Albrecht Pichler

ALBRECHT PICHLER Foreword by Robert Lamb Hart

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT? My Life as an Architect and Sheep Farmer

What’s Luck Got to Do With It? My Life as an Architect and Sheep Farmer

Dedicated to Margrit Lisa Bob

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Contents

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Foreword by Robert Lamb Hart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Move to the Mountains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Preface by David Howerton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Colorado. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Utah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Part 1

Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

From the Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

East Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Callaway Gardens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Part 2

Mountain Air, North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

The Start of My Architectural Career. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Reynolds Plantation, Georgia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 The Greenbrier, West Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Part 3

Alexandria, Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

A Change of Scenery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Westlake, Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Olney, Maryland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Disney. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

The Hill School, Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

SeaWorld, Florida. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Silo Ridge, New York. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Annapolis, Maryland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Nantucket Island, Massachusetts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Part 4

Nashville, Tennessee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

My Not-so-Secret Other Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

George Taylor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

My Life as a Sheep Farmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

The Bahamas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

There Is Life after Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Hawaii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Final Thoughts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Residential Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Clubhouses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Epilogue by Jim Tinson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Santa Lucia Preserve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

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Foreword

By Robert Lamb Hart

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FOREWORD

This is a book about an extraordinary man. Lucky, yes, but an immensely talented architect, and beyond that, one of the finest men I’ve known. His integrity, humanity, and what used to be called virtue have drawn out what’s best in all of us around him.

words and ideas, for him it was the reality of drawings and buildings. And it was Albrecht who was recognized and respected, both inside the firm and out, as taking the lead in creating a building’s ‘personality,’ the way it performs, stirs emotions, meets its program and budget, and expresses the intensions and expectations of both owner and architect.

In practice, Albrecht’s fluency in the languages of architecture, combined with a seemingly instinctive understanding of the ways people experience architecture, created a kind of genius in his work: an ability to respond to our clients’ clear appreciation of the warmth and timeless values in traditional styles in projects that at the same time had the clarity, rationality, and levels of refinement that were part of the contemporary way of life.

Often, the architects with these skills, whose hands and eyes and personal qualities underlie the reputation of a firm, are ‘promoted’ to management positions. That’s intended to give them more influence over the firm’s work, but instead their talents tend to be reshaped by this broader role. But not Albrecht. Together we carved out a unique role for him where he could cultivate his talents throughout his career as the lead, hands-on designer well into a design’s development, working – pencil and markers in hand, sketches on the table – side by side with clients or their top decision makers.

Together, those qualities enabled Albrecht to design and draw confidently and fast. I kept encouraging him to step back and work with alternatives, but from the start he had already grasped the essence of a client’s demands and dreams and had translated them into the kinds of buildings that led one client to tell us: “I love it when people say our house is beautiful and all that, but what I like most is just living here.”

I met Albrecht when he came to my firm’s New York Planning and Architecture office in 1971, early in our history. We were becoming established in New York City primarily as a planning firm working with the Lindsay administration. But I was looking for someone to help build a budding architectural practice, and here was a young architect with exactly the personal presence and portfolio I had hoped to find.

I couldn’t have worked with a better teammate. In the thick of a challenging design he was calm, open-minded, and able to focus not so much on himself and his role but on the total project, and letting it bring out the best in him. I learned a lot, too – such as when and how to be resolute, or as I called it at the time, stubborn. Essentially, every design difference we had was resolved in his favor. Not mine. Because he was right.

And, as a result, Albrecht made it possible for me – for our whole firm, which grew into a global practice under his design leadership – to create architecture at a higher, more satisfying and successful level than any one of us could have done without him in our lives.

As it turned out, for the next three decades, he and I worked closely together as a design team: for me, it involved mostly

Robert Lamb Hart Tiburon, CA

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Preface

By David Howerton

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PREFACE

Luck has plenty to do with it – for every one of us to have had Albrecht as our principal design partner shaping our work and our success over the life of our practice. And it’s certainly lucky for each of us who has had the opportunity to work alongside Albrecht, guided by his quiet, assured direction and encouraged and inspired by his extraordinary talent.

underlie their success. His work brought our projects to life as ‘special places’ and ‘complete environments’ because he understood what Bob simply calls, “What is it like to be there?”

