potential is quite different than actualizing what you’ve already seen. Essentially, you’re making something visible that was previously invisible, right? That’s a creative process. Snowbird was done by a number of people. Our firm, Enteleki Architecture Planning Research was not vertically aligned. It was more like a really a tight little artistic studio. Lots of people were involved with Snowbird. Certainly, I was the original author for the concepts, but many other people were involved all the way through and that’s what made it successful. When did you decide to leave Enteleki and what did you do next? I had basically been involved with Snowbird for 10 years and was also running a firm - we went from three people to 75 people. I was president and we had an office in San Francisco as well as Salt Lake City. I was living on an airplane, which I had been doing with Kiley for years. I wanted to really get a little bit more involved in my own work. So, I left Enteleki and started my own firm called Jack Smith Architect. I moved to Sun Valley, where I’ve had an independent practice since. That leads us to the academic side. I taught at the University of Utah, and I taught at the University of Idaho in Moscow for a semester. I was a distinguished practitioner in residence for a year. I think right now I’m still an affiliate professor. I went back to school at age 68 or 69, to the University of Hawaii for two reasons: I wanted to dig deeper into what Architecture really means, and I wanted to teach more. I spent five years to get a doctorate degree. Because I was already an architect and also a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and had won a lot of design awards, it was not necessary for me to be involved in the school of architecture so much. They said, “What do you really want to do?” I essentially designed my own curriculum for a Doctorate of Architecture. I was in the philosophy department. My professors were from Japan, India, China, and Oxford University. I’m not a philosopher as such an armchair philosopher, but I have five years of exposure to philosophy at a doctorate level. That led me to Montana State University. I didn’t expect to teach there. I was doing a large ranch that was near Bozeman. I visited the school just for fun. But they offered me a full professorship, and I couldn’t refuse it. I thought I’d stay there for a semester or two. I stayed there for 14 years. I only retired from teaching in 2020 and returned to practice full time. I’m not going to quit. You know, I think retirement is a disease. The interaction with student/faculty interaction keeps you sharp on all levels. You’ve got this symbiotic relationship between teaching and practice. The interaction with students is heaven. You fall in love with them. They’re your children. I get letters now clear back from the students I had in the sixties. It’s amazing. What is your philosophy of architecture? Architecture must first be thought of as an art form. There are three levels of comfort. The first level is to make a physically comfortable building. Is it warm in the winter? Is it cool in the summer? Is it going to stand up? That’s just physical comfort, that’s just building. Almost anyone can do that. The next level of comfort is intellectual comfort. Does it make sense? Is it reasonable? Is this appropriate? Why did you do that? Why does the structure do this? Is that reasonable intellectually? The third level of comfort is much more difficult. And that’s a spiritual comfort. Does it make you feel better? Does it make you happier? Does it change the way you live? We don’t just accommodate the way people live, we should improve it, we should enhance it. Without the three, I don’t think it’s really architecture. I don’t hear the word art spoken enough in architecture. It’s really important to understand that it’s an art form and we have to do more than just make a building stand up. What work are you really proud of? I think that Snowbird is probably the most important project I’ve done. Snowbird is basically a new village, a new idea, a new concept. The first modern American ski resort in the country, anywhere, actually. I would say that’s probably the most successful. But I think it’s also the most troublesome. I think that one can compromise certain things, but never compromise in principle. Fifty years ago, the idea was to have a tram go up to a bridge, which is a megastructure, and do a bridge building that spans the entire canyon, and not have any cars. That was proposed because the canyon is very difficult, and we were snowed in all the time. Now, fifty years later, we’re struggling with endless cars, traffic jams, and the proposal of the gondola is hugely expensive. 14 REFLEXION
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