Designing CULTURE

At Carrier Johnson + CULTURE, Gordon Carrier, B.S. ’79, M.Arch ’81, says understanding the heart of a client lies at the heart of good design

AS A CHILD GROWING UP in Mt. Morris, just north of Flint, Michigan, Gordon Carrier regularly passed a one-of-a-kind yellow house while biking to town center. As it turns out, that house belonged to a local architect. “I remember I admired this house, as it was unlike any other in the neighborhood,” says Carrier, B.S. ’79, M.Arch ’81. “However simplistic, it was my first exposure to the power architecture can have on an individual.”

Today, as design principal of Carrier Johnson + CULTURE (headquartered in San Diego), Carrier is drawn to the search for unique architectural outcomes through research-based client engagement — not to elicit a design “wow” factor but to reveal the genuine spirit of a specific client’s need. “If we successfully discover that which is unique about our client, i.e., their CULTURE, how could the resultant building solution resemble any other?” he says.

Carrier believes an organization’s CULTURE defines its unique offering and spends concentrated time revealing

his clients’ project desires, while continually assessing and tuning the CULTURE inside the firm. It’s also why Carrier and his partner, Michael Johnson, added “+ CULTURE” to their firm’s name in 2007: the word represents their passion to pursue that which represents the unique in a given commission. “We don’t believe powerful design solutions derive from collateral design elements like style, material, furniture systems, or an interesting form viewed in isolated fashion,” Carrier says. “Rather, we believe strong design reveals itself through identifying and leveraging an organization’s CULTURE, no matter the client. This is what sets every client, firm, and organization apart. We have to find it.”

That approach has been highly successful in San Diego and elsewhere. Carrier Johnson + CULTURE has long been recognized as a leading architectural firm in San Diego and has additional footprints in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Aside from its west coast influences, Carrier Johnson + CULTURE’s design team has planned and designed developments in the United Arab Emirates, China, Costa Rica, Korea, Vietnam, and Africa, including hotels, corporate headquarters, exhibition facilities, and urban mixed-use developments. Carrier Johnson + CULTURE’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including Architectural Record, and it is a perennial part of Building Design + Construction Magazine’s Giants 300 Report, Architect Magazine’s Architect Top 50 list, and ENR’s Top Design Firms. The firm and its design principals have received more than 210 awards for design excellence in architecture, interior design, and sustainable design.

Most recently, two projects have garnered significant praise: the Point Loma Nazarene University Science

The Point Loma Nazarene University Science Complex has earned national and international acclaim.

We believe strong design reveals itself “ through identifying and leveraging an organization’s CULTURE, no matter the client. This is what sets every client, firm, and organization apart.

We have to find it.” — Gordon Carrier, B.S. ’79, M.Arch ’81

There’s a natural tendency to spend “ more energy making a building meaningful when you know who the end user is and what they represent and, as a result, can create a solution befitting their CULTURE.” — Gordon Carrier, B.S. ’79, M.Arch ’81

Complex in San Diego and the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. The Point Loma project was named Building of the Year for the West Region in Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Awards Program; it also won the American Architect Award from the Chicago Athenaeum’s Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, and it received an honorable mention in the educational building award category from the Architecture Master Prize.

The Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability is the first higher education building in California to receive zero net energy certification. It earned a Citation Award from the AIA Los Angeles and also won Project of the Year from the U.S. Green Building Council at its annual Sustainable Innovation Awards (SIA), as well as an honor award in the SIA’s energy and atmosphere category.

The firm’s rise is more impressive when weighed against its financial condition when Carrier first became a principal in 1986. Carrier was working in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the first branch office of what was then Buss

(Opposite) Ballpark Village. (This page from left) 7th & Market. Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability.

Silvers Hughes & Associates, when his branch office’s success convinced the San Diego-based founding principals that the firm would be best served by relocating him to their headquarters. Soon after Carrier arrived in San Diego, he was surprised to discover that despite their strong design reputation, the firm’s seven-year history of poor management practices would soon lead to its financial implosion. As the firm neared bankruptcy, Carrier was asked to take the helm and was thrown into immediate, on-the-job training in how to run a business. Rule one? “Michael [Johnson] and I made a pact that we will always run a profitable firm, because if we don’t understand the economics of day-to-day practice, we’re putting our staff and client base in jeopardy,” Carrier says. “If we wanted longevity, we had to reframe the firm as a real business. Making beautiful buildings wasn’t enough.” The new partners also realized that part of the firm’s vulnerability stemmed from its reliance on a narrow client base, both in terms of location and project scope. “So we started interviewing for things the firm hadn’t interviewed for before,” says Carrier.

