Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gary Gene Olp. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Gary Gene, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Please tell us about starting your own firm and if you’d do anything different knowing what you know now.
My early career was sort of magical. I have been interested in Sustainable Green Design since I was a young Architectural student. The work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Alto influenced me deeply. They both understood materials, siting, how daylight plays with a space, how to integrate nature into the building. Additionally, they seemed to have an intuitive understanding of ecological stewardship. I was fortunate in working for a marvelous professional John E. Harris III. Not only was he an incredibly marvelous man but he also let me design projects for his clients that expressed my budding ethos. John offered me a partnership but I declined. I simply didn’t see a future for me in Ohio. I left to join a firm in Dallas, Texas. They had a fine reputation but unfortunately ran out of work. From there I moved on to a firm that was not regarded well in professional circles in terms of quality design. They were an established firm with a solid reputation for producing buildings well. I chose to that because I was offered to be the Director of Design. As a result I completely transformed their reputation and soon built a client base that desired good design. Ultimately, I became the Director of Marketing in addition to Design and was made a principle of the firm. But then, it was decision time. To continue on with the firm was untenable. The founding principal was resistant to modernization and the firm was burdened with 3 other unproductive tenured partners. I broke away and started my own firm focused on significant design, sustainability and environmental responsibility. The clients I brought to the prior practice enthusiastically supported my decision and I’ve never looked back. Not sure what I would do differently. Perhaps I would have chosen a firm with a different specialty to polish my skills. Retail was a difficult specialty to make a difference in and where I am now resembles nothing in terms of the type of projects I started with. It’s tough to start a firm. Tougher today even. It’s a lot about relationships, a lot of serendipity, and like Steve Jobs said, be sure your vision and passion are strong enough to pull you forward. A young Professional considering starting a firm needs to consider if they are on an artist mission or a commodity business path. From my current view, the path of Architecture as a business where the moral compass of an Artist isn’t a guiding influence is easier and certainly more lucrative.
Gary Gene, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Our practice represents our passion and commitment for Health & Wellness. Health & Wellness is a broad brush representation of our work. When we design spaces and built environments for people we focus on Design, the Environment, and, Sustainability. Design affects people at an energetic spiritual level. Too often beauty and appealing design are overlooked. Certainly, Journeymen Architects produce buildings, that keep you warm or cool, keep the rain and dust out and so on. What they do not do is sing! They do not resonate with your inner being nor connect one to the magic of life. Quite honestly, they are dead spaces dumping down and dulling the senses. There is something magical about a beautiful building that inspires people, wrapped in the embrace of the power of the unseen. Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Alto, Richard Neutra among others could do it. We do it. The sculptural spaces we create affect people positively. Filled with natural light and the harmonic organization of space our Architecture renders a feeling of lightness, joy, comfort, love and peace. Consequently, health and wellness improves for the occupants. It happens without conscious thought or effort, the Architecture simply infuses the user with a transformational experience. Wright often talked about shaking buildings out of his sleeve, he saw the finished space in his mind, fully formed, an inspiration from the unseen. Mozart did it writing out music as he heard it in his mind. I refer to Architecture as frozen music. What is the difference between a journeyman and an artist? An example I really enjoy is the comment Paul McCartney and John Lennon made about Ringo Star. The Beatles had five different journeyman drummers. Ringo showed up for a trial and played with them. Afterward Paul commented that Ringo had the passion and the spark, Lennon described it as magic; made him tingly and giddy. The rest is, well magic! Beauty is fundamental to human health & wellbeing.
Additionally, there is the health & wellbeing of the environment, that’s where sustainability comes in. We work to create built work that is restorative. Minimizing and now to a large degree improving the state of the natural world. Our work features design and construction that uses next to no energy, referred to as NZE, Net Zero Energy and NZC, Net Zero Carbon. When we focus on eliminating all toxins from the construction process as a consequence the air, water and soil is cleaner. A healthy natural environment results in improved human health & wellbeing. We pay attention to utilizing plants and organic methodologies that improve the soil, filter the air, and, provide food and forage for pollinators. Few know that I’m a beekeeper and have learned so much how sensitive these beneficial insects are adverse environmental impacts. We don’t design boxes with holes cut in them. Our work features space plans that welcome natural lighting into the interior in a way that the heat of the summer is excluded but the warmth of sunlight in the winter penetrates deeply into the spaces we inhabit. More and more we are learning that sunlight is essential to human health and wellbeing. Our eyes and the cells in our skin internalize sunlight, researchers are finding out that this phenomena can not only augment human health but also heal disease and damaged biology! It only makes sense to fill our spaces with natural light. Again, go back to the journeyman Architects that build boxes negligent of beauty and essential dark interior that require artificial illumination that has an adverse effect on weight gain, mental acuity, fatigue, and lethargy.
