Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm. Patrick MacLeamy

CHAPTER 5 Growth: Project Offices

      The three founders were united around the goal of geographic expansion beyond their St. Louis roots in accordance with Hellmuth's depression-proof-firm strategy. After all, if they were going to design a world-class architecture firm, they needed to get out into the world. But each founder had a different idea about where, and how, to expand.

Hellmuth told his partners, “You simply have to establish a real presence in New York and Washington. Too much significant work is going on there to be among the missing.”¹ He was in a hurry and proposed buying a firm with an established reputation in each city. The advantage of his approach was instant local credibility, but the disadvantage was the high initial purchase price.

      Obata had a special interest in San Francisco; He wanted to plant the HOK flag where he had been “kicked out” many years earlier. Kassabaum favored Los Angeles, which was emerging as the dominant West Coast city. Both Obata and Kassabaum liked the idea of winning major new commissions in other cities, establishing project offices there, and then marketing for new work as the project was underway. The advantage of their approach was low initial cost, but the disadvantage was establishing local credibility, which could take years.

      So, they agreed to disagree—and did both. It was expedient for HOK and is not a bad idea for any firm to grow opportunistically, depending on which opportunity presents itself in different markets. Sometimes HOK expanded by growing from a project office and sometimes by buying another firm, depending on the opportunity. In the early years, most new offices grew out of project offices.

Planting a Flag in San Francisco

In 1966, HOK won the commission to design a new graduate library for Stanford University. Obata led design from St. Louis, and HOK assembled a small team in San Francisco to coordinate and complete the project. “Stanford University said they'd give us their Graduate Library project if we opened an office in the Bay Area, so we opened a small office,” Obata recalled later. “I was familiar with it since I was born there.”²

      Temporary project offices like this one supported specific projects, and often included staff from local firms that partnered with HOK to do the work. Hellmuth was convinced HOK could get more Bay Area work if a good marketer could look for new clients while the Stanford project was underway. He remembered Dan Gale, who had impressed Hellmuth as a natural marketer when he worked for HOK in St. Louis. After several years, Dan had left HOK and relocated to the clear air of Aspen, Colorado to alleviate his daughter's asthma. Hellmuth called Dan and persuaded him to relocate to California as the new HOK San Francisco marketing principal. Dan accepted, one of many to return to HOK—once—and began a search for work. But the work he found was not in San Francisco. It was in Alaska. HOK's project locations were about to get way more exotic.

      One of the ways architects find projects is by networking with contractors, engineers, and other consultants. In San Francisco, Dan met Richard Flambert of Flambert & Flambert, a kitchen consultant that specialized in designing large, institutional kitchens for hotels, universities, and hospitals. Flambert traveled extensively in his practice, including to Alaska, which was booming after the discovery of North Slope oil and the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

      Flambert had consulted for Crittenden, Cassetta, Wirum & Cannon (CCWC), an architecture firm in Anchorage, and knew they were swamped with design jobs and struggling to handle larger and more challenging projects. In 1969, he offered to introduce Dan to CCWC senior partner Ed Crittenden, and the two traveled to Anchorage for a meeting. It was a perfect fit. CCWC had more contracts than it could handle and HOK San Francisco needed work. HOK immediately began to provide design and production leadership for the largest and most challenging Alaska projects while assisting CCWC with smaller work. The two firms began marketing to Alaska clients together as CCWC & HOK, winning more commissions around the state, including a high school on Kodiak Island, student housing for the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, and a major addition to Providence Hospital in Anchorage.

      By late 1969, Alaska work was so substantial that Obata asked Bill Valentine, his most trusted designer, to move to San Francisco as the first design principal outside of St Louis, effectively turning the little project office into the first permanent satellite HOK office. Bill recalls that when he agreed to move to San Francisco, Obata said, “That's good … could you fly to Anchorage in the morning?” Things were moving that fast. Sometimes you just have to seize the moment, even if it's a stretch.

      HOK opened the San Francisco office just 11 years after its founding. Over the next seven years, HOK created three more offices—in Washington, DC, Dallas, and New York. The founders discovered opening new offices was difficult and would learn many sobering new lessons.

Launching in Washington, DC

      As the San Francisco office grew, Hellmuth established a marketing office in Washington, DC to support his regular trips there to market to federal agencies. Setting up a marketing-only office is another way of growing and makes sense in a target-rich environment like Washington, where Hellmuth called regularly upon the General Services Administration (GSA), the State Department, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Smithsonian. His early efforts led to a State Department commission to design the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador.

      Hellmuth visited Smithsonian officials often, and in 1965 secured the commission for a major new museum on the National Mall, the park connecting the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial. The space race was well underway, and Congress had appropriated money for a national air and space museum to house the nation's expanding collection of airplane and rocket artifacts.

      The Smithsonian required a local associate architect for the work, and Hellmuth selected Petticord and Mills, successful Washington architects with previous experience on the National Museum of American History. The two firms worked together on the museum project, then merged, in 1975, creating a full service HOK office in Washington, DC. This works well as long as the two firms share a similar company culture. Obata designed the Air and Space Museum from St. Louis, making frequent trips to Washington to meet with Smithsonian officials.

      Fatefully, by the time the design wound its way through the bureaucratic process and got approved, inflation had driven the construction cost well beyond the original congressional appropriation. The Smithsonian asked HOK to redesign the museum to fit within the original budget. Sometimes the best design solution comes from second chances. And sometimes it comes from an underling. This was one of those situations where HOK's unique belief in finding the very best solution—regardless of who it comes from—paid off. Chi Chen Jen, the Taiwanese-born designer who had evacuated so fast in that St. Louis earthquake, had an idea. He proposed an elegant assemblage of three large, skylit