Albrecht was always able to grasp the essential qualities of the diverse geographic regions and cultural settings where we worked to produce a distinctive combination of architecture and landscape that distinguished our projects – in the western mountains, New England, coastal low country, the midwest, southwestern deserts, and tropical islands. At the same time, Albrecht’s designs combined imaginative thinking, practicality, and an understanding of how people would use and enjoy them. Supported by this work, our practice could grow steadily and confidently.

Everyone wanted to draw like Albrecht, and many spent hours tracing his drawings, learning his line weights and colors, matching his distinctive script, and at the same time studying the logic and clarity of his plans. Our clients from around the country traveled to New York to sit with Albrecht as he helped sort out their ideas and objectives – whether for a house that reflected how they wanted to live, or for a real estate development that would capture their market. Both with clients and members of the firm, Albrecht brought out their best.

Albrecht personifies not only what we think of as the ‘complete architect’ who understands both people and places, but also, as his book shows, the individual who has had the good luck to enjoy a rich, fulfilling life. And I am very lucky, too, for the long and pleasant journey I have enjoyed with Albrecht that started with a bond of friendship with each other and Bob, with whom we both have had the good fortune of working and learning so much. I am honored and grateful to be Albrecht’s friend and partner, and certainly share his pride in all he has produced on behalf of our firm.

In this book about his life, Albrecht speaks with characteristic modesty, mostly about actual buildings he is responsible for, and indeed they show the remarkable range of his talent. Bob Hart often described Albrecht as a Bauhaus-trained modernist who also understood and made use of qualities and lessons of architecture of the past.

Yet so much of Albrecht’s genius is evident as well in his work on our larger-scale master plans for towns, destination resorts and new communities, where the design concepts he produced

Dave Howerton San Francisco, CA

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Part 1

From the Beginning

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FROM THE BEGINNING

This is a story about a man who calls himself extremely lucky.

I have always considered myself blessed by good fortune throughout my professional and private lives. And that luck, with some hard work thrown in, has allowed me to lead a fulfilling and happy life.

I was born in September 1940 in the town of Villach, in southern Austria, at the beginning of World War II. Germany had just annexed Austria two years before. By the time the war ended I was five years old. The real name of my home country is actually Österreich, which means, literally, “Eastern Empire.” Non-German-speaking people seem to have difficulties pronouncing the real name, so they prefer to use the English word, Austria.

Villach, my hometown

We, of course, had no car. So now that the war was over, my mother bicycled and hitchhiked 500 miles from Germany to Villach, across the alps, to see if her husband was still alive.

Once she saw that he was, she made the same trek back to Germany to pick up her three children. For our weeks-long trip back home, we hitched rides, often on trains transporting dust-coal in bins. These, I thought, were just great: built-in playgrounds of coal ‘sand boxes.’ For most of the journey, I was pitch black from top to bottom, except for my right thumb, which spent much of its time in my mouth, and stayed bright white. For me, of course, this voyage was a lot of fun, but it was not much fun for my mother, who continually had to search for food and lodging for us. In addition, the three of us children contracted the usual childhood diseases along the way. Some nights we slept on the ground; at other times, we were taken in by family or strangers.

For safety reasons, my mother, sister, brother and I spent the last year of the war in Willingshausen, a small town in the middle of Germany, with relatives of my mother. Villach was a transportation hub, and therefore a likely bombing target.

My father, however, had to stay behind. He was a professor of history and geography in the Gymnasium, a public school of students aged around 11 to 18.