Beauty, environmental awareness, envelopes that feature energy optimization and touch the earth lightly are features that we integrate into every building we design. We are most proud of buildings that diffuse the barrier between outside and inside, reconnecting our clients and the those who use our buildings with the natural world. Call it an exercise in rediscovery, supporting the access and experience of how humans once lived in a symbiotic relationship with nature.
What we are most proud of are comments that offered without solicitation about how marvelous people feel living in or using the Architecture we have manifested. Sometimes its as simple as people who comment that don’t know how they can continue to live in their current homes or work in any other office building!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I began my early career with a small firm in Ohio, I was given a lot of freedom to pursue designs for clients utilizing knowledge I’d gleaned from change agents practicing at that time. Malcom Wells – Underground Architecture, Gary Wright – Passive Solar Design to reference a few. I was drawn by my passion for the natural world and the challenge to build minimally and in a way that is environmentally responsible. I was fleshing out a green or sustainable approach to Architecture. To grow, I needed to relocate to a larger City and a larger firm, or so I thought.
Every career path is circuitous, mine has been no different. I wound up as a partner in a large firm that was focused on retail, primarily shopping malls. Every experience offers growth opportunities: acquiring team management skills, project management skills for large projects, built a network, learned how to market for new work and how to effect real change in terms of sustainability with clients who were deaf to anything green.
But then I began asking myself why I was in a project type that was ephemera: fashion vs substance and I just didn’t see a long future in shopping malls. Honestly, I hated being in them. I tried to create concourses and courts that were interior gardens, filled with sunlight and landscaping. To that end I was successful but I still found that my professional life represented an untruth regarding my real passion. The day I realized that my work was not sustaining my soul I decided to make a change to my professional practice and purse projects that would be enduring, influential and environmentally impactful.
That decision has led me to where I am today where I work to create restorative projects that benefit future generations yet unborn. I have been honored by the election to the AIA’s College of Fellows as well as a Fellow with the United States Green Building Council, USGBC, and numerous other environmental achievement awards. The emotional need to pivot was strong and deep. It’s obvious to me that like the Chippawa wisdom speak – “. . .all the while the spirit that moves through all things moves me across the sky”, this is the work I was intended to do, my purpose, passion and gift to humankind.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
Too many times I’m afraid. Clients that are dead beats and don’t pay their bills or only partially pay, Projects that filed for bankruptcy with substantial fees unpaid. Clients that were a regular source of work dry or simple come to an end by my choice or theirs. Gaps in workload where all available cash and lines of Credit are drained down to thin air. Delays in payments from clients due to bureaucrats nit picking invoices for edits not written into approved contract language. Oh, yea, I’ve lost a lot of sleep over these situations.
And, over the years I’ve learned to realize that it is what it is. I don’t fear these events anymore. I learned how to manage the financial aspects of the business in a way that is almost like juggling pineapples or better, flaming torches. I have also worked to separate personal and business finances in a way that if the business ever did fail its not the end of the world. Life goes on, I could always find another job due to the network and reputation I built day upon day upon day.
But the most significant thing I’ve learned is that if you are on “YOUR” path of heart, where your passion is and you stay focused and steady, somehow, out of nowhere, this too will pass and the situation is surpassed. I’ve kept working, identified what is it I can do right now to keep the firm alive, and, the actions self start and have kept me moving forward toward a solution to the problem. It’s important to ask the question about your purpose,” am I truly on my path of heart”, and through the magic of the unseen I historically been gifted with what’s needed to carry on.
Mysteriously, and it truly is a mystery to me, when I sit back in a quiet moment and ask myself how has this firm survived for 35 years with all the financial and real estate busts, twists and turns and road blocks; I “See” that there is a lot of serendipity and magic involved in all of this.
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