Connected: the future of the American city and the demand for integrative design.
Public and private. Urban and suburban. Big picture and small. What defines Cooper Carry is its ability to create connections—to integrate a diversity of disciplines, goals and ideas into a singular design vision that enriches both space and spirit. At the foundation of this approach is a powerful value system—one that emphasizes place and focuses on the human experience. The firm's unique philosophy has paid big dividends: despite a sluggish economy, the company has grown over the last two years. The New York, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta offices are bustling with projects—calling on the firm to look beyond single structures and envision the visual and functional character of city blocks and, on occasion, entire cities.
We spoke with Cooper Carry's President, Kevin Cantley, about how the firm is connecting its core values to its practices, its projects, its clients and the cities it is helping transform.
How has Cooper Carry evolved into the multi-disciplinary firm it is today? How has the firm's vision changed over the years?
There was once a prevailing attitude in our profession that buildings created for commercial purposes weren't worthy of the attention of architects. They weren't high profile, and they presented daunting functional challenges. Cooper Carry was formed to change that attitude and over the past four decades we've become best known for exactly that—connecting commerce with art, creating commercial buildings that are both more beautiful and more useful.
We've developed very strong hospitality, mixed-use and institutional practices, which have led to some exciting multi-building projects, particularly for education. We've also found an increasing amount of work in the urban context. Space is limited in the cities; and traffic issues and inconsistent planning plague the suburbs. These issues have put a real emphasis on the ability to combine uses and develop more integrated and useful environments. For this reason, public and private interests are working together, and architecture, interior design and landscape design are being seen as aspects of a single design process. Integrative design is critical to future of American cities, and has been our area of expertise since the beginning.
Can you give us a good example?
The city of Raleigh is an excellent example. Our involvement began when Progress Energy, the city's only Fortune 500 business located downtown, approached our Mixed-Use practice to help them conceive of uses for some downtown properties they were about to buy. Our brainstorming sessions led us to a much broader vision for the development of the downtown corridor. The guiding principles we established for the Progress Energy project were eventually adopted by the city as a foundation for the Livable Streets Initiative. Ultimately, our Center for Connective Architecture was retained to help spearhead this project and manage public participation in the design process. Now our Hospitality group has been chosen to design the new convention center hotel.
How has Raleigh benefited?
Raleigh 's main downtown thoroughfare, Fayetteville Street, had become functionally obsolete, the main thoroughfare blocked by an imposing convention center. Downtown properties were marginalized from the commercial life of the city; development stalled; the area was largely populated by drab government offices. But the community realized that the area had tremendous potential—they wanted their downtown back. Once engaged, we master planned a new downtown convention center—one that reopened access to Fayetteville Street and to some wonderful green spaces the city had developed. Cooper Carry is now on the team designing a new Fayetteville Street, and is the architect for the new convention center hotel. How has Raleigh benefited? The city center is coming back to life—with residential development, a renovated city market, entertainment and retail. This is a really good model for urban redevelopment.
Where else has this need for integrated thinking engaged the firm?
Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach , Florida ; Atlanta , Georgia ; Lancaster , Pennsylvania ; and Bethesda , Maryland , to name a few. We are engaged on a number of levels in these cities. We are creating new buildings—hotels, transportation venues, and the like—but are also helping the cities develop their urban and exurban redevelopment initiatives. The diversity of our work within each city is a testimony to our ability to address some uniquely modern questions: How does public merge with private, how does university merge with city, how does hotel merge with office, with residential, with retail, with an airport? We're not only able to ask those questions, but are able to deliver thoughtful, pragmatic and elegant solutions.
How has working within the urban context influenced your practices?
One idea that has become a driving force behind all our projects is the concept of place-making. The spaces within and without a building are as important as the building itself. No building exists in a vacuum; its exterior face is also the interior face of the street. We envision the street as a public room, and our design addresses every space created by and related to the building: the streets, the walkways, the siding, and the landscape. This idea applies both to urban and suburban environments—the need to create value, to realize the full potential of every space, both inside and outside the actual structure you are creating.
How does the firm facilitate this kind of integrated design?
We've created a laterally thinking environment that fuses the disciplines of the interior architect, the landscape architect and the architect on every project. Embedded specialists within each practice group work together, creating a dynamic interplay of ideas, and educational and professional backgrounds to ensure the thoughtful harmony of every element and space in the finished product.
Our executive leadership reflects this approach. We have recently made Richard Stonis our Director of Interior Architecture, and Brett Wylie our Director of Landscape Architecture. Richard and Brett will assure that their expertise is represented firmwide. Our urban design and planning group, The Center for Connective Architecture, facilitates the interaction of public and private interests with all of the design disciplines to address civic, commercial and community goals.
Where do you see the firm—and the industry—headed?
Since our earliest days we've had an unwavering belief in design for context, in place-making, in a collaborative design process that absorbs the character of the community and environment in which we work. At Cooper Carry, we are encouraging more collaboration across disciplines and elevating the profile of interior and landscape architects in our design process. And we're going to find new ways of blending public and private interests to create better, more livable, sustainable and beautiful cities.
Our Washington and New York offices are growing. The Atlanta office will continue to diversify—broadening the breadth of its services and at the same time focusing on important market niches such as assisted living, university science environments, climate specialization, and historical renovations, to name a few.
None of this would be possible, of course, without the vision of our leadership. We have a growing team of thought leaders whose insight into all the areas we've discussed is a major reason why Cooper Carry is stronger and more diverse today than at any point in its history.