26 REFLEXION | 2021-22 | AIA Utah developer came to us. They said, “We want a couple of office buildings here.” “Well, okay, we're on South Temple. This has a lot of history. What's an appropriate building? Are we going to put up some pretend brick and some pretend carriage lights on it and stick it on the street?” That didn't seem right. So, I called my future partner, Peter Emerson, who did a thesis on South Temple. “Peter, what is your thesis telling you about South Temple?” Peter says, “All those mansions were modern buildings at the time: modern materials, good materials. One of the most important things is that they had open space around it.” So, we designed a building that had open space in the front. “Let's make a plaza there. Let's step the building from a little building on the left. We can go a little higher to the building on the right. Let's get the massing right. Let's make it out of modern materials.” Ralph Edwards wasn't sure that was going to fly, but we took it to the Historic Landmarks Commission and explained it that way. They said, “We totally agree with you. We don't want to see pretend old-fashioned buildings.” I like that building, it probably wasn’t well-received. A lot of money was taken out of it. It could have been a little bit better, but it was a no-frills thing. Disappointments? The Salt Palace we did in ‘81. The lobby was right next door to Symphony Hall, just 20 feet apart. We designed this slick white, form-conscious thing that was a kind of a signature building. It won some AIA awards. But if you look at it in context, there is this white shiny step building, right next to this very elegant symphony hall. Now, what was going on there? Who was showing off there? As time went on, it bothered me that the building was next to that building I really love so much. So fast forward 25 years. Now the county wants to expand the Salt Palace. It was a design-build competition. The contractor brought us on board because of our experience with the building. We find out that the county wants to expand that section I had done in ‘81. They also needed about 90,000 square feet of meeting rooms, a big chunk. They turned it over to four or five teams to come up with a cost estimate and a design for the interview. Looking at the plan for the Salt Palace, there wasn't a lot of room for 90,000 square feet of meeting rooms – which are very important, very lucrative. We're at a design meeting, and I say, “You know where those meeting rooms ought to go?” The contractor says, “Yeah, they have to go right where your lobby is, that big lobby that has been intrusive, has been offending Symphony Hall.” I figured there might be other teams that came up with that same thing. But at the end of the day, it probably got us the job. So here I had an opportunity to take a disappointment – that building, which at the time seemed like a good idea. If you're in this business long enough, you finally get to go back and fix these problems. Now, that building we replaced there is just a building, not a piece of architecture. We calmed it down. We simplified it. It matches Symphony Hall. Changes in the industry from the time you started? A lot more women for one thing. It is good for the culture, it's good for creativity, it is good at so many levels. There used to be no women in the offices; now there are a lot of them. I think that the stuffy thing of being this “cape guy up here and the community is down there – the little people” has changed. These buildings are for the community they serve. It's important for us to listen to them and not get so damn full of ourselves. And then we found out we could use these computers. These computers are very, very powerful. They can be seductive. And with computers, we can understand buildings so well. It makes you wonder, “How did we ever draw these buildings by hand and anticipate all these conditions in the building?” Computers, we know every little inch of it. With creative hands, they can do these structural acrobatics and we can do these visual images that get so seductive we think this is a good thing. We're not stopping to ask ourselves, just because we can draw it and it is beautiful, should we build it? We can go overboard; we cannot keep it simple. So, I think there's a lot of that going on. Technology has changed everything and now I think we do a better job of engaging with the people who use the building. It's not a good building if the activities that take place in it don't evoke feelings of goodness and meaningfulness. That's more important than how the building looks. I think we're seeing a lot of interesting buildings, but there needs to be some throttling back. Somebody needs to be in the room saying, “That's wonderful, but let's think about this.” You got to calm that thing down a little bit. Advice to a new generation of architects? Commit to the profession and commit to the work you're doing. The more you commit to it, the more you are going to enjoy it. It has so much to offer. Understand the value of it and the contribution you're making to the community. You're doing a meaningful thing here. It's not a frivolous thing, so don’t take it for granted. I feel very good about my career and the ways it's defined my life and the quality of the life it brought me. I have absolutely no regrets. And you shouldn't. — continued from page 25 To watch the full interview, please scan this QR code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjn8YMjKDag
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