20 REFLEXION | 2022-23 | AIA Utah When did you decide to become an architect? My mother died when I was young and let it be known she wanted me to be an engineer. Since I had very few opportunities to comply with her wishes, I started in engineering. The breakthrough day was inordinately hot; I was in an unairconditioned building, and there was a guy in front of the class with a giant slide rule attached to the ceiling who was telling us fledgling engineers how to use it. I must have dozed off because I got a blackboard eraser right between the eyes. I woke up quickly. He kind of apologized but said it was very irritating to have someone just fall asleep in his class. If I had no more interest in the program than that, maybe this wasn’t the place I belonged. I sat there for a few seconds. I thought, “You know, the guy’s right.” I got up, grabbed my books, and walked out past him. I said, “Thank you very much. You’ve changed the course of my life.” I was aware of where the Architecture Building was. I’d been toying around looking into it. I walked into the building; it was magic. I thought: I’m home. It was funky and disorganized, and there was a hall where there were projects up on the walls. Then As part of our ongoing series of interviews with architectural legends, we are proud to present this interview with long-time architect Max Smith. He was gracious with his time, and it is with great pleasure we present this interview. you went up a few stairs to the office. There was a lady there who was a legend. Her name was Johnnie Edwards, and she was the secretary and everything else. I introduced myself and said I thought I might be interested in going into architecture, but I wanted to talk to somebody about it. She said, “Well, you can talk to Roger Bailey.” So, I’m sitting across the desk from Roger Bailey, who had to be one of the most magical human beings on the face of the earth. He’s just this handsome, gray-haired, rugged Abe Lincoln kind of guy. We talked, and I walked out on cloud nine, and that was really the inception. Later, I found out what my mother meant by an engineer. It was an engineer on the railroad. So, I was on the wrong track to begin with. I decided if I’m really serious about this architecture thing, (since I’d wasted time in engineering), I didn’t want to be bouncing around forever trying to get an education. So, I thought with my high school mechanical drawing skills, I might have some value in an office. I knocked on just about every door in town, and I got a cold shoulder in a lot of places. I finally went to work for Stanley Evans, who had a little office on Fourth South over a coffee shop. I made my pitch to Stan. I said, “I just want this experience, and I’ll be happy to work for nothing until I become of value to you.” He looked at me like I was something that came in on his shoes and said, “If I pay you nothing, then you’re worth nothing. And I don’t need that.” Then he said, “Be here at 8:00 Monday morning.” I started architecture school. I was in the old five-year program. I took rather naturally to it. When I graduated in ‘67, a mentor on the faculty, Stephen McDonnel, had me working in his little office at his home out in Millcreek. The University of Utah hired a brilliant man from MIT, David Evans, who started a program called Computer Graphics. It was a cutting-edge program, one of the first in the nation. It fed off the MIT program and was well funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Air Force — where the Internet was born. David Evans saw the significant application of computer graphics and architecture. So Stan worked it out in the architecture department and became the faculty member who headed up the joint research program between Computer Graphics and Architecture. Interviews with Local Legends Max Smith BY FRAN PRUYN
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