As a result, today Carrier Johnson + CULTURE’s portfolio is intentionally diverse: the firm works on interior design and urban design, in addition to a variety of architecture projects. This includes residential towers, offices, mixed-use developments, laboratories, hotels, libraries, civic centers, and correctional facilities. One of the firm’s current high-profile projects is development of a new 167- acre west campus for San Diego State University on land surrounding and including the stadium that was vacated when the NFL’s San Diego Chargers left town in 2017. Another is 7th & Market, a vertical city representing 10 different building types and including San Diego’s tallest building, covering an entire city block. In addition, Carrier Johnson + CULTURE recently completed downtown San Diego’s largest development, the 3.2-million-squarefoot, mixed-use Ballpark Village. The San Diego Union Tribune dubbed it “downtown’s next big thing” when it broke ground in 2015. In contrast, Carrier also designed an award-winning, 550-square-foot prayer chapel for Point Loma Nazarene University on its oceanfront campus in San Diego. While smaller in scale than many of his other projects, he says it may have been one of the toughest projects he has ever done: “This small but important commission was about seeking an architectural clarity and simplification,” he explains.

That notion of consistently drilling down to the meaning of a design challenge was inspired by Gunnar Birkerts,

the internationally recognized, Eero Saarinen-mentored architect who taught Carrier at Michigan. The two went on to collaborate on numerous projects after Carrier graduated. “Frankly, he changed my life,” Carrier says. “He forced me to seek clarity of concept before anything else.” When Carrier and Johnson took over the firm more than 30 years ago, another early strategy was to deemphasize the prior firm’s focus on the developer enterprise and pursue projects for whom the end users are already known; hence the plethora of education and civic-based projects that anchor their portfolio. It’s another nod to the intentionality that Carrier learned from his mentor, Birkerts. “Speculative office buildings are largely about efficiency and sculpture, largely projects one observes, as opposed to structures that engage the user,” says Carrier. “There’s a natural tendency to spend more energy making a building meaningful when you know who the end user is and what they represent and, as a result, can create a solution befitting their CULTURE.”

Carrier’s core belief that understanding people and their culture lies at the heart of strong design thinking extends to those who create that design. In addition to design awards for its projects, Carrier Johnson + CULTURE has received numerous awards for offering professionals a great place to work, including being named San Diego’s most admired business/corporation.

Carrier says the scale made the 550-square-foot prayer chapel for Point Loma Nazarene University one of the toughest projects he has ever done.

When it comes to design thinking and its staff, the firm tries hard to avoid silos. Carrier Johnson + CULTURE talents might be working on a high-rise one month and a library the next. Beyond running a good business by protecting the bottom line, the firm believes that “crosspollinating” its people on a variety of project types makes them better able to serve all of their clients. “We are here to solve a client’s unique problem. Having done 15 of the same building type doesn’t always result in creative problem solving. In fact, it could be just the opposite, with tendency to lean on the last project as informant for the next. So we prefer the freshness of each opportunity,” Carrier says.

The firm also doesn’t believe in a top-down org chart; a junior associate or Carrier himself are seen as equally capable of contribution regarding best ideas. “Hierarchy is the enemy of collaboration,” Carrier says. “We don’t have a triangle of power, but rather a circle of design influence with everyone’s names inside of it, including mine.”

He sees that circle as his biggest legacy. “I’m most proud of the quality of the talent and the dialogue we have every day. Ours is an environment where people enjoy the art and process of design. There’s just no substitute for being in a place where all people are trying to make a project better.” — Amy Spooner

Class Notes

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1960s

Thomas Zung, FAIA, B.S. ’60, president of Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung Architects, was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in February. He established Thomas T.K. Zung Architects Inc. in Cleveland in 1967; the following year, he designed the first elongated geodesic dome in association with Buckminster Fuller Synergetics organization. Thomas T.K. Zung Architects and R. Buckminster Fuller merged to form Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung Architects where they designed numerous geodesic domes, tensegrity structures, vector equilibriums, museum exhibitions, publications, and Fuller’s last invention, Hang It All.

Terry Slonaker, B.S. ’63, is retired and living in eastern Pennsylvania. He has maintained his state architecture license and continues to provide limited consulting services. He spent the bulk of his career in private practice at Slonaker McCall Architects, which was based in York, Pennsylvania.

1970s

Peter Kuttner, FAIA, B.S. ’72,

M.Arch ’74, was inaugurated as the 58th chancellor of the AIA College of Fellows in December 2019. He previously served as New England regional representative to the College of Fellows, as well as bursar and vice chancellor. He is a principal at CambridgeSeven, an architectural and exhibit design firm located in suburban Boston, where his work includes serving as the principalin-charge for the new Mote Sea Education Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida; the Port Wonder Children’s Museum in Lake Charles, Louisiana; the kidSTREAM Children’s Museum in Camarillo, California; and the Naples Nature Center expansion in Naples, Florida.

