Category: Featured

By William Richards

Last year, VMDO’s Michelle Amt, FAIA, wrote about the firm’s commitment to “radical transparency” on the road to 2030. She was reflecting on the prior year’s achievement: VMDO’s sixth time of reporting its project performance data to the AIA’s 2030 Design Data Exchange (DDx), whose results, she said, “contain victories and defeats that remain untold—untold because we are not even close to hitting our 2030 goals portfolio-wise.”

It seems potentially damaging to a business like VMDO to admit, “Hey, we’re not hitting our marks, even if we believe we’re doing the right thing.” But, Amt’s rationale was simple and compelling: let’s agree that the road to success is paved with failures, and if we can’t talk openly about those setbacks—and why they occurred—we won’t rise to the urgency of decarbonization. We won’t learn from each other if we keep secrets. 

Radical transparency isn’t anti-business, Amt contended. It’s actually pro-business development. 

In today’s architecture world, where performance data and the optics of practicing sustainably form a heady blend, firms that are serious about decarbonization must leverage both to differentiate themselves in a competitive market. The AIA and the U.S. Department of Energy launched DDx in December 2014 with 132 firms reporting project-level information about energy performance. Now it features a decade’s worth of data from 500 firms, which represents a potentially vital data set for the 2030 Commitment’s evolution. 

“The 2030 Commitment has spurred discussions about our role and responsibility when it comes to climate action, resilience, equity, and health [and] after three years of not seeing our firm-wide percent reduction number move significantly, we discussed whether we wanted to focus our business development efforts solely on clients who were already interested in or actively asking for climate action,” said Amt in 2023. “This made us look deeply at how we measure success and impact beyond the DDx.”

What’s so radical about transparency? Well, for one thing, it doesn’t just shine a quick light on data that was once considered, at the very least, uncouth for an employer to reveal about not hitting goals. In a company that practices radical transparency, advocates say it ensures everyone has the ability to shine that light. 

Once you consider net zero benchmarks and an earnest desire to hit them, it’s not too long before you consider the other dimensions of transparency that can push a firm forward.

That includes salaries, long the elephant in the room, but now more and more visible as the crucible of pay inequity between workers who do the same job, as well as between men and women who do the same job. Just Google “gender pay gap in architecture” and see what you come up with.

WPA’s Mel Price, FAIA (once the chair of the AIA Small Firm Exchange when she spoke about the principles of openness in an AIA National interview) has been a tireless advocate of transparency as evidenced by her Norfolk firm, co-founded in 2010 with Thom White, AIA—and an open-office plan pairs well with an open-books plan.

“Back then [in 2010], the economy was shaky and the recovery from the Great Recession was slow-going. It maybe wasn’t an ideal time to try something radical when it came to company finances, but in that moment of uncertainty it was critical to create a culture of trust,” says Price about WPA’s founding.

Today? The firm’s approach to openness appears to be both prescient and also sustainable. 

“The recent business climate hasn’t changed our approach to transparency at all and I really can’t imagine any economic situation that would,” she says. “I think the kind of trust between staff and management that true transparency creates is critical in the current moment as well. I can’t say if transparency is right for every firm all the time. But I do believe that if more firms tried, they would see what we have seen and they wouldn’t go back.”

Radical transparency in companies has been popularized in recent years as a function of equity—openness and visibility in organizational processes, decision-making, and communication. 

Advocates say, in the pro column, radical transparency fosters trust and accountability, and provides employees with a clear understanding of the company’s goals, strategies, and performance metrics. When employees feel informed and involved, they are reportedly more likely to take ownership of their work and hold themselves and their colleagues accountable for outcomes.

It also enhances communication. Transparent communication channels facilitate the exchange of ideas, feedback, and concerns among employees and leadership. By encouraging open dialogue, companies can identify and address issues promptly, leading to improved decision-making and problem-solving.

To Price’s point, it enhances learning and professional development, too. Transparency exposes employees to different aspects of the business, allowing them to gain insights into various functions and roles. This exposure fosters continuous learning and skill development, empowering employees to take on new challenges and expand their expertise.

