Its March 2007, and my architecture firm is only 2 years old. The economy is roaring, construction is booming and Lehman Brothers is one block away. In a short time, we’ve managed to obtain over 60 (mostly small) projects, and have grown to a staff of 3 crammed into one tiny office in Times Square.
Over the year leading up to this point, we’ve been getting involved in larger and more interesting projects. Now, suddenly…a huge opportunity presents itself. We are being invited to submit to an RFP/design competition for a new mixed-use City Hall project on the West Coast in the City of University Place, WA.
We’re competing against 6-7 other firms – most of which are large and well established. We’re probably the newest, smallest and youngest of the group, so with nothing to lose, I decide to go after this with everything we have. While I feel confident, the issue is that we’ve never done a public building nor anything as large and complex.
I decide the best way forward is to develop a detailed understanding of who the city is, what they need, and how they function by asking a ton of questions, and documenting our understanding to demonstrate this. Perhaps, if they see that we truly know and understand who they are, we may have a shot at winning if we’re able to design something that’s truly unique to them and captures their essence, aspirations and imagination.
To make a long story short…the strategy worked: we won the competition and built the building. The reason we beat the larger, established firms was precisely because we listened to the City, learned from their staff and understood who they were as a city, and how they function. We took nothing for granted. I asked myself simple, obvious questions related to the foundation of a city such as: “what is democracy?”, and “how does democracy work?” But then dove so deeply into these questions that, as a visual person, I was able to develop a series of diagrams that addressed them. I then realized we could merge these abstract diagrams with the specific information we were learning about the City of UP to create an overall understanding of the city and how they practice democracy.
Looking back at this in 2016 – almost 9 years ago – I now realize this was the foundation of what became our design process and my passion for using design to understand and solve complex problems. This blog will attempt to look at these issues by sharing thoughts, experiences and examples of how design can be a tool for solving problems of all types – from architecture, to urbanism, products, and even more abstract issues like culture, lifestyle and branding…
