Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm. Patrick MacLeamy

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Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm

      The People, Stories, and Strategies Behind HOK

       Patrick MacLeamy, FAIA

Cover image: Courtesy of HOK

      Cover design: Wiley

      Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

      Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

      Published simultaneously in Canada.

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      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Name: MacLeamy, Patrick Edward, 1942– author.

      Title: Designing a world-class architecture firm: the people, stories, and strategies behind HOK / Patrick Edward MacLeamy, FAIA.

      Description: Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, [2020] | Includes index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019053600 (print) | LCCN 2019053601 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119685302 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119685456 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119685432 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. | Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum—Employees.

      Classification: LCC NA737.H385 M33 2020 (print) | LCC NA737.H385 (ebook) | DDC 720.92—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053600

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053601

      ISBN 9781119685302 (cloth); ISBN 9781119685456 (ePDF); ISBN 9781119685432 (ePub); 9781119685463 (obook)

For Jeanne . . .

       the love of my life and HOK's greatest gift.

Introduction

      When I became CEO of HOK, people would often ask me, “Now that you're an executive, do you miss designing buildings?” I would always reply, “No, because now I'm designing a firm.” That answer, so often repeated, became the inspiration for the title of this book: Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm. Of course, I was not HOK's original designer.

HOK's founders—George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and George Kassabaum—were visionaries who set out to establish a new kind of architecture firm that would outlast them all. They succeeded—and then some. Today, 65 years later, HOK is one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the world.¹ This book tells the inside story of how they did it. However, it's not just a history of HOK, even if that history is fascinating—and often funny. Instead, I have used HOK's story as a vehicle for sharing lessons we learned along the way that will be beneficial to other architects, designers—and really anyone in a creative or service business.

      Most architecture books are about a firm's design work, but not this one. I have included some significant projects to illustrate milestones in HOK's growth and development, but that is not the main thrust of the book. Instead, as the subtitle says, I have written about the people, stories, and strategies behind HOK because they are stories worth sharing with lessons worth learning.

      People. Let's start with the people. Founder George Hellmuth watched his father's architecture practice repeatedly go boom and bust throughout his childhood. How did that inform his efforts to build a “depression-proof” firm? George Kassabaum drafted the atomic bomb rack for the Enola Gay aircraft. Did that have anything to do with his unofficial motto? He often told us: “Do the right thing, always.” Gyo Obata served in the U.S. Army, even though his Japanese-American family was interned during World War II. Perhaps, that character-building experience helped him set aside his own ego, listen carefully to each client, and come up with the best design solution just for them—a hallmark of HOK's work.