On the cons side of the page, many observers see privacy concerns as the biggest entry. Radical transparency may infringe on individuals’ privacy, particularly when it involves sharing personal or sensitive information. Employees may feel uncomfortable with the level of exposure, leading to distrust of managers and bosses, and disengagement with the company whose Oz-like revelations are simply just too weird for most people because it’s such a different sort of experience to the vast majority of workplaces. 

It can also lead to misinterpretation of information. Transparent communication can sometimes backfire if not executed carefully. Employees may misinterpret information or jump to conclusions, leading to rumors, misunderstandings, and conflict. Effective communication strategies, such as providing context and clarification, are essential to mitigate this risk. If that weren’t enough, it can lead to the dissemination of information that puts companies at a disadvantage. n highly competitive industries, radical transparency may inadvertently reveal sensitive business strategies or proprietary information to competitors. While transparency promotes trust internally, companies must carefully balance transparency with the need to protect intellectual property and maintain a competitive edge.

Cons aside, at the heart of transparency is a propensity for sharing around the office, which extends beyond pay to more fully define collaboration for the benefit of the project teams. It’s the kind of “silo-buster” that organizations and companies strive, but often fail, to implement. 

For Price, that’s an attractive proposition for prospective employees. 

“Pay transparency has been an excellent recruitment tool. We have had many applicants who say they were attracted to WPA because of our open books policy and those who learn about it during the hiring process are intrigued,” she says—and it even extends to internal company outlooks about ownership. In 2020, WPA went from two owners to eight and, recently, upped that number to 13. 

“We found early on that our open books policy was resulting in an ownership mentality throughout the firm and it seemed only fair to reward that mentality with ownership,” says Price. “That ownership benefit is powerful and helps keep people invested for the long term.”

If you’re reading this and you are a firm owner or employee, what should you take away from WPA’s experience? 

Set salary aside for a second and focus first on the benefits of openness: When employees have access to diverse perspectives and data, they can generate creative solutions to complex problems and drive organizational progress. That holds for any firm across the Commonwealth or, really, anywhere. 

Companies known for their transparency and openness can be seen as desirable employers. Potential recruits are drawn to organizations where they feel valued, respected, and informed about the company’s direction and culture. Radical transparency, it stands to reason then, can help companies attract top talent and retain skilled employees.

Then consider salaries—not as an extreme version of transparency, but as a way to accelerate a real quality of equity within your firm. Once you do that, it’s hard to imagine why radical transparency is the exception and not the rule. 

“We don’t believe anyone in this industry should be underpaid,” says Price. “Firms that are transparent help build awareness around compensation in a way that makes it more likely that architects are being paid what they are worth.”

The U.S. Embassy Campus in Niamey, Niger, was completed in 2022, mere months before the country’s president, Mahamed Bazoum, would be jailed by a military junta. It was one of seven recent coups d’état in the Sahel, a 2,300 square-mile region that includes ​​Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, as well as Niger, which is now nominally governed by Bazoum’s jailers, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland—an organization that just this week called for America’s ouster from the country. Needless to say, there are a lot of eyes on the U.S.’s presence in the region focused in a physical sense on the 34,000 square-foot LEED Platinum embassy campus designed by Miller Hull with Page Southerland Page, and a 2023 AIA Virginia Award of Honor recipient. 

Page has lots of secure embassy work in its portfolio, too, working for more than three decades with the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations to design, maintain, upgrade, and preserve embassies and consulates in 100 countries. As you would expect, the campus includes state-of-the-art security features for its new chancery, recreation hall, and pool, and a residence hall addition for stationed Marines. The amenity-rich design for the American diplomatic corps, State Department employees, soldiers, and families, is also about bolstering infrastructure—not always the glitziest of pursuits, and yet the Miller Hull and Page teams elevated everyday architecture to be more than connective tissue—an entry pavilion for the adjacent American International School, a warehouse addition, a utility pavilion, and a service access pavilion. 

