Walker Warner Architects
Greg Warner, principal and founder of Walker Warner Architects, talks about architecture and embracing Hawaiian roots.
This interview is part of The Second Studio Podcast hosted by FAME Architecture & Design.
Kua Bay in Hawaii - Photography ©DouglasFriedman
This week David and Marina are joined by Architect Greg Warner, Principal and Founder of Walker Warner Architects to discuss growing up in Hawaii and its influence on his professional career; co-founding his office and its growth; working in Hawaii; the responsibilities of a principal and the importance of leadership; his philosophy and approach to projects; and more. Enjoy!
DL: Tell us a bit more about where you are from.
GW: I was actually born in Connecticut. I was raised in the Hawaiian Islands but moved there when I was quite young. My father read an article about a leper colony on the island of Molokai and decided that he wanted to change what he was doing, and pulled up his roots practicing there in Connecticut. That was the early sixties, and he took off. We ended up on Molokai, which was and still is one of the most, not backward, but a remote island in a lot of ways relative to the populated islands. We lived in a house up on a pineapple field, and he would get on a horse and ride down to Kalaupapa, which was this colony based on leprosy, which was a disease at the turn of the century. Pretty, pretty heavy disease there. There was a community there and he was the doctor there for a year and a half, and that's how we got to the islands, to begin with.
The first island was Molokai which was back in the sixties was, you know, everything was either mostly agrarian-based, it wasn’t tourism, it really wasn't as much as sugar, and pineapple and some of the other things. My dad had read this article and, you know, he wasn't a hippie but he kind of was up for adventure and he died when I was really young, and that's a different part of the story, so I didn't know him, but I think he was an adventurous sword, is the way I think about it. He just decided to take some risk and or opportunity or adventure and move the family there. There were four boys at that point and of course my mom.
That's how he started. Then he worked there for a little over a year. Sugar was a big industry in Hawaii and all the sugar companies had sugar towns and all the towns had hospitals and infirmaries, and they had what they called plantation doctors which were, you know, doctors associated with the various plantations. They would group and he was lured to the island of Kauai, which was the next island I lived on. He was a plantation doc there for a couple of years. I was young, don't remember much about that. I think I was seven or eight when we moved to the big island of Hawaii, he was the town doctor in the town where I was raised, which there are two names for Kamuela or Waimea as it's more popularly known now. It's a ranching town, there was a big Parker ranch. It was a big 300,000-acre cattle ranch. He was kind of the town doctor, but also the sugar doctor just in the town nearby. That's mostly where I grew up, on the big island.
DL: How long were you in Hawaii before you moved to the next state?
GW: It wouldn't be till I was heading off to college in 1977. So I was pretty much raised there. By then we were six boys and a girl, so kind of a thing. So it was a big family kind of living in a ranch town.
MB: Boys and a girl! How did that work out for the girl?
GW: She was last! Anyway, that’s the context of where I lived. It was a good place for kids to grow up for sure. He died accidentally when I was eight, so didn't really know him, but it was a great place. The town basically adopted us and we just kind of took off from there as kids my mom was fortunate to be able to raise us there. So it's a pretty simple lifestyle. It wasn't complicated by a lot of things that we have to endure as parents and all that here, we were just kind of outdoor kids for the most part.
Hale Mau’U in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: As I mentioned before we started the interview, I have some relatives who were born in Hawaii and they still have some relatives who live there. They grew up probably around the same time that you're describing. They were, I think in Honolulu which is more mainstream than the islands you're describing but even then their descriptions and the stories of what it was like to grow up there, it’s very simple.
GW: I didn't wear a pair of shoes till I was in eighth grade.
DL: Yeah. I wasn't going to say anything like that, but that's what I hear.
GW: We were kind of barefoot kids. I was thinking, prior to this interview, because you had asked about my upbringing. I listened to a couple of your other podcasts, which are great by the way. It was, you know, all those influences early on. I mean, we were kids. I remember my mom opening the screen door and everybody would just go out the screen door and she'd put a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and jelly on the shelf outside. And we just went outside and played and took our BB guns or whatever it was, and didn't come back till the sun went down.
DL: At what point did architecture become an interest? Because maybe people who are not architects would think, well this seems like a pretty agrarian kind of lifestyle and sophisticated buildings seem to be almost at the opposite end of the spectrum in a certain sense. How did that come around?
GW: I call it Stage two really when you know, growing up on the island even another island was a long way away for us. It was like you're kind of in your own little world there, your bubble and you don't know what you don't know. You know, you just, everything around you was just that. To answer your question, architecture really didn't come into the reality what I knew what architecture was, but until I went off to school in Oregon, to college basically. Even then it wasn't my intention, it was really serendipitous in a way. When I graduated from the high school that I went to and pretty much applied to one school, which was Oregon. I got in and I was undeclared for the most part and was interested in art.
