bob Hermanson invited me to teach a studio with him, so that was the start of 35 years as an adjunct, eventually receiving tenure and teaching studio every other year. Then, eventually, I applied for the directorship and got that. That was such an honor. Let’s talk about your practice and its trajectory; how did you rebuild it? It was a lot of cutting expenses, which is painful because the primary expense in an architecture business is labor — people. When you build relationships with people and train them, it’s painful to let them go; that is the brutal necessity of business. I always felt like I wanted to have an emphasis on design, having seen comparative practices in LA and New York. That was tough in Salt Lake. This was the beginning of quality-based selection, which basically said, “Let’s reward future projects to somebody who has a portfolio of 25 fire stations.” It’s tough to break into that. So, I thought the prescription for survival was to get some bread-and-butter clients. We started with grocery stores: Smith’s, which became Kroger. After 45 years, they’ve been very loyal to us; they paid the bills that allowed us to pursue more speculative design-oriented work. That was the business model, and I think that worked. I think you tend to get stigmatized by the kind of work you do, which is okay. It’s a business and you’ve got to tend to that aspect, or you won’t survive. Memorable projects? The state’s promotion of quality-based selection, almost overnight, forced local architects to team up with national firms that brought the portfolio. That’s still going on. We teamed for the central Salt Lake Library with Gwathmey Siegel. Charles was such a great guy, as was Bob Siegel, his partner. We got shortlisted but weren’t awarded the project. But we developed a very good relationship with those guys. Subsequently, we pursued the Utah Museum of Fine Arts project on campus, teaming with Charlie and Bob, only to discover that Frank Sanguinetti, the director, did not like the museum that Charlie and Bob had created at the University of Washington. That’s like something I should have known yesterday. So, we didn’t get that, but the project resurfaced in a different form, and we teamed up with Machado-Silvetti, whom I thought was a better fit for Frank Sanguinetti and the campus. We were able to win that. That was just before the Olympics, and we’d done the programming on it with another firm, so we were very familiar with the project. That was a very rewarding association. We’re still working with those guys. Those partnerships can be difficult, but they can also be very rewarding if you pick the right firm. We had other collaborations with national firms that were not pleasant. It’s a cautionary tale for younger architects to try to find a good, collaborative, mutually respectful relationship. Otherwise, it can be somewhat painful. You can be subject to abuse when the national firm comes in and you pick them up at the airport, carry their luggage up to a meeting and become their drafting service. They often take the lion’s share of the fees upfront and then leave you with insufficient funds to complete the job. As a result, we’ve typically tried to go it alone. If it’s not in the cards for a local architect to win the job, then we’re just not going to pursue it. Instead, we focus more on our long-term relationships with clients that become very meaningful over time. You’re on the front line of the stewardship of the buildings that you create, which I think is wonderful. Architecture as an Evolving Craft Tell me about the evolution of architecture since you started in the profession. The tools have changed so much. I don’t think the buildings, per se, have necessarily changed. That’s the interesting thing about architecture. We’re always projecting into the future, but we’ve got this tradition of how to build and that knowledge base. It’s like taking an ocean liner and trying to steer in a different direction. But the tools have radically changed. When I started, everything was analog. With the Mies School education at Southern Cal, we used Rapidograph pens on Strathmore boards, and those pens never flowed well. You’re trying to keep the thing flowing as you’re drawing, and invariably it splotches, and you would have to start over. I look back on that and wonder why Mies put people through that, especially building models. We’d do these clear-span exhibition halls like McCormick Place in Chicago, using brass trusses. And Alfred Caldwell would find the little brass shapes that replicated the wide flange beams. They were just meticulous. You’d build these jigs and then set the brass, and you’d cut the brass and set it there and solder it, and then you’d move to the next joint and go to solder that. And the heat from the solder would return to the previous joint and cause it to pop. I’m thinking, why did he put students through that? And I look back on it, and it was all about building discipline. There was this kind of correlation between discipline and stick-to-it-ness and aspiration towards perfection that he 14 REFLEXION
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTg3NDExNQ==