Case-in-point, the photovoltaic array—a 700 kilowatt solar energy farm that generates more than the campus’ needs. For comparison’s sake, a capacity of 700 mW is about the size of the “community-solar” operations you find in large rural towns like Bristol or Merrifield (both with populations just under 20,000. (The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s “Sharing the Sun Community Solar Data Project” maintains a reasonably current list of community solar farms throughout the U.S., which you may search by production capacity, state, utility that services it, and other criteria.)

Miller Hull and Page rightly surmised that an arid climate with tons of sun is ideal for a photovoltaic array. It’s a practical move—to create a self-sustaining power grid that doesn’t rely on the local infrastructure—and it’s also a strategic one, as well—to demonstrate independent energy leadership in a 2,300 square-mile region amid Chinese, French, and Russian economic influences. 

The future is uncertain for Americans in NIger, however. In April, U.S. military officials announced it would withdraw 1,000 troops at its two bases. This month, the diplomatic corps continues to negotiate an agreement with junta leaders to leave behind some troops, and a CNN reported on May 10 that a delegation recently arrived to iron out the details. This embassy project’s function will be tested far quicker and more rigorously than anyone imagined as last-ditch diplomatic efforts unfold, and Miller Hull and Page’s work will surely take center stage in the process. 

Architecture Firm/Architect of Record: Page Southerland Page, Inc.
Design Architect: Miller Hull Partnership
Owner: U.S. Department of State
Contractor: BL Harbert International, LLC
Geotechnical Engineer: Schnabel Engineering
Civil Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers
MEP Engineer: Mason & Hanger
Structural Engineer: Ehlert Bryan Consulting Structural Engineers
Blast Engineer: Weidlinger Associates, Inc.
Photographers: Amber Renee Design and Kevin Scott

Architect Alex Shifflett, AIA, is an associate principal at KGD Architecture who says good design is not just good for communities, but great as a teaching tool for young designers hoping to make a difference. “I’m lucky enough to work on projects that matter because it suits the way I work and think,” she says. Inform recently spoke with Shifflett about her experiences over a decade of practice and what it means for the next generation of architects.

Inform: Did you think you’d be doing projects like the types of mixed-use, community-forward projects you work on now when you decided to be an architect?

Alex Shifflett: I’ve been at KGD since I graduated from school and, at that time, we were doing office buildings—then residential projects when the market changed, and then combined multi-use projects, which have become more prevalent in the industry. It’s something KGD does really well. Being responsive to the market and being diverse is a natural exposure for me at KGD. The pride I have in my projects and my firm—I feel so lucky. [KGD’s] Tom Donaghy, AIA, and I have been working on large, mixed-use projects centered around public private partnerships for over a decade. We are excited about these types of developments and would love to do more mixed-use projects locally or across the nation because of how impactful they are. It makes me feel good as an architect, and it makes the people that live and play there feel good as well.

Inform: How do you think about the scale of the difference you can make as an architect?

AS: For a long time, we’ve been a local firm, but we now have a lot of projects elsewhere—and being able to spread out has been awesome. The exposure has been great for me personally. I’ve lived here in this area my whole life, and this is what I know, but I’m enjoying thinking about how far we can go in terms of making a positive difference—townhomes in Arizona, hospitality in Colorado, and so on. I’m learning things every day. 

Inform: How should someone who is an emerging professional think about their opportunity now?

AS: Be present in your experiences—make the most of those opportunities, learn as much as you can on your own. You come out of school and you don’t know how to do anything, but being curious and interested is enough. You gain so much more knowledge by investigating things yourself than if you wait for answers. Right now, there’s a lot of multifamily going on—and so get into it. Find out what you can learn, and make a difference. Critical thinking is hugely important when so many firms are running thin and fees are tight, so you have to think of ways of being more efficient and productive, and it’s a creative process to think that way. We all ask the same questions when we graduate, and we all have to figure out the answers. Every day, I am still learning new things and doing research. That’s what an architect does. Learning never stops.