I kind of grew up in the art realm, which was an interest of mine throughout all parts of my schooling. I was in the fine arts program, taking some early classes and at Oregon, they call it the allied arts. The fine arts are commingled with architecture, landscape architecture, and art history, and it's a cross-pollination. I could see in going to a few of the art classes, you wander by the architecture studios and saw what was going on. That started an interest I guess, or at least an awareness. Then kids in my dorm were in the school of architecture and I could see what they were doing and one thing led to another as it relates to what does it take to get there? And it’s a difficult school to get into. You have to submit a portfolio. I had to look up what portfolio meant really just cause.
You kind of have to earn your way in. So I studied what the other kids were doing, got some help there, and then applied and didn't get in until my junior year. It was a little bit of a way to get there. Then of course it's a five-year program in Oregon. So I was at school for a while, but I would say backing up to high school, I did take in my senior year what they called architectural drafting and I just took it because I needed something to take. All I remember was dipping a pen, those old ink pens you dip it into a well and it was lettering. I remember the lettering, the course was basically how to draft. It wasn't anything about architecture, but I was kind of turned off by the whole notion.
DL: What was the inclination to go to college? Because I feel like Hawaii is known for being a paradise place and you were happy there. Why even bother coming all the way back to, or going all the way over to Oregon?
GW: Well, certainly my parents or my mom had the intention of good education, all that sort of thing. The serendipity of it all was the school I went to, which is unusual. In Hawaii school's, the public school system's not that great. There are private schools and of course, we've all heard about Pulau and some of the other schools on Oahu, they're known for their educational status or whatever. There's a school on the big island and in the town where I was raised called Hawaii Preparatory Academy. It was basically a boarding school. It started in the early sixties as an all-boys school, more or less for bad boys that got, sent off to boarding school, and it evolved into a co-educational school.
It's small, maybe 300 students. Probably 50% or 60% are borders. I was a day student just because I was lucky enough to be in the town, and that school obviously was a prep school. So everything to do with that school had to do with moving kids toward higher education. Given the context of Hawaii, I was very fortunate to be able to be in that town and be able to attend that school so it put me in that place. Otherwise, you're right, a lot of kids are not necessarily unique to Hawaii, but rural, it's just harder to motivate kids to go to school, for different reasons. You could become a rancher or a waterman or whatever it is out there and it would be pretty easy. A lot of my friends still did. I just happened to move in the direction I did. So it was fortunate for me in that regard.
Makena Residence in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: Zooming forward in a sense, do you ever think about what if I just stayed? Would my life be less complex, less stressful, perhaps?
GW: I do think about it. In fact, I was just there last week for a reunion, my 45th high school reunion, believe it or not, at that same school. You reminisce, of course, you look at those that you're with and you hear stories about those that aren't there and otherwise, and you see the different paths. I would say generally I don't regret anything. I don't have a lot of stress in doing what I do. I often wonder, what else would I be in terms of a professional? I can't think of anything really. I mean, not even art. I love art and I love the outdoors and adventure and all that sort of thing, but I couldn't put those into the kind of professional sense. Architecture for me is, it’s just I guess the part of. Pretty easy to think about in that way. Didn't try hard to get there. It just, I didn't grow up thinking about architecture, studying architecture, or any of that sort of thing. It was just a part of my story, I suppose.
DL: When you applied to the architecture program at the University of Oregon, you got in and you start architecture school. Was the passion for it pretty clear from pretty early on?
GW: It was very easy because backing up again to high school, I was in these art classes. That was a big part of my interest in part of my curriculum in high school, drawing basically. One of the things that we did a lot is you head off on campus in the context of where we were and you draw, and a lot of things I drew were buildings just by the nature of their subject, whether it was studying a building, whether it's for its texture or how light hits it or whatever else. I would just go over and over again to these places. Jumping forward to school, the first early parts of Oregon are really just media and how you communicate graphically or otherwise.
Drawing classes are a big part of it. It was kind of something that I'd already done. So that part was really easy. Then it was really more about dialing into what it is you were drawing and oftentimes you're drawing existing buildings very similar to what I did in high school. They sent you out to draw things and then you kind of interpret and say, well, how did those things get there? And the process to design and all that.
DL: You were fortunate also because the University of Oregon has a very good program. It's not an easy school.
GW: It's a great school. The interesting thing about Oregon, as I think back on it, it was kind of an island in the middle of nowhere too. I mean, Eugene is a pretty isolated community and you think about other architecture programs and studying architecture. We were out in the boonies really. Portland was a long way away and you know, back then, Oregon had a great program and had really good professors and good background. Kahn was a big influence and all that sort of academic stuff, but it was also pretty environmentally ahead of its time in terms of responsibility and that sort of thing. It wasn't just architecture, it was in the culture of the community. It was just a good place to think about architecture in the world, in the context of sensibility, your surroundings, and that sort of thing. It was pretty comfortable for me in that regard.
