Patrick MacLeamy - Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm

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 glass galleries for the display of aircraft and space memorabilia separated by four marble cubes for smaller exhibits. It was brilliantly simple, and Obata went with it.

Sometimes the best design solution comes from second chances. And sometimes it comes from an underling.

The Smithsonian dedicated the redesigned museum on July 1, 1976, at the height of the United States Bicentennial festivities, under the leadership of Director Michael Collins, the former astronaut who had journeyed to the moon on Apollo 11, in 1969. The National Air and Space Museum quickly became the most popular museum on the National Mall and earned praise in the architectural press, establishing a much-needed national reputation for both Obata and HOK. Any design firm that can nab a prominent commission early in its corporate life—then design an elegant solution—will benefit, as HOK did. It remains the most-visited museum in the United States, with 7.5 million visitors in 2016, for example.

FIGURE 5.1National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC.

Source: Photo by George Silk. Photo courtesy of HOK.

Dallas, Texas was not on the minds of the founders when they first considered adding offices. That would soon change with the advent of a major project opportunity. This time, Obata's burgeoning design reputation, more than Hellmuth's clever marketing ability, led to the establishment of another new office. It happened in a mad rush of opportunity and action.

The twin Texas cities of Dallas and Fort Worth are only 31 miles apart, and both maintained competing airports until 1966. After prodding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the cities agreed to jointly build and operate a new airport on a large tract of land midway between their two city centers. They recruited Thomas Sullivan, former head of Kennedy Airport in New York, as director of the new airport to be called Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). Acting on the advice of friends in the aviation industry, Sullivan invited Gyo Obata to Dallas for a preliminary interview and was impressed with his ability to listen and absorb ideas for the new airport. A few days later, Sullivan asked Obata for information about HOK and examples of recent work. Sullivan explained that he wanted to brief the airport board—and that the meeting was the next morning!

Frantic, Gerry Gilmore of the marketing department worked all day to assemble the requested material. Then—in a classic move inspired by Hellmuth, his mentor—he flew to Dallas and hand-delivered the package to Sullivan late in the evening. Sullivan looked through it but was not satisfied, and asked Gilmore for more supporting detail. At 1 a.m., Gilmore called King Graf in St. Louis, rousting him from bed. King put on his clothes, drove downtown to the office, and assembled yet more material for Sullivan. Then he arranged for a chartered plane to fly it to Dallas! Gilmore met the plane, rushed to Sullivan's office, and hand-delivered the new material to him just as the board meeting was beginning.

Gilmore waited nervously outside Sullivan's office to learn the outcome. Finally, Sullivan called Gilmore into his office, telephoned Obata, and said, “Obata, I just finished the presentation to the airport board. I'm sitting here with your guy, Gilmore, and I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you.” A big grin spread over his face. “The bad news is that I sold you to the board this morning, and now you're going to have to design this damned thing.” 3

HOK was required to establish a Dallas project office as a condition of the contract. As with San Francisco, the founders believed the project office was an opportunity for a permanent HOK office. Maybe it was because King Graf had performed so admirably, half-asleep, in the middle of the night, to help land the DFW Airport job, that Hellmuth asked him to relocate from St. Louis to Dallas and look for more commissions. King would remain in Dallas for a decade and was successful in winning many more contracts, establishing Dallas as a major HOK office.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport began operations in 1973, and today serves over 60 million passengers annually, with five terminals and 165 gates. In 2017, Airports Council International named DFW the best large airport in North America for passenger satisfaction.

FIGURE 5.2Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport under construction.

Source: Photo by George Silk. Photo courtesy of HOK.

These three offices, opened at such an early point in the firm's history and within seven years of each other, established the pattern HOK would follow in the future: seek out major design contracts, which sometimes required opening a local project office; grow promising project offices into major branches; acquire firms when necessary to gain entry to a market. It was risky to open new offices so quickly, but, for now, the firm appeared to be up to the challenge.

1 Expand by buying other firms when you have the money and need instant credibility.

2 Expand by growing project offices into branch offices, when you don't have the money, but have plenty of time to establish credibility.

3 Establish just a marketing office in a new city, when you don't have the money—or a project—to break in there.

4 Remember that sometimes the best design solution comes from second chances—or comes from an underling.

5 Work to win a high profile commission early in your company's development, for the good press and national reputation it can spark.

1 1Walter McQuade and Paul Grotz, Architecture in the Real World: The Work of HOK (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1985), p. 34.

2 2Cathy Sivek, “An Interview with Gyo Obata, FAIA, Founding Partner of Global Architectural Firm HOK,” p. 2, ArchitectureSchools.com, February 2, 2006. Accessed April 21, 2019. http://architectureschools.com/resources/an-interview-with-Obata-obata-faia-founding-partner-of-global-architectural-firm-hok.

3 3McQuade and Grotz, 44.