Michael Tobin, B.S. ’74, M.Arch

’75, joined Rush Street Gaming LLC in December 2019 as senior vice president for development. He is based in Chicago. Previously, he was with CBRE as managing director in charge of the development management services group in the Midwest market. Rush Street is comprised of several full-service casinos, internet gaming, restaurants, hotels, television production, and more. It is one of the fastest-growing gaming companies in North America, launching four casinos in four years within the past decade.

 Brian Craig, FAIA, B.S. ’73, M.Arch ’75, was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in February for his work in architectural education and practice. He recently retired from his position as founding director of the Master of Architecture Program at Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Building on a career that spans from the Peace Corps in Afghanistan to senior vice president at Progressive AE, he designed, implemented, and led the accreditation of the KCAD M.Arch and taught in the program. He now returns to architectural research and consulting.

 Elisabeth Knibbe, FAIA, B.S. ’76, M.Arch/M.U.P. ’78, a principal with Quinn Evans, is retiring after a 40-year career in architecture. She is widely recognized as a pioneer in the practice of historic preservation, noted in particular for her work in the repurposing of aging, underutilized buildings in order to promote economic development and community resilience. She will continue to

serve as principal emeritus consulting on several of Quinn Evans’ major projects, including the restoration of Michigan Central Station in Detroit. She joined Quinn Evans in 2004; prior to that, she was principal and owner of Elisabeth Knibbe Architects. AIA Detroit honored her career accomplishments with a 2019 Gold Medal.

Michael LeFevre, FAIA Emeritus,

B.S. ’76, M. Arch ’77, has joined DesignIntelligence Strategic Advisors as principal, consulting with firms on strategy, technology, and leadership. In addition, he serves as managing editor of DI Media Group, publisher of DesignIntelligence Quarterly, DI Research, and Foresight. After a 30-year career as a practicing architect, he spent 22 years in a new role as design liaison within Holder Construction Company, a national CM firm. Last year, his debut book, Managing Design (Wiley, 2019) was Amazon’s No. 1 new release in its category. He continues to write and speak nationally on collaboration — and the power of others — and looks forward to seeing fellow classmates and alumni.

1980s

William (Bill) Hartmann, FAIA,

B.S. ’80, M.Arch. ’82, was promoted to regional managing principal at Gensler, covering the North Central Region and overseeing four offices, their teams, and their clients. Since joining the firm in 1996, he has served in a variety of leadership roles, including office director in Detroit, chair of the Design Leadership Taskforce, a rotating member of the Management Committee, and, most recently, firmwide client relationships leader.

George Kacan, M.Arch ’86, has joined the leadership team at Wightman. He will focus on business development centered around

architectural and planning services for the education sector. Additionally, he is serving as the regional director for a new Royal Oak, Michigan, office that the firm is in the process of opening. Previously, he was with Sidock Group Inc., where he was responsible for the company’s design studio in Novi, Michigan. His completed projects have a collective construction value of more than $1 billion and include numerous school buildings throughout Michigan. He also led work on the Detroit Public Schools’ successful $500 million bond proposal in 2009 and subsequent program management. 

John Myefski, B.S. ’84, M.Arch

’86, principal and president of Myefski Architects, won a 2019 AN Best of Design Award (Honorable Mention in the Retail + Mixed Use category) for the Christian Dior store in Chicago. The project also received the Design Award of Honor from the Society of American Registered Architects in November 2019. Transforming the 1950’s-era Walton Gardens building designed by Bertrand Goldberg into Maison Dior’s modern concept involved creating an incandescent facade that features a patterned frit/ceramic glazing. Show windows and lightboxes further balance the prominence of the historic Walton Gardens with Dior’s modern, French identity.

John Ronan, B.S. ’85, and his firm, John Ronan Architects, received the 2020 AIA National Honor Award for the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at the Illinois Institute of Technology. One juror commented, “The Kaplan Institute at IIT is an academic building that combines functionality and sustainability into an elegant design solution, all while working within rigorous financial constraints in a setting with tremendous architectural standards.”

1990s

Stanford Harvey III, FAICP, B.S.

’91, has been elected to the American Institute of Certified Planners’ College of Fellows. He is a principal in the urban design and planning practice at Lord Aeck Sargent and is director of the firm’s Lexington, Kentucky, office. His specialties are conceptualizing planning processes, facilitating community participation, directing facilities/infrastructure programs, and developing implementation strategies. In 1997, following three years of heavy involvement with pre-Olympic urban redevelopment for the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta (CODA), Harvey co-founded Urban Collage, which in 2013 became a practice area of Lord Aeck Sargent.

Pankaj Duggal, M.U.P./M.Arch

’95, recently joined Jensen Hughes as president and chief operating officer. He joins Jensen Hughes after a 21-year career at Jacobs, a global architecture, engineering, and consulting firm, where he most recently held a senior leadership role managing the company’s federal and environmental businesses worldwide. Jensen Hughes, headquartered in the Washington, D.C., metro area, (continued on pg. 58)