DL: If I'm not mistaken, that emphasis still exists as part of the program. That's one of the things it's known for.
GW: It is. Of course, a lot of other programs have caught up and even surpassed, I would guess, but it's in their DNA, which is great. Again, by the cross-pollination between programs, landscape architecture, and other things, there was just a great ability to be wide-ranging in your interest.
Kua Bay Residence in Hawaii - Photography ©DouglasFriedman
DL: Tracking the story. You're at the University of Oregon, and you've finished there. What happens after that?
GW: Well, it was a long time there, seven years. I fished my way through college in order to pay for college. I fished up in Alaska on a salmon boat for a couple of years. It took me a little longer, but so I was there for a while and in my final year, I had a studio with two individuals that became my partners. One is my wife and the other one is my business partner. Neither of which I knew at that point. My wife Sandy is also an architect, not practicing any longer, but she was from the Bay Area. So I went off to fish one last spring and summer up in Alaska. Came back to finish and then headed to the Bay Area and chased her down.
Obviously, we're married and started our life down here as, as she was doing architecture. Then lost touch with Brooks, I would have never known we were going to be business partners. He was working for his uncle who was an architect in the Bay Area. This was maybe four or five, or six years after graduating. We ran into each other socially and he was about to go back to business school because I think he was thinking he was going to get into development or something like that. I was in the midst of changing jobs or moving from one side of the bay to the other. We just kind of hit up a conversation. He had an opportunity to design a home or two for a cousin of his. He had designed and was building a house for his sister. We decided that we would take a shot at these two houses, cuz that was in between jobs, and did the dining room table thing. That was in 1989 I think. We never, never, never stopped doing it. It was another serendipitous thing. I was moving and had nothing to lose. I worked for a couple of firms, doing everything from commercial work to residential and you know, we just started out doing residential work. Brooks and I have kept that going obviously for a while.
I graduated in 1983, I think it was. They might have graduated in 1982, so 1989 was I think the formalization of Walker Warner. We just started really easy. We rented a little studio space and hired our first employee. Kind of did it all, you play all instruments when you're starting out and just kind of slowly grew.
MB: I like how you basically, things kind of happened and it was not like a big master plan, It was just you took the opportunity as they showed up.
GW: I always say what you don't know can't hurt you. We were really fortunate. Brooks was raised in the Bay Area, so he had a lot of connections and that's effectively how we founded the firm was on who you know, obviously the two projects that he knew of. Then it's a word-of-mouth thing and the kind of architecture that we were doing. You just do a good job. It's a pretty basic idea and someone says something about what it is you did and gives your name and that's how it still works.
Hale Nukumoi in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
MB: Did you know that early on that eventually, you would want to have your own practice? Did that ever come to your mind?
GW: It's funny because I was talking to Sandy, my wife, about this because we're both architects, and we worked for other firms and you see how firms worked and you always have a better idea, and that sort of thing and opportunities come along. We were just raising our first child by then and we were just thinking about where we wanted to live obviously family's important, so you want to be where you have peace of mind and comfort. As far as business goes, this gets all the way back to schooling, doing the best you can, and feeling like you could do better. So it's just looking for opportunities and then executing. It was really more like seeking out interesting projects.
Every starting architect, kind of take whatever you can get. We were doing the same old thing, bathroom, kitchen remodels, we were doing anything we can, and it wasn't just residential, we were doing commercial other things, but you're scrapping together what you think you could do. Then something happens, whether it's a special client or a special project. You get this opportunity to do something important and just leverage from there. I think that's not unique to Walker Warner, I think it's luck and circumstance, but it's also desire and talent to some extent. You have to earn it to get those opportunities.
DL: You were talking about referrals essentially. Once you get started and you start building up some work and some connections, the work can stand for itself. I was also wondering if you felt that your kind of temperament or personality also played a big role in having people trust you guys at the earlier stages to have you as architects.
GW: That’s a really good point, I do think that matters. I call it the X factor, and I don't know how to describe it. There are a lot of real talents, whether it's architecture, design, artists, or whatever, I mean, talent is talent. But if you're talking about it from the business sense of architecture, there are so many different components. One is getting the work or rain making or whatever you want to call it. And there's an engagement factor because a lot of really talented people aren't very engaging and, you know, fountainheads.
There are different ways. At the same time, there are a lot of engaging people that aren't really good architects, but they're still good business people. I have great respect for those that can do both in the sense that I admire the work that they do, but they also have this cachet or way about them to either communicate what it is they're doing or, to some extent you get fortunate whether you're published or whether so and so is your client and they say something to somebody else who knows what the path is. You still have to perform and be able to deliver. I always say it's a combination of things and that gets back to the practice. It’s the balance, and hopefully, today's conversation is not about me, it's about us at some point. Because it's that combination where the entirety of the firm generates what it is we do. Maybe there are significant rules but it's that balance of those ingredients to do what we do that makes us successful today.
