Who we are

Who are we, really?

The other day, three senior administrative staff members from one of our most cherished institutional clients attended our annual Board meeting and shared with us, among many other things, their mission and core values. It was evident that all three not only deeply understood their institution’s fundamental ideology, as expressed by their mission and values, but passionately embraced it as well. They made a one hour presentation to our 15 member Board and spent an additional thirty minutes patiently answering our questions. At the conclusion, I expressed my considerable appreciation and walked them to the door. As they were leaving I asked what had prompted them to invest so much time in us, and the reply was simply “how can you effectively serve as our architect if we haven’t taken the time to explain who we really are?”

So, who is TRO JungBrannen, and have we done a good job explaining who we really are to everyone? And, by everyone I mean our internal staff, our clients, and our external consultants and professional colleagues as well. As I ruminate on that question it strikes me that we are pretty rigorous internally, but that our external message may be less clear. Internally, we have detailed the firm’s history in a timeline which we have posted {or are in the process of so doing} in all of our regional offices. We have emblazoned the firm’s ideology {“We are dedicated to the betterment of the human condition through inspired design”} in the front lobby of our Boston headquarters office; we have celebrated the firm’s five core values {design excellence, performance, partnership, vision, and passion} with an equally prominent graphic in each regional office; and, we hold regularly scheduled “lunch and learn” sessions with new employees to ensure that they gain an initial understanding of the guiding principles of our firm.

But, I thought I would take this opportunity to elaborate a bit further on our ideology and values in this blog, and perhaps provide additional insight to employees, consultants, and clients alike who wish to know us better.

Our ideology guides our firm’s strategy and was crafted following the firm’s most recent growth initiative in 2006: the merger of the two highly regarded legacy design firms – TRO/The Ritchie Organization and JungBrannen Associates. The result was TRO JungBrannen - an international design collaboration of nearly three hundred staff in architecture, interior design, engineering, and master planning working within the specialty practice areas of commercial, arts & education, healthcare, hospitality & residential, and research. Before consummating the merger, the twenty seven principals assembled and discussed our aspirations, and it was evident that our shared passion for design bound us most firmly together. Then, as now, we believe that design is a powerful force for change in our world, and that the processes it entails hold extraordinary potential for meaningful personal and communal transformation. Its manifestations transcend societal boundaries and are enduring records of our highest aspirations in art and science. I have personally embraced this ideology since I first began studying the inspiring profession of architecture nearly forty years ago, and I believe it still.

In concert with our ideology, our core values guide our everyday behaviors. They are reflected in our people and resonate in our projects, as follows: Design Excellence: We are dedicated to enhancing the built environment through design solutions that celebrate the human spirit and make an inspirational difference in people’s lives; Performance: We are committed to creative outcomes for our clients and ourselves - designs that generate exceptional results, optimize opportunity, exceed expectations, and sustain our firm; Partnership: We value the synergy of interdisciplinary collaboration and the cooperative, compassionate spirit realized through open communication. Respect, teamwork, integrity, and uncompromised professional ethics are at the core of our practice philosophy; Vision: We embrace a design process that looks beyond traditional boundaries, invites exploration and discovery, and results in solutions that adapt to and anticipate change; and, Passion: We bring energy, dedication, enthusiasm, and an unremitting quest for excellence in our work, and believe that our commitment and contributions will be meaningful and enduring.

The core value of partnership best expresses our design approach. At TRO JungBrannen, our in-house design professionals specialize in specific practice areas and, therefore, develop an extraordinary depth of focused knowledge and personal experience. Yet, as the Japanese proverb says: ‘”None of us is as smart as all of us”. So, collaborative teamwork has become the foundation of our design process. We believe that a truly transformational design experience is best achieved through a shared journey of informed discovery, and that great design occurs only when the complex array of conditions, challenges, and opportunities that define a project are rigorously investigated and questioned from many viewpoints. Only through interdisciplinary collaboration is fresh thinking and unconventional design wisdom realized. This is the environment in which we are privileged to practice.

This is who we really are.

New Year’s Resolution

As we begin 2009, I am making resolutions with the very best of intentions. I tend to make a lot of them, so when the year finally comes to a close a few may actually be intact.

The first of my resolutions is to start a blog. Obviously, blogging is a great vehicle for exchanging ideas, and I readily admit that I am undertaking this blog because I am naïve enough to think that some of my professional insight may actually help others. But, blogging also seems like an inexpensive alternative to therapy. After all, when business frustrations begin to mount and I find myself muttering to no one in particular I can simply post a blog on whatever subject is on my mind and experience the satisfying release of getting something “off my chest”. So, there it is, I’m starting a blog for those two reasons.

But, let me offer a few words of caution to anyone reading Bob’s Blog. First, writing has never come easily to me. I remember sitting next to Ralph Swanson in English class as a sophomore at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Ralph was a good deal smarter than I was {most of the students at Andover were as well, by the way} and whenever our teacher asked us to spend the last thirty minutes of class writing an essay on a subject of our choice, Ralph would confidently open his notebook and immediately begin writing. My God, the kid didn’t even spend a few minutes thinking about an appropriate subject! He just started writing and never stopped until he’d filled half a notebook by the time the bell rang. And, he used a pen. Meanwhile, I labored for five or ten minutes just settling on a suitable topic, then wore out my pencil erasing most of what I’d written, only to fill a page or two with disjointed thoughts in a barely legible scrawl. Needless to say, Ralph got A’s and I got what I deserved.

Second, although my mother invested countless hours correcting my grammar and spelling, I get sloppy sometimes. And, since computers are human too, they aren’t likely to catch all my misspellings and syntax errors. So, please overlook this shortcoming as well.

Finally, keep in mind that I am an architect. I love the profession and am endlessly fascinated by the people who practice it. But, architects are the exact opposite of, for example, engineers. Engineers know a great deal about the rather esoteric and highly technical subject of engineering. But, when I went to architecture school {Harvard GSD, class of 1974} they taught us a little bit about an awful lot of subjects. When I began professional practice I found myself learning less and less about more and more, until after 35 years I now realize that I know practically nothing about virtually everything!

There, consider yourselves forewarned….