Inform: If I have recently graduated from school and I come to tour a project, what am I going to realize about it? 

AS: Specifically for the large mixed-use projects, one will notice the scale and the complexity of them. When you see how the structure works and all the pieces that we had to invent and design to fit all the required program into the building, the whole thing is like a Swiss watch. One thing I push for internally is to gain exposure and experience during construction. It’s my favorite stage of the process, because you can find out if your design is going to work. The general contractor and the owner have a different role during that time, and things become real for the architect—so giving junior staff exposure to that, for our firm, is important.

William Richards is a writer and editorial consultant based in Washington, D.C., whose books include 2022’s Together By Design: The Art and Architecture of Communal Living (Princeton Architectural Press).

The LEED Platinum Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, known as the CODE Building, opened in Charlottesville in 2022 to acclaim, both as a work of interdisciplinary design and as a sensitive intervention in the downtown pedestrian mall—sacred ground to be sure. Designed by EskewDumezRipple+ working with Charlottesville’s Wolf Ackerman, the CODE Building is a multi-use coworking, office, and retail complex that clocks-in at 215,000 square feet with a show-stopping public plaza designed by Gregg Bleam Landscape Architects. There is no shortage of metaphors to describe CODE’s role in the Lawrence Halprin-designed cityscape positioned, as it is, at the western end adjacent to the Omni Hotel—anchor, gateway, hub, and wedge all come to mind. But, it’s the design team’s responsiveness to a symbolic site and a higher bar for sustainability than most locales that set it apart. 

Halprin’s plan for the mall is legendary—the culmination of three years of public workshops titled “Take Part” and design iterations for the handful of blocks that defined the city’s original main street. Coming off the urban renewal years of the 1950s and 1960s that saw, among other bad ideas, the destruction of the nearby Vinegar Hill neighborhood, Charlottesville needed something for the win column to resuscitate its municipal core. Amid the pedestrian mall boom years between the 1950s and the 1980s, Halprin’s scheme that elevated the pedestrianization strategy to an art form. It’s also one of few in the country that have remained standing. As an economic gambit, the 1976 downtown mall eventually proved successful, and as a social experiment, it proved transformational. Later additions eked out another few blocks to create its current footprint. 

EskewDumezRipple+ and Wolf Ackerman’s contribution to that history is laudable. Replacing an old skating rink, the design team fought two related battles: one in massing and elevation between the dramatically shifting urban scales from Water Street to East Main, and one in plan to reimagine a rather unceremonious entrance to the mall between a skating rink and a hotel’s glass canyon wall. The new arrangement is finally the entrance the mall sorely needed, not because of a deficiency in Halprin’s plan, but because it had become underutilized for so long. Entering at Water Street behind the Federal Court Building, CODE steps down in height to bring us down to the pedestrian scale, offering an esplanade rather than an access road. If you’re headed the other direction and planning to exit the mall, CODE’s public plaza tucked underneath CODE invites us in—a fitting rejoinder to the mall, and also not a bad strategy if the point of the building is to entice workers and shoppers. 

The LEED Platinum project possesses all of the qualities you’d expect, from green roof terraces to decisions about site, orientation, and massing that drive down energy consumption to ventilation that doubles the usual flow of fresh air to water conservation and reuse systems. Operable windows and a 40 percent window-to-wall ratio also offer the optimal balance between light and energy efficiency. It’s part of the upper echelon of green buildings in and around Charlottesville that offer a test-bed for any number of strategies from Cradle to Cradle to mass timber to passive house. But, that’s all architecture nerd-speak. To the eyes of the mall dwellers in Charlottesville—somewhere between central casting for a Steely Dan song and central Virginia’s Horse & Hound set—CODE is a handsome building that appeals to the eye and seems, inarguably, just right. 

William Richards is a writer and editorial consultant based in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2011, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Inform Magazine. In 2005, he wrote “On Architecture,” a weekly column for Charlottesville’s free paper The Hook.