DL: It's funny because we have our own practice and fairly often we think to ourselves, I have no idea how someone would do this if they were one person.
GW: I'm coaching my son who's just gone off on his own after having practiced with a really well-respected landscape architect that we know. He's on his own. So you could see exactly what you're describing. He's trying to do everything right. He's doing the design, he's doing the drafting, he is drawing, he's doing the people thing, he's doing the invoicing. I remember on the old typewriter, typing up the invoices, and doing all this kind of stuff. Brooks would do what he was doing and I was doing, and I remember thinking, and I'd said this for years, when Brooks and I decided to become partners that I would always say “gosh, we're just, we're so much alike”.
The reality is we're kind of, the yin-yang thing. We're very different, but we complement each other. His strengths and my strengths aren't the same, but we just kind of balanced each other out in a really good way. I think to your point, as a sole proprietor, the burden's all on you. Partnerships, you know, can be complicated. We have four partners now and we have a bigger firm and you're always kind of finding out who's good at what and so you're not duplicating things, but you're complimenting and it's that kind of synchronicity I guess that's helpful. I was listening to some of your earlier interviews, it's a lot about like how people early in their careers decide what path to take. You can jump into an SOM or an HOK, which I started to do when I got out of school, I had my portfolio and I was walking into every big office and I had a suit and tie on. I thought I was going to conquer the world. It was a recession. I didn't get any offers.
You think you're going to go into an SOM and learn how to be the most practiced architect in the world. But in hindsight, I'm really glad that didn't happen. I ended up working for a two-person office and your exposure is just so different. I wouldn't have changed that part for a minute because I got a lot of mentoring advice that I just would never have gotten from someone who either started their business or was, was doing it all. So it was, it was a good experience.
Hale Nukumoi in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: You had mentioned the two of you being kind of similar about the yin and the yang. What are some of the differences that were clear to you? The strengths and I guess weaknesses or lesser strengths of one or the other?
GW: Let's start with not in the architectural sense, but more in the barefoot kid from Hawaii sense. I landed here even out of Oregon, pretty naive to what the world was really like in the professional sense. Brooks on the other hand grew up in San Francisco in a well-respected family and was immersed in architecture and a lot of things that I didn't have. In my early years in our partnership, it was really kind of learning from him in a good way. I would probably say I was definitely more on the design front in terms of what I knew really well. It's where I could draw and I was very comfortable when the project started. That's probably where my strength was. Not that Brooks doesn't have those strengths, but it's definitely what I was focused on. As far as project management, the technical aspects, all that sort of thing, Brooks is brilliant, he's an encyclopedia in terms of how things go together and how things are made and all that sort of thing. I think his strengths were certainly there in that regard. He was building a house for his sister when we joined forces. His grandfather was an inventor and he still is that way. He just loves building technology and all that good stuff, and that translates to business. That's us turning from hand drawing to CAD, which I'd still be hand drawing today if it was for me.
DL: The design processes that happen within the office, for you it's still a fair amount of hand drawing. Are hand drawing and hand illustrations like an established way of presenting things to clients for you guys? Or is it whoever's running it does their own thing?
GW: I'm a bit of a hot mess in terms of my process, but the firm has a very rigorous one, I give complete credit to the other two partners that Brooks and I have alongside of us. Their early contributions to the firm were in regards to not only design, which we all have a responsibility toward, but more to do with process and organization because when you look at what it is we do, it's how well organized we are in terms of getting from pre-design to construction administration in the sense the full service of what we do.
The firm now has a very organized way to move through the process of design and delivery of a project. To answer your question, I'd say drawing is not institutionalized in what we do, but it's definitely in the front end of what we do. We're trying to be really smart about not faking it. I mean, there's only so far hand drawings can go now in comparison to the power of the computer so when it makes sense to go into BIM, three dimensions, or anything else, we go into the computer real early as in schematic design. In the conceptual sense, we try to keep it very, very hand drawn. The computer's really powerful to use even in conceptual work, but we dumb it down so that we don't want to go there too soon in communicating with the client. It's maybe a romantic idea or notion of how we do things, but it just is the way we are.
We have a VR room in our office and it's incredibly powerful to walk in there and put the goggles on and import views and all that and feel like you're in the space. We used to build models and we don't build them anymore. Building a model slowed you down and made you think about what is it I'm trying to convey whether it's a study model or a finished model. It's a powerful thing to move quickly but sometimes that's not always the best. It's not right or wrong, it's just being aware of what it takes to, in the art of architecture, what it takes to get to the best solution.
MB: You said speed and it's a very interesting thing to think about in terms of the thinking and creative process. Speed is always great. Everybody wants to be able to do things more quickly, and faster but in some instances, let's say the creative process, it might not be comfortable, maybe not everybody works at the same speed.