At the end of the war, the first Allied soldiers, who entered our small village in Germany with little fanfare, were the Americans. Seeming to be very fond of us children, they were probably missing the children they had, or knew, back home. I was able to make friends with the American GIs in my part of the village, and they let me pretend to drive their jeeps. They also gave me chocolates and bubble gum – such riches in a time of scarcity! I sometimes wonder whether this experience influenced my decision later in life to live in the US.

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

At the last border control before coming to our home province, Kärnten, my mother discovered a compromising note in English on top of our travel document. It said: “Not good to pass border.” She didn’t want to take any chances, so she cut off the top of the document with her scissors. Luckily, the border agent didn’t notice that the document was a half inch shorter than it should have been and let us pass through.

After the war, the Allied countries decided they would not make the same mistake they had made with the Treaty of Versailles after WWI. That treaty’s harshness and humiliation in making Germany and Austria pay huge reparations caused hunger, unemployment, and major discontent. These conditions inevitably led to WWII. After the war, rather than punishing the defeated countries, the Americans tried to help them recover. The Marshall Plan was brilliant in this regard.

As a result, Germany, Austria, and Japan are now our allies (speaking as an American now) rather than our enemies.

Russia, unfortunately, dealt with the situation differently, exploiting every weakened country it could get its hands on.

On May 15,1955, Austria obtained its independence from the Allied forces by convincing them that our country had actually been a victim of Germany’s aggression and not a willing coconspirator (this was only half true). October 26th, the day all occupation forces finally left the country, is now celebrated as Austria’s national holiday. East Germany, occupied by the Russians, had to wait another 35 years to gain its freedom and be reunited with West Germany.

During the war: Me (left) with my father, Alfred, my sister, Hilka, and my brother, Gerhard

The first few years after the war did not provide plenty, but my parents never let us go really hungry. I was lucky enough to be able to spend summers in Rosegg, at the farm of family friends, where there was no shortage of food. In exchange, I helped with farm work. My brother and sister were envious.

This experience instilled in me a lifelong love of animals and farming.

I would call it luck that my country lost the war. The loss marked the beginning of many years of peace in a thriving, democratic country. It was fortunate that I didn’t grow up in the section of Austria that was occupied by the Russian forces.

We would have succumbed to the fate of East Germany and other Eastern European countries. Our section was overseen by the British, who, like the Americans, treated us with significant respect.

At about that time, I got my first pair of traditional Austrian lederhosen, and so did my brother. Even my father wore

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FROM THE BEGINNING

lederhosen on his many hiking trips. They are a very practical garment for all kinds of activities, and almost indestructible.

They have since gone out of fashion and are now worn mostly at traditional folk festivals.

I got my first pair of skis when I was six. The war delayed my introduction to the ski experience, which usually begins at age two. The saying goes that Austrians are born with little skis on their feet. So, naturally, skiing became my favorite sport, as is true for most Austrians.

My early years of education at the Villach elementary school (the first year was spent in a one-room schoolhouse) were unremarkable. My parents then enrolled me for four years in the local Gymnasium (it’s not a gym!), where my father used to teach and where my sister had started three years earlier.

She eventually went on to university, and later, like both of my parents, became a teacher. The Gymnasium was an intensely academic experience, and I am not an academic. Latin was pure hell. My father, who spoke perfect Latin, tried to help me with declensions of verbs and all sorts of other drills, but finally gave up. I was more adept at sketching and drawing, even then. Fortunately, my parents realized that I was not happy, and in 1954, when I was 14, they enrolled me in a fiveyear Technical High School (Baufachschule) in Villach.

Summers at the farm in Rosegg, near Villach

This school was divided into two departments: Hochbau, the department that concentrated on architecture, and Tiefbau, which was geared toward engineering. My brother, who had started in the school a year earlier, opted for Tiefbau. Later, after graduating at the university in Graz, he started his own structural engineering firm in Berlin, where at the same time he taught structural engineering at the university. One of his hobbies was surveying glaciers in the Austrian alps to study

Me (left) wearing my new lederhosen, and happier times

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

their retreat due to global warming. In 2004 he died during one of those surveys when he fell into a glacier’s crevasse. I miss him very much.

