We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Steve Scribner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Steve, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have a majority of our projects and clients align with our mission and values, which makes much of our work meaningful and rewarding. One project we’d like to spotlight is the Bluff Lake Nature Center, which embodies so many of our favorite things: they are a mission-driven organization dedicated to furthering equity in outdoor access, conserving an important urban natural ecosystem, and educating individuals of all ages. This project involves collaborating with this incredible organization and their constituents, to create a new building on their existing nature center site to support their educational and community mission while improving their ability to fulfill their stewardship work. Our approach to the project turned the idea of designing a building inside-out: how could we use our skills – in collaboration with our incredible Landscape Architect partner, Superbloom – to design an entire site intervention that used both landscape and building to create a new gateway to nature that enhances user’s connection to the incredible site. The close collaboration with consultants, owners, the builder, and community is a constantly rewarding and meaningful process that leaves us fulfilled every day. We became architects to make positive change to the climate, our communities, and specific, unique sites, and with this project we are achieving all three at once.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Morgan started Shape in 2016 after moving from the East Coast to Golden with his wife, who dragged him to the mountains and blue skies from coastal Maine. He had been working for a great, super progressive architecture firm there, who was on the forefront of sustainability, focusing on certified Passive House design – they designed the first Certified Passive House school in Maine (one of the first in the country), as well as other groundbreaking projects. When he arrived in Colorado, he did not find a similar company that shared the depth of building science expertise, commitment to lower energy use and associated benefits of increased comfort, health, durability, and reduced operating costs, so instead, he started a design-build company with a friend (Paper Airplane Design Build). After a year or two and some successful projects, he wanted to shift his focus back toward design, so he started Sustainable Habitats and Performance Engineering (SHaPE). It began small with ADU’s, renovations, and additions, but it gave Morgan a chance to help create a small but passionate network of other like-minded building science experts and sustainability advocates. A couple of interesting passive house projects came out of that network, and catalyzed the growth of Shape Architecture. In 2018, Steve moved to Denver for similar reasons. His background was in cultural and educational design work as well as single-family residential, and he was also a Certified Passive House Designer. He and Morgan had been in touch as Shape was being established, and the two immediately recognized that they shared a vision for creating positive community impact through deeply sustainable, site-specific architecture. They never looked back, and through their partnership, expertise, and the dedication of their talented, growing team, they have been incrementally making this dream a reality. We’re so proud that our passion and expertise align to bring positive change to our clients, communities, and hopefully demonstrate a path toward a more sustainable world.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
This is a great question – architecture is an incredibly tough profession and typically very undervalued. The fees we have to charge for our work can seem high to people, given the relatively intangible value and deliverables we bring, especially when compared to the actual homes or buildings produced by contractors. But we love what we do because we are truly creating value and optimizing how people spend their hard-earned treasure. We empathize with clients on how painfully expensive the construction industry is, and always do our absolute best to be efficient with our time while being creative and maintaining quality; some clients see and appreciate this while others are more focused on dollars. As a society, we really should place a higher value on designers across all creative disciplines and have more trust that their craft takes time and iteration, but the cost will come back manyfold over time. One thing that we have discovered is the importance of partnerships and the value of taking extra steps to be connected to the broader industry including contractors, engineers, and other experts and artists, which helps to cultivate a thriving ecosystem – we lean on each other and learn from each other’s experiences. We find that when we bring a team or individual into our orbit for a specific project, it often leads to other connections, knowledge gained, or just friendship. More is always better when it comes to relationships. We invite you to reach out!
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
When we first started Shape, we never thought we’d read so many business self-help books! There have been many that have really helped guide how Steve and I approach leadership and business management, but of course the challenge is actually incorporating what we pick up in reading / listening. But one book that sticks out is by Monty Moran, former co-CEO of Chipotle. It’s called Love is Free, Guac is Extra, and it is a super enjoyable and easy-to-read yet insightful book about his journey and approach to leadership that led to wild success in business. His basic premise is about cultivating cultures of empowerment and accountability, and many of the ideas and anecdotes have stuck with me. I highly recommend that any entrepreneur check it out.
We also love listening to interview podcasts of other architects or related professionals – hearing others’ origin stories, struggles, and approaches that have made them successful is both inspiring and grounding. One such podcast is called Second Studio and is hosted by a couple of architects who have a way of getting interviewees to really open up. And we have to shout out our local friend and colleague Adam Wagoner who created a podcast in which he interviews local architects and designers on their origin stories and passions – we highly recommend checking out Architect-ing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shapearchitect.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shape_architect/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shapearchitecturestudio
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shape-architecture-studio
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shapearchitecturestudio/featured
Image Credits
Drew Tooley,
Kylie Fitts,
Sarah Vanderpool