GW: I compare it to cooking and I'm not a cook but you watch those great shows, how long it takes to bake or how long it takes for the yeast to do its thing. It's a good topic that as we're talking about this, I'd love to be able to just talk to the firm about it just in terms of those that are coming up in the firm. Everything is so velocity-based right now, clients' expectations, all that sort of thing, and speed and efficiency and get from here to there. When you think about the made-from-scratch type of thing, it takes time.
Hale Nukumoi in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: What was the first project that you remember as being significant to you guys? Not necessarily in terms of its status or size or publicity and maybe those are attributes of it, but a project where when the two of you created it, you felt like, okay, this is starting to feel like something that I'm close to.
GW: There's a couple that comes to mind. A house that we did for clients down in the Monterey Peninsula years and years ago that Brooks and I had just a unique opportunity. That was one of those ones where we just kind of went all in on and it was almost like going back to school and we were just committed in terms of the work, that effort that we were doing and doing it side by side. That was Jack's peak, which is not on our website, it's nothing recognizable anymore. It's still there, I'm sure it's beautiful, but it was kind of an early California-inspired home.
It was for the right people that had the right appreciation for it. The other one would be a winery that we did. Never done a winery, but we somehow got our name again. It wasn't a formal competition with kind of a bake-off with several other architects. We had offered up some conceptual ideas that had to do with this pretty significant piece of property. Part of it was a winery, but there was a residence and there was a spiritual place and there was a farm center. We came up with a series of vision boards that talked about the winery but also about these other places. It was actually the spiritual place or our effort that described that that got us the project. It wasn't the winery, so when we got the winery, it was like, Oh my god! We surrounded ourselves with experts. That was a significant project in regards to scope and scale, but also typology. We'd never done anything like it. That one kind of launched us in the more serious architectural sense.
DL: How large was the office at that time? Or how old was the office?
GW: I'm totally guessing here, but I bet we were 20 people maybe, probably less than that. That was probably 18 years ago, could be 20 years ago by now. We had done enough to be good at what we were doing in terms of houses and things, and this was just an outlier project that we luckily landed and went for it.
DL: The topic of doing different types of projects is interesting to me, especially now because it does seem to be based on our own experience and a lot of conversations with other architects who are older than us, that it's more and more challenging to get into different building types if you don't have that experience already.
GW: We as a firm or partners talk a lot about this, the diversity of what we're doing. Some architects have a huge appetite to do all kinds of things. I always joke we're just making the world a better place, one house at a time and that's what we love doing and I think we're really good at it. In order to be really good at something you have to practice and put in the hours and understand. I would say that we've been deliberate in thinking about how we, what we, and what it is we want to do.
DL: Do you have the interest to do mid-rise or high-rise buildings?
GW: Yeah, for the right people. I've learned a lot in the recent resort project and we have an awesome client it's gonna be a really beautiful project, but it's very different the dynamic, and intimacy of it are different. The process is different, the layering, the decision making, there's something really simple and calm about a residential project.
For example on the resort project, the first answer we gave was no, because our firm was not set up, and we didn't have the horsepower to do that. We didn't have the expertise in the matrix of who we are. So we offered we would partner or we'd find a joint venture firm to be able to be architect of record. We ultimately ended up there thankfully, because what they're doing is very different than what we're doing. And to be honest, it's not what I would want to do. We were the design architect that did the design work for the most part, still collaboratively. So if it's a mid-rise building or something along those lines, anything library, church, there's a lot of buildings that still would like to be a part of, but within the right capacity, I guess.
Unless we're really good at something, I would rather not waste an opportunity for somebody else. If we say we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. We want to be the best that we can be in that sense. Every decision you make as a leader of the firm, whether it's a residential client of a certain type or stature does change the culture of the firm.
Hale Mau’u in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: That's a good point to jump off of in talking about the journey in terms of office growth and in its size because I always say there's a big difference between being a great designer and then being a good architect. But there's also a big difference between both of those and being an effective leader for 20, 50, and 78 people.
GW: Brooks and I started of course, and we had a certain vision and then the evolution of the firm, but it really comes down to what it is you wanna do. If you really do want to make a difference in what you're doing and be really good at it, you have to be really disciplined and control your destiny in that regard. We started out, I remember about halfway through, we hired consultants to help us talk and found out what it is we think we're good at and what we wanna do. The bottom line is we think of ourselves, and this is still a question, of how we're perceived out in the outer world as what we call design first firm.
That was a term that came to us from one of our advising consultants. You think about firms that we all know of that are Regionalists. Whether it's Bay Area firms, you know, William Wester or some of these others, they were design-first firms. The design was paramount and it is for us too. It took us a while to really confirm that idea, and get to the point where we were doing our own work. We weren't trying to copy somebody else or be somebody else. That realization and that determination, really drove how it is we think about the projects we take on. I think of ourselves as good regionalists and all the great firms that I personally respect were those, whether it was the Bay Area or Pacific Northwest or now in Hawaii.