While he was enrolled in Tiefbau, I enrolled in Hochbau, and it became the beginning of my architectural education. My classmates were all boys – with the exception of one spunky and talented girl. In those five years, I shared the school ‘bench’ with my best friend, Manfred Kovatsch, who went on to become a professor of Planning and Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany.

Graz, with the famous Schlossberg in the middle of the city

center, is the Schlossberg (castle mountain) and its iconic Uhrturm (clocktower). The castle was pretty much destroyed by Napoleon’s army in 1809, but the people of Graz paid a ransom to Napoleon to keep the historic 13thcentury Uhrturm intact.

Manfred and I at our 60th class reunion, in 2019

The 13th-century Uhrturm

This beautiful city is where my father grew up and attended university and where he met my mother, who was taking a year off from her studies of German literature, geography, and sports in northern Germany, where she lived. They got married shortly thereafter in 1933, but not before she finished her studies back in Germany.

After graduating in 1959, Manfred and I went to study architecture in Graz, Austria’s second-largest city after Vienna.

In 1999, the city’s historic center was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Rising high above the city, in its

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FROM THE BEGINNING

Manfred and I enrolled in the Technische Hochschule for Architecture in 1959. This translates to “Technical High School,” a misnomer really, since it is actually a university, and one of Europe’s best. With not much money, I was lucky to be able to attend the university, which gave me not only free tuition but also additional financial support for food and housing. In Austria, as long as you have good grades and are not very rich, education is basically free, unlike in the United States, where it now can take years to pay back student loans. There were many students from wealthy families and from other countries who had to pay full tuition. I still feel somewhat guilty for having left the country after finishing my education there and for not fulfilling my patriotic duty of giving something back. At that time, naturally, I took it all for granted.

allowed us to participate in those competitions once we obtained the blessing of a licensed architect, and for these efforts we’d then receive credit toward our degree. Manfred and I were fortunate to win second prize at one of those competitions, for our design proposal for our hometown’s Cultural Center.

One of my favorite classes was Architectural Sketching. The professor led our class to the top of the famous Schlosssberg to sketch the complicated roofscapes of the city below – in single lines and without using an eraser. Mistakes could not be corrected. It was great training for keen observation and eyehand coordination.

In addition to studying, we had plenty of time to pursue other activities, like mountain climbing, skiing, and going to concerts and movies.

Still, despite the university’s largesse, I could not afford to rent a room by myself. So, Manfred and I shared a full-size bed in a small room in town, the only one we could afford. The situation caused a few territorial fights, but our friendship survives to this day.

I spent most of my time studying in one of several drawing studios at the university, similar to the ones we have at Hart Howerton today. The studio included first-year students as well as graduate candidates. Since the costs for studying were minimal, we could afford to spend extra time teaching and mentoring younger students in addition to pursuing our own studies.

Almost all public projects in Austria, as well as in most of Europe, are decided through competitions. Our teachers

Mountain climbing, with Manfred on the far left and me, second from right

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

One of those movies was about Vikings, all with long beards.

So, just for fun after having consumed a few beers, my classmates and I decided to grow our own beards. I’ve kept mine to this day.

So after two months of tobacco-picking for 10-hour days seven days a week (they have a very short growing season), we went on to Montreal. It was an incredible architectural experience. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, Moshe Safdie’s Habitat, Frei Otto’s suspension structure for the German pavilion, and much more. Not to mention the spectacular city of Montreal itself.

After I graduated in 1967, with the title of Diplom Ingenieur in Architecture, similar to a Master of Architecture degree in the US, I had to decide what to do next. Together with Manfred and two other colleagues and friends, we decided we wanted to go around the world before settling down in an office at home in Austria. Not having the money for lots of traveling, we ended up at first at a job in Canada, picking tobacco. (Yes, they grow tobacco in Canada.) That is also when I started to smoke cigarettes (bad idea). As luck would have it, 1967 also happened to be the year when the World’s Fair took place in Montreal.

