Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm. Patrick MacLeamy

a serious structural flaw. He had the integrity to approach Citicorp about the problem and offer a solution that was implemented floor-by-floor while the building remained occupied.

Production Innovation

George Kassabaum set high standards for production, the process of making sure designs are feasible, preparing documents for bidding, and working with the contractor during construction. He believed clients deserved buildings completed on time and on budget. He also believed contractors deserved well-organized and complete information to construct the buildings. Kassabaum understood the natural tension between quality and schedule, and once quipped at a conference, “There are two types of clients, those who want it right and those who want it Tuesday.”³

Kassabaum's department was the largest in the office, with dedicated teams to shepherd each project through to bidding and construction. Each team was led by a project manager, who was responsible for organizing, wrangling, and then delivering each project through to completion—by the deadline and within the budget. Each team also had a project architect, who was responsible for preparing the technical drawings and specifications necessary for construction.

      For those not familiar with this process, architects make drawings to describe items best represented visually, such as floor plans, details, and elevations, which are drawings of the facades of buildings. They write specifications to describe items best represented by words, like what color paint the contractor should use and how to mix and apply it— information not easily conveyed in a drawing.

      Just as Obata and his designers innovated in how they drew and refined their designs, Kassabaum encouraged his production architects to find better, more flexible ways to translate design into a completed building. HOK production architects made innovative use of Mylar, synthetic plastic drafting sheets, instead of traditional drafting paper. Mylar was semitransparent, had the right texture to accept pencil drafting, and was easy to erase without damage—a great improvement over paper.

      Kassabaum's department was also an early adopter of the pin-bar drafting system for architectural drawings. A metal bar attached to the top of each drafting table contained pins matching pre-punched holes in the Mylar drafting sheets. Production architects could place several Mylar sheets containing different information over the pins, aligning them exactly. That made it easy to coordinate architectural and mechanical plans, for example, by layering them over each other.

      Detail drawings are critical to describe how parts of a building fit together, such as how a window fits into a wall. Common practice for most architects was to draft many different details on a large sheet, starting at the top and proceeding to the bottom. Detail sheets tended to be crowded, messy, and disorganized. Details were often drawn out of a logical sequence. Architects frequently drew details too small to be clearly understood by the contractor or squeezed too many details onto a sheet. These shortcomings required the contractor to hunt through the detail sheets to find needed information, slowing construction. Every moment lost during construction costs money, and since a project may last for years, the accumulation of small inefficiencies can have a big impact.

      Kassabaum recognized that this practice was seriously flawed and encouraged his production architects to find a better solution. Two of his top people, Bob Stauder and Herb Koopman, began to experiment with drawing details freehand—without drafting tools. It sounds counterintuitive in this technological age, but this was refreshingly efficient. They learned they could place a sheet of Mylar over an earlier detail and make a freehand sketch, adapting or improving an old detail for a new or changed condition. The process was quick and flexible. If a detail needed to be changed, it only took a few moments. Better yet, the freehand technique worked best if the detail was drawn larger than usual, providing the benefit of extra clarity for both the architect and the contractor.

      Finally, Stauder and Koopman innovated how details were organized on detail sheets. They started drawing all freehand details on 8-1/2 × 11 or 11 × 17 sheets of Mylar and storing them in a drawer until the drawings were nearing completion. Then the project architect arranged the details in a logical order on large Mylar sheets and fastened them with clear tape. The HOK print shop used a photographic process to create a clean, new Mylar sheet with all the details shown in sequence. This process of freehand detailing followed by organized sequencing was well-suited to the evolving process of architecture.

      FIGURE 3.1 Example of a freehand detail, c. 1969.

      Source: Image courtesy of HOK.

Xerox machines, pin bars, Mylar, and the rest, were all tools of that time. Of course, they are totally obsolete today, so why mention them? Because innovation never goes out of style. The point is that HOK people were finding new ways to use the tools available to them. Architects today should look around at the tools of this time—Building Information Modeling (BIM), virtual reality, and more—and dream up new ways to use them. Organization never gets old either. Arranging details for the contractor in a logical sequence is just as helpful today as it was then. You'll just use new tools to do so.

Kassabaum also set high standards for personal integrity inside and outside of the office. Remember, his motto was “Do the right thing, always.” It was especially important when genuine problems arose. A good example was Our Lady of the Snows, a Catholic shrine and retreat center in Belleville, Illinois designed for The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Shortly after completion, the client complained that the roof was leaking. Kassabaum discovered the leaks originated in a flawed HOK detail and called the client. “It's our fault. We'll take care of it,” he told them. HOK oversaw and paid for repairs. Rather than being angered by the mistake, the clients were impressed with Kassabaum's integrity, and became lifelong friends and supporters.

      Kassabaum was also responsible for firm-wide administration, including accounting and legal support. He was the ideal man for the job. Despite his workload, he always left his office on time, and rarely worked weekends—unlike Obata and his design team. Sometimes people would chide him about not working overtime, but he always said, “If you organize your work properly, you can leave on time, and have more time for family and other activities.” It sounds idyllic in this age of overwork. Two Kassabaum traits helped him manage his workload: personal organization and an ability to delegate responsibility.

Start-to-Finish Innovation

      Another HOK innovation was the firm's emphasis on getting involved in projects at the very beginning and then assigning teams that stuck with those projects until the very end.

It started with Kassabaum, who observed that architects tended to disengage from society to concentrate on their work, and who believed the profession suffered as a result. When he became AIA president, he said, “Architects shouldn't wait around for politicians, economists and sociologists to come to us. Too often they decide where a building is to be built, how much it will cost, and then call in an architect. By that time, too many important decisions have been made.”⁴

      Kassabaum believed that instead architects should be civic-minded, get out into the world, and engage with decision makers to help make good choices early. Today we call this “predesign services,” where architects do things like help a client choose the ideal site, decide how many stories a building should be, and so on. Intervening early came to be a core belief of my own. More on that later. As for Kassabaum, he practiced what he preached. He was a latter-day renaissance man, fully immersed in civic, professional, and academic life. In addition to his lifelong work with the AIA, he remained connected with Washington University as a faculty member, fundraiser, and trustee. HOK benefited early and often from his deep ties to the community and profession.

Gyo Obata also contributed