We're not trying to match up to something. The same thing goes nothing against classicism or traditional architecture, but it wasn't something we wanted to do over and over again. We didn't want to match and repeat kind of things. We went through remodeling and all the things in big beautiful San Francisco houses and all that sort of thing but at some point you just kind of want to bake from scratch. It took a while to get there, but we got there and then it was formulating the idea about what is it that we do not to be different, but just that makes us feel good about the ingredients and how we do that.
Relative to me personally, it would be when we started doing work in Hawaii, I was doing a lot of work over here. We had an opportunity with a client that bought a piece of property on the big island where I was raised he recalled that I was raised there and he said “Hey, have you ever heard of this place called Kukio? Tell me I'm not crazy to spend what I'm going to spend on this piece of lava rock”. I remembered it and I had lost touch with the islands for years, I used to camp there as a kid.
I just said “No, you're not crazy. It's an incredible slope spot. That instance brought us back to Hawaii or that client actually changed the course of the firm, just given where we are today and the amount of work we do over there. Obviously for me, it just gave me back the confidence again. It gave me the context of a region that I was very familiar with and gave me the opportunity to go back and rethink what architecture could be now that I was an architect.
“Our work isn’t traditional but referential.”
MB: It's interesting because you guys are known to do a lot of houses in Hawaii and one would've thought that it was in your plan. But again, no plan!
GW: No, no plan! It was awesome. I'm still shaking my head about that because of the circumstance. When you think about it, it goes back to just doing a good job of what you're doing and you never know what luck or circumstance comes up and this was one of them. At that point, I knew not only was there more work to have to be had there, but it was where I felt most comfortable. So I just said, this is where I'm gonna go. It was mo selfishly because I wanted to go back there and knew what I thought could be meaningful architecture. It just so happens that, Hawaii is on one side of the Pacific and or in the middle, but between California and the Bay Area, there are very similar indoor-outdoor circumstances that you can capture and take advantage of.
DL: Was there ever a moment where you thought that you were going to move the office to Hawaii?
GW: I actually pushed back. It was suggested a bunch of times like we should open a satellite office, but then it would be working in Hawaii versus playing in Hawaii! We have a cool little old building in San Francisco. Actually, we had early on our first office in a boatyard in San Francisco. So it was really more about like who we are and fortunately, technology is caught up or surpassed the efficiency of working remotely.
DL: When was that first project in Hawaii? When did that take place?
GW: I'm bad at numbers, but I wanna say 16 years ago. It was a house in a little resort community. I would say now we probably have a dozen houses ongoing there and a resort and other things.
DL: I asked that question because in my mind I'm thinking of the timeline of your career to date and the point being is that this project didn't occur in like 1989 or 1992 or something. It occurred after several years of practicing and doing other things.
GW: A hundred percent. This is another tangent, but it's how I rediscovered who I was in terms of what influences me and trying to figure out who I am over here. But I say me meaning what thoughts go through your head as it relates to design or architecture? When I went back to Hawaii, it was really obvious to me, whether it was the school I was I went to or other things that I revisited that it just clicked. You just realize that, hey, here's why this could be this way. That confidence gets translated as we were talking about earlier, that X factor, that engagement when you talk to a client, it's just super easy.
Quintessa Pavilions in Napa Valley, CA - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: When you went back to Hawaii, you're seeing buildings and you're realizing, “okay, like some of the architectural gestures or something that I'm drawn toward come from these structures I saw before”?
GW: It's more specific. It's a singular architect that I didn't know about when I was there growing up. As I said, architecture was not a front burner for me, but the high school I went to Hawaii prep, or I call it HPA, was designed by an architect from Honolulu Vladimir Ossipoff. He was a midcentury architect with, complex background: he was born in Russia, raised in Japan, went to Berkeley, and then settled in Hawaii. He was practicing and he knew what was going on relative to West Coast architecture.
Anyway, when I went back for this particular project, of course, I went back for work, but I also went back and started reminiscing about it because I'd lost touch with Hawaii for 20 years. I went back to obviously my own hometown and drove around and tried to reconnect and went up to the school and didn't realize until I walked through the campus again, how significant the architecture was. I didn't think about it, even though I was drawing it and doing all this stuff. I went back to campus and I went to a few of the buildings, a Chapel in particular, and realized that the architecture was significant and still is. I mean, it's timeless. It has all these qualities that just blew my mind and I've had to kind of back check and went up to the administration building and tried to figure out who the heck was involved in the architecture because I had now been exposed to it.
When I realized and started digging in, it was a watershed moment where all of a sudden I realized, holy cow, this is the stuff that I grew up around, touched and felt and all these things that you don't know when you're a kid, and nobody said anything to you, you're just, you're just involved in it. That right there personally launched me in terms of self-confidence and other things that are still going on in our work today, for the most part, whether it's material or just sensibilities. My tagline right now is trying to figure out what we can do as a firm with the opportunity that we have in Hawaii to carry on good design as it relates to work there, but it's now, it's not just there, it's everywhere that anything that we do, that gets back to that design first, how do we do things that are meaningful and responsible as it relates to our contributions as architects.