Moshe Safdie’s Habitat

Buckminster Fuller’s dome Frei Otto’s German Pavilion

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FROM THE BEGINNING

After our summer jobs ended, we went via Boston to The Big Apple, where we spent a couple of days having fun. After that, though, the others decided to go back home, leaving me alone in the daunting city among those intimidating yet awe-inspiring high-rise towers – and speaking hardly any English. Most of the English I had learned in high school went pretty much AWOL during my college years. I now had to concentrate on getting it back.

Back to earth: It was high time to find a job to finance my (initially planned) trip around the world. I was not interested in going back home, where I had just broken up with my girlfriend and would have had to serve in the military for a couple of years.

An intimidating city – one of my sketches of the Big Apple from Bob Hart’s book, A New Look at Humanism

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Part 2

The Start of My Architectural Career

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THE START OF MY ARCHITECTURAL CAREER

A friend of a friend of a friend who worked in New York for Marcel Breuer, one of the well-known Bauhaus architects, recommended that I apply for a job at his firm.

that there would be no salary. Young so-called interns were expected to work for free (this was still legal back then). After I told them that I needed some money to live on, they offered me $100 a week, which at that time wasn’t too bad. All of a sudden, those threatening high-rises towering over me seemed like friends.

Marcel Breuer, together with Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and others, had been one of the leading architects and furniture designers at the Bauhaus school. Gropius had founded the school in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, to wide acclaim. But the Nazi regime hated their design philosophy and considered it “degenerative art.” To begin with, the Nazis did not approve of flat roofs and called them un-German and Jewish-influenced. In 1933, storm troopers entered the school, which by then was located in Berlin, and closed it down. The three architects eventually emigrated to America, where their new style, called The International Style, was welcomed with open arms by those wielding architectural influence. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of my heroes, on the other hand did not at first approve of the new style. He called it cold and inhuman.

The education I received at Breuer was topnotch, and I began to realize why many of the young architects there were happy to work for free, getting an education without having to pay tuition. The team captain on the project I worked on for most of my time at the firm (the IBM research center in Boca Raton, Florida) was a great teacher. He explained to me not only how things are done but also why. He was quite forgiving of my inadequate English. It also helped that I was one of many in the office whose first language was not English (including Breuer, who grew up in Hungary). It was quite an international environment.

After spending nine years teaching with Gropius at Harvard, Breuer settled in New York in 1946. He moved his office there over the years, and in 1964 opened an office on 59th Street and Madison Avenue. That is the office where I ended up working.

The office had a large lunchroom where everybody, including the four partners, and sometimes even Breuer himself, took their midday meal. It was a great opportunity to socialize and casually exchange ideas.

In spite of having just lost my portfolio in a New York City telephone booth, I was lucky again. After interviewing at Breuer’s office with one of his partners, I was offered a job. My one-page resume was sufficient. It was only later that I learned

I liked Breuer’s single-family houses very much but was less enthusiastic about his more brutalist concrete forms of public architecture (like the Whitney Museum, for example).

However, the sculptural pre-cast forms, with their delightful

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

asks of you, and then, and only then, can you showcase some of your own ideas. Breuer, a gentle and kind man, was pretty cool about it, but Bob was furious, and I was lucky I didn’t get fired. The chapel remained box-like. The final design, however, became one of Breuer’s favorites (without my input).

The years I worked there are remembered as the hippie period, when many of the young men in the office, including me, wore beards. Somebody told Breuer that The Körfer House in Moscia, Tessin, Switzerland and the Wassily Chair, named after Breuer’s good friend Wassily Kandinsky this was not good for the office’s image, but Breuer’s response was play of light and shadow, which he used on many of his other to come to the office the next day with a false beard strapped projects – including the one in Boca Raton that I worked on around his chin, which put that issue to rest.

