Читать книгу Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm - Patrick MacLeamy - Страница 54

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.