went to Ross and said, “How about leaving the ranks of the securely employed and joining those of us who are rather insecurely employed?” For those who haven’t been in that environment, it’s a scary decision. But he decided to join me. I had told him that if things worked out well, we would be partners, and we were very shortly thereafter. How did you get into public education? When I started for Silver Alsop, they had one educational client. They worked for Nebo School District, and the superintendent was a very bright man named Joe Reedhead. Joe convinced us that people were designing schools in the wrong way — that we were designing for ourselves and not for the needs of the school district. So, we started to look at schools in a different way. Our portfolio expanded slowly and naturally as we performed work that was very successful. Clients started to come to us around the early 90s. I was designing a school in central Utah that had a very limited budget and needed to be done within nine months. We told him the only way we could do that was by doing something a bit unusual. We suggested tilt-up concrete, but I had never detailed tilt-up concrete before. So, I called Mike Upwall, who was an expert in tilt-up and doing a lot of service stations, garages, and warehouses. When I asked him to help us learn how to do this, he commented, “I’ve never had an architect ask me for advice or even value what I had to say. So, I’m going to come in and spend time with you for free.” He came in a number of times and sketched out things and taught us how to detail tilt-up concrete. Then, when Washington School District needed to do a new school and they wanted it to be very economical, they called Mike Upwall as a consultant during their selection process. They didn’t select me or my firm. When Mike joined that group, he said, “Are you nuts? You’ve got somebody out there who has the technique and the understanding. Why don’t you hire him?” They went through the process, selected somebody else, and then came to me and said, “What would be your ideas? Come down and talk to us.” We went down and talked about some of the things we’d been doing, and it resonated with them. One Saturday, I’m cutting my lawn and I get a phone call from Superintendent Stephen Peterson, Washington School District. He said, “Can you be down here Monday morning with a contract? We’d like to get something going immediately.” As I remember, we had 60 days to get this school designed, detailed, and underway. That was the beginning of a very successful venture promoting public education. We did a number of wonderful schools in the Washington School District that were both pleasing and much more economical than anything they had done before. We started bringing people down and showing them our work, which eventually expanded to about 80% of the school districts in the state of Utah, plus others in Wyoming and Idaho. Tell me about some of your favorite projects. The number one project is the Federal Courthouse, our collaboration with Thomas Phifer and Partners from New York City. We had done projects in the historic Frank Moss Federal Courthouse. That allowed us to get into a lot of detail about historical woodworking, moldings, and wonderful stuff. After that, we considered the competition for the new Frank Moss Courthouse. We had approached a firm we’d worked with that we knew through our association with GSA, but they had already accepted another partner. Then I got a call from a fellow named Thomas Phifer. It was a pleasant conversation, but then I said, “Well, thanks, but we’ve kind of decided maybe not to pursue it.” Then, I talked with Chris Lund, whom we had added to the firm. Chris looked at me and said, “Thomas Phifer!” and he ripped open the Architectural Record. There in Architects in the News was this picture of Thomas Phifer, a very talented architect who had been the lead designer in Richard Meier’s office in New York. I didn’t know how to call him back, but he called a couple of days later and said, “I don’t think we’ve finished that conversation.” I always expected that someone with the notoriety and the talent of a Thomas Phifer would be difficult to work with. It was absolutely the opposite. Thomas was pleasant, friendly, and loved being in our office. We learned how collaborative the design process needs to be. I think people tend to think that the architect of a building is one singular person, and in my experience, it hardly ever is. Thomas came to our office and talked about some of the beautiful projects he had done around the world and helped us to understand how to reach further in our designs. It’s really fun to elevate yourself above the horizon just long enough to see what’s really out there and what architects at an international level are doing, what they’re thinking and how they’re doing it. Disappointments? When I retired in late 2011, there were two very disturbing issues. First was being willing to say anything in an interview, even though you know you cannot deliver. During the interview process, it is common for a client to say, “I have a limited budget. It’s very important for me to have an architect that can design within that budget.” One of the things we tried very hard not to do was to mislead a client and to tell them, “No problem, 15
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