MB: You guys are doing mostly modern architecture rather than more traditional, either in the bay area or even Hawaii. Is it hard to find those clients in those specific regions that are interested in maybe more forward-looking design versus local vernacular?
GW: I appreciate you saying that because sometimes I think of us as a little behind in terms of contemporary work. We're definitely not bleeding edge or cutting edge modernist, and I think I use the word referential because a lot of our work isn't traditional, but it's referential to residential architecture, in particular, that may have traditional notes to them, whether it's the form of a building or other things, but it's definitely forward leaning. The word we use a lot that probably precludes us from being on the bleeding edge of things is livability. Comfort and livability are a really important part of what, particularly with homes, that we wanna make sure that it's not an ego thing, that we're not trying to be somebody or present something that isn't gonna be livable.
In other words, if we have to give something up in terms of a contemporary statement or something, we'll do that behalf of making sure that it lives well. We love doing modern things or think of ourselves as modernists, but I wouldn't say that we're not gonna start out by saying every one of our buildings is gonna be this, we've done a lot of and still do a lot of traditional things for the right reasons, whether it's the client or the context or other things. Just because it's the right solution. You just have to do it really well, and you can take a traditional building and make it very modern just based on detail. Yet it can still have that you know when you squint your eyes far away, it still feels like it belongs there relative to history or whatever it is. Every project has a different recipe in that regard and we're not gonna force anything.
DL: It's funny because the whole conversation, about traditional versus modern versus whatever other label was never even in my periphery up until we started our own practice, and honestly, in my mind I am like what are you talking about?
GW: I would say if somebody comes up to us and says, “I want an Italianate", we would probably say no, there are much better architects for doing this kind of work. That being said, in the spirit of that Italianate architecture, if you wanted us to talk about what it is you like about it and you want something baked from scratch, we're open to that idea. But if you want a replicate, we've done that and we got pretty good at it, but we moved past that in, in our, in the phase of what we're doing. I was going back to the food show thing, you know, that food shows where you get all the chefs, and they all line up and they into the pantry and there's a whole bunch of ingredients. They're all perfect ingredients. And then you run in there and you just try to make something out of it for the main dish or whatever. It's kind of what we do, we seek out really good clients and good ingredients and all that sort of thing. And then, we try to figure out what it is we're gonna make. For the most part.
DL: I like that analogy a lot, the baked-from-scratch is a pretty clear and direct way to describe the process, the emotion, the outcome, the purpose of what we're doing to someone. I often find that analogies and stories that are not about architecture are probably the best way to explain architecture to not architects.
GW: When you go back to that same show, some of those chefs have a background, they went to culinary school and this and that. Others grew up in Grandma's kitchen and the food is just as good. So as long as the ingredients are good and they have practice at what they're doing I would say, you could have five different architects going to the same thing, come out with very different ideas, very different results.
Mountain Wood, CA - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: It's interesting when certain details, as you said, appear in multiple projects. We've found that some of them exist functionally, from a construction perspective, it makes sense to do this, but also at some level, I think there is a philosophical reason behind it. For offices like you guys, I would imagine those details have evolved to become something, there's a design value.
GW: Sometimes it's an exploration, I’ll use concrete as an example because I love the use of concrete exposed or otherwise, it's a continuation of an idea, whether it's the look and feel of it or what it's doing in the sense of where it is in the architecture. Like any architecture, painter, or anybody else, the art of architecture is a continuation, particularly in the high design sense. It’s an exploration of things, at least for me to take an idea that can only go so far in a particular project, but it does seed itself.
DL: Going back to what you were saying about finding yourself and the kind of architecture you wanted to produce for that first project in Hawaii all that seems pretty clear. I'm wondering how that approach to architecture is. I won't use the word style, but the manner of architecture gets translated within the rest of the office. It's not just you and five other people, you have 78 people.
GW: Mentorship is what comes to mind. Just in terms of the growth of the firm, we've grown like 10 or more people during Covid, we're a long-tenured firm for the most part. It’s a good place to work for whatever reasons. The culture and how we treat each other are good so people stay around for a long time. To answer your question, I think there has been communication and what I call the serendipity and rub-off of being together. As you get to be a larger firm, I have to learn how to be more proactive to be able to communicate and share the story of what we do or what I did, or, and that's a topic that we're talking a lot about. There are so many things that contribute to the success of a project other than a big design idea. The execution to get from A to Z is heroic with some of these projects.
MB: Going back to you guys doing projects in Hawaii. Is that kind of the most challenging part of doing projects over there, that you are physically removed from the site on which you're hired to design something?
