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Houser Walker Architecture: Half a glass, full plate |
Gregory Walker, AIA, and Hank Houser, AIA, principals of Houser Walker Architecture worked in different departments at their previous jobs at the large Atlanta firm of Lord Aeck Sargent Architecture, with Walker in the science arena and Houser in the arts and culture studio. Yet they don’t think each of them contributes a left brain or a right brain mentality to their business partnership. “It’s more of a glass half empty, glass half full kind of thing,” laughs Houser, admitting he’s the glass half full. Whatever the two young architects bring to the mix that makes up their seven-person firm, it’s working, and despite equivalent shares of optimism and pessimism, they’re both equally surprised at their success. An example is the Toco Hills Library, which just broke ground and is scheduled for completion in 2009. The city of Atlanta had a bond referendum pass allowing it to choose a pool of architecture firms to design 14 branch libraries. “We killed ourselves to get in that pool,” says Walker. Despite the effort to get into the water, they were shocked to find themselves, well, swimming happily in the deep end, so to speak. “It was surprising to us how well we did against the firms we were competing against,” says Houser. “But that success has given us the impetus and confidence to go out there and figure out how to compete again.”
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In a place where big well-known firms like Lord Aeck Sargent; Mack Scogin Merrill Elam; and Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback, among others, are at the forefront of people’s minds when they think of Atlanta architectural firms, it’s not easy for a small, young startup to become known. “Especially when you’re as horrible as we are at promoting ourselves,” says Houser. Houser Walker began in 2004, and with the work now speaking for itself, the firm is gaining a reputation with cultural and academic institutions as well as developers and private clients. Houser and Walker’s design for the River Heritage Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, a 32,000-square-foot expansion in three phases that has an estimated completion date of 2016, is both dramatic and ambitious. The new museum, with its bold, new building, twin-pronged satellite pavilion, and riverfront park, is part of Paducah’s riverfront redevelopment.
Houser and Walker admit that the road from new firm to new-firm-with-clients has meant a lot of long hours and intense work establishing the firm’s core values. “We are really into the process,” says Houser, “and we think that putting a lot into process has a direct correlation to sustainability. I don’t mean that in the usually understood sense, but sustainability as approaching a design from an ecological framework: One thing affects another thing affects another thing, and so on.
Affecting the firm, at least since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, is the renaissance Atlanta seems to be having. It could mean more work for Houser Walker — if they want it. Houser Walker has already had the luxury of turning down some potential clients who were looking only to hire a firm to give them a cookie cutter design. “What we want is clients with high standards,” says Houser, “clients who demand a lot.” Walker agrees. “We’re not particularly good at just handing over a box. That’s just not us.” For these up-and-comers, knowing what they’re not is just as crucial as knowing who they are.
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