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.