GW: I would say yes to Hawaii, but it's not unique there. We were doing work obviously close by in the region where you can drive there within an hour, but we're doing a lot of work up in the Rockies and West coast here and there. The physical project is always going to be a challenge in that regard, that’s one of the reasons why we like the singular office is that everything comes to us. We're typically the spearhead of the design collaborative environment, whether it's consultants or otherwise.
So it's really important to understand where it is we're working. I don't mean in the contextual sense, not necessarily, because obviously, that's important, but it's everything from culture to who the client is to all these things, influence, or the context of a project. The more we know early on the better. It's like we need to fish and mine for everything we know about our project before we start designing. If that means getting our people out to the project site, camping out there, doing all those things that we kind of romanticize about it, that's really important to be able to do that. It's hard and sometimes we have to insist on it with our clients because that's what's going to make our design process more meaningful and more thorough in that sense.
MB: Sometimes it's also where you are going to find the unexpected ideas, it’s not always obvious.
GW: That's an interesting point because we've been asked to do projects all over the world and there's only so far you can go to do what you're just describing so that we feel good about how we're doing it, at least in our process. That is a way that we say, “Well, that sounds really intriguing, but unless we can get there and do that and it's just not feasible”, then we're probably not best suited for that type of project. That being said, if that special project comes along and it is far away and we really want to go for it and the client is ready, then we're ready. It's just things have to line up
I think pre-design in general it's a little bit of a ready, aim, fire versus ready, fire, aim. Unless you have yourself well organized, to begin with, from a design standpoint, you have the right tools. You understand the parameters that influence the design. It's a really important first step for us is getting our ducks in a row and understand as much as we can, even with a client that's really anxious to get going.
Kahua Kuili in Hawaii - Photography ©MatthewMillman
DL: You mentioned an interest in maybe doing other types of projects. Is there a particular type of project that you personally or as an office you're hoping to try and do?
GW: I'll speak for myself. There's nothing on a list out there for me. For me, it's probably more client based than it is architecture or typology based. Whether it's an institutional building or a museum or, all the things you think about as a student in school, which we still think about as grown-up architects, art museums and libraries and all these great things, certainly they would be fun to do but it has to be for the right client. You have to have that chemistry and that trust and confidence from a client to be able to take a chance on us to do something that's other than a house, for example.
I think the firm still questions whether we should diversify a little bit with opportunities. You know, hospitality is pretty easy to co-mingle with residential work, and we could go after resorts, hotels, or whatever you want to call it. We just did that and I'm kind of learning some of the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of that. There's nothing in particular, but that doesn't mean we're not wanting to do something else. In other words, 10 years ago it would've said I could do houses for the rest of my life and be happy and it's probably true, but I also now say to myself, because I'm 64, how many more houses do I want to do? I say that in a way that every house for us is a three to five-year adventure because it's a process, design, and construction and there are only so many left project-wise.
MB: My last question is, what is your favorite building and what is your favorite place in Hawaii?
GW: Let me answer your first question, what’s my favorite building? My answer to that one is always my next one! For the second question, I would say the big island of Hawaii of course, is my home or my home away from home. I'm very biased toward that island and it's a big island obviously, so it's very diverse. I'm a ranch boy, I grew up at Elevation of 2,500 feet. I would say my hometown would be where I'm most comfortable, maybe not where I want to live or be all the time, but it's where I fall back into super comfort in terms of just who I am.
-
Greg’s interest in contextually appropriate design was greatly influenced while growing up in the Hawaiian Islands where climate and environment have a great impact on design. He further developed his expertise in contextual design while attending the University of Oregon, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1983. Early in his career, Greg worked for several Bay Area firms gaining experience in both residential and commercial design before co-founding Walker Warner Architects in 1989 with Brooks Walker.
Greg does not work in a singular design approach, but rather he is versatile and adaptive to the unique environment of each project. His forward-looking approach incorporates a modernist point-of-view imbued with warmth and texture. He also attributes his sensitivity to context and site to agrarian buildings that shaped his appreciation of architecture within rural settings.
He finds inspiration from architect Vladimir Ossipoff, who is best known for his works in Hawaii, including the Hawai’i Preparatory Academy, which Greg attended as a young boy. Greg contributes his early interest in architecture to his time spent at the Academy.
As an alumnus of the University of Oregon, Greg actively supports the school by participating in lecture programs and other activities. Greg’s community service has included a pro bono assignment to create a new health center and storm shelter for Oceania Community Health in Micronesia. Greg is also working on efforts to restore Vladimir Ossipoff’s Davies Chapel which is part of the Hawai’i Preparatory Academy and one of the key influential buildings that shaped Greg’s approach to site responsive architecture that is enduring. Outside of architecture, Greg pursues his love for the outdoors with activities ranging from fly fishing to participating in triathlons. Greg has two children and currently resides in Lafayette, California with his wife.