tuition, fees and books. I entered electrical engineering because they had the beginnings of a computer program, but it was also an undergraduate degree to use to get into the Architectural Masters program. The Vietnam War was going on, so I decided my best option was to join the National Guard. After basic training, I came back and switched to psychology. I was anxious to get into architecture school, and that was the fastest way in. I started the graduate program in my last year as an undergraduate. The first time I really recognized that this was a good place for me was while taking Tom Kass’s Basic Design class. Tom had studied at Cooper Union and Yale and worked as an assistant to Joseph Albers. He saw something in me and recognized that I was sometimes working three jobs to put myself through school. He said, “Why don’t you come and help me teach basic design as my assistant? Forget those other jobs and stay on campus.” That was really encouraging. I will always be in debt to Tom. I also had the opportunity to learn from Bob and Anna Bliss. Bob was from MIT, and Anna was from Harvard. We had a number of faculty from Harvard. It was as good a graduate school in architecture, I think, as you could find in the United States at the time. I was also deeply inspired working with John Sugden. I can’t say enough great things about the school and how much I learned. My class was small — 15 students. In 1973, the Arab Oil Embargo put the whole world into recession. When we graduated in 1975, it was a really tough time, and there were few opportunities. Somehow, I was lucky enough to get a job working for Ian Cumming at Terracor. It had a small architecture office called the Environmental Design Group, where I worked with another mentor, David Rohovit. I finished my internship, became a licensed architect and moved to Edwards and Daniels. It was an honor and a privilege working with Ralph Edwards and Jud Daniels. Jud was leading the design work and had just finished the (old) downtown Salt Lake City Library and Cottonwood High School. After about seven years, I started my own firm. We won a number of Western Mountain Region and Utah AIA honor awards. Right next door to us was Ann Marie Boyden with et al advertising agency, and et al hosted the AIA office. I went through all of the offices of the Salt Lake Chapter and AIA Utah, working with Mike Stransky and Stephen Smith. Stephen and I were classmates and knew each other from school and had worked together at Edwards and Daniels. We’d have breakfast once a week at the Hotel Utah and talk about what we were doing, the profession and what the future looked like. We decided to merge our two small firms — David Brems + Associates and Gillies Stransky — together. Abe Gillies ran the office and put out quality documents while Mike got us through any door marketing the firm. I love to design, work in the office and work on projects with our clients. It wasn’t very long after we merged that we added Steve Smith and became Gillies Stransky Brems Smith (GSBS). Many firms fail, but this one was a marriage made in heaven. It was very successful from the beginning. We prospered and grew every year from that time. You are known for your work with environmentally responsible and sustainable architecture. I went to college in the late 1960s and early 70s. There was a lot of change happening in the world and the beginnings of an architectural movement that I was quick to embrace. I believed that I owed a lot of people a lot of things and that I had a duty to help change the world. In my world, that meant changing architecture from being a resourceconsumptive profession to one that was more environmentally responsible. We began designing passive solar homes and buildings that had natural ventilation and admitted lots of natural light, attempting to reduce the energy use of the buildings and make them more responsible. Talk about some of those projects. One of the very first projects was a double-envelope twin home I designed for a client in Emigration Canyon. When his partner fell out of the project, I bought into it and helped build the project. It was a lot of fun. It won an AIA Honor Award in Utah and a Western Mountain Region Honor Award. We started designing a number of other houses in Utah; I think they all won AIA awards. We did a base ski facility and worked on a hotel at Brian Head, Utah. They were great clients who propelled us forward and helped us gain distinction as a design firm. The design awards were helpful in being appointed to the AIA National Committee on Design. Being involved on a national level and making friends and working with national-caliber design architects introduced me to people that I wouldn’t ordinarily know. Utah Olympic Oval & Kearns Athlete Training and Event Center 9
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