– I found very appealing. I also greatly admired the furniture When Breuer was asked why he had given up teaching, he he designed. Breuer is known for his bent-metal chairs and responded: “And what exactly do you think we are doing here?” tables, which are very popular and much copied, even today.

Not unlike what Bob Hart was doing during his professional Cesca, the famous dining chair, was named after his mother, career. Breuer limited his teaching to include his staff as well Francesca. as his clients.

One day, Bob Gatje, one of the partners, invited me to work on Breuer once asked me to go to the art-supply store to pick up Breuer’s design concept for a chapel in the French ski resort of a few of his favorite drafting pencils for him. When I went to Flaine. I was to draw up his early concepts. (It happened to be hand them to him, he turned around with a smile and gave one of those concrete boxes.) I did not like it very much and, one to me, for “a job well done” (a little tongue-in-cheek but it in my youthful enthusiasm, decided to start from scratch. That made my day). was a big mistake! I learned that, first, you do what the boss

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THE START OF MY ARCHITECTURAL CAREER

The controversial design concept for an office tower over New York’s Grand Central Station was another project with which I was involved. More as a close observer than a designer.

There were two design proposals: one that obliterated the outside façade of Grand Central and another that would have destroyed the inside of Vanderbilt Hall – all in order to accommodate the structural supports and elevator cores.

Grand Central had just been designated a historic landmark.

Within the office, however, I detected some real disdain for the eclectic architecture of the old Grand Central Terminal, and covering up the façade was not considered a great loss.

Marcel Breuer (Lajkó to his friends)

Luckily, many of those in the preservation community, which was still smarting from the disastrous demolition of Penn Station a few years earlier, fought against it. And with the help of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who was an avid supporter of preservation efforts, and others – even a group of architects, led by Philip Johnson – the project was nixed. Grand Central Station, to this day, remains as one of the most admired train stations in the country – with no office tower looming over it.

I have to think that Breuer was not fully behind his proposal either. However, it would have been his first high-rise office building.

The IBM research facility in Boca Raton that I worked on

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One of two Grand Central proposals

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

This is also the part of the story where my planned trip around the world ended. First, I had planned to stay for six months with Breuer in New York. But then I decided that a half year wouldn’t look very good on my resume and changed the timeframe to at least a year. After one year, however, I had made many good friends and had even started working as a ski instructor on the weekends so I could get ski lift passes for free. Traveling around the world took a back burner. I discovered that there is much of the world I could experience right there in New York City. Little did I know, then, that my next job would last for over 50 years, at the same firm!

In 1971, together with Barbara, I bought a piece of land in Vermont, where, inspired by Buckminster Fuller, I built my own little geodesic dome. Big enough to sleep two comfortably. I put it together with snow fencing and a staple gun.

Skiing in the Northeast was enjoyable for the most part.

Frequently, though, it could become outright painful, especially when, after a day of rain, temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees F or below overnight, and the slopes turned into sheets of ice. In fact, Eastern skiing is famous, or should I say infamous, for its icy conditions. This is only useful if you want to become a ski racer like Bode Miller, for example, who grew up in New Hampshire and became one of the most celebrated ski racers in America. Recently, with the Hart Howerton team, I had the opportunity to work with him on designing a ski academy he sponsored in Big Sky, Montana.

Lots of things happened in my third year in NYC. In 1969, the Mets won the World Series. The Jets won the Super Bowl. An American stepped on the surface of the moon. And I became the head ski instructor at a NYC ski-tour company, taking skiers to Vermont every weekend. And yes! That year I also married my first wife, Barbara, who had been a student of mine on one of the ski trips. Manfred was the best man at our wedding.

I also bought my first and only motorcycle, a 250 Yamaha, to commute to work. This was a lot more pleasant than traveling by subway (before there was air-conditioning in the subway cars). Parking in New York was an issue even for motorcycles. I frequently found myself in arguments with doormen who wanted to keep the area in front of their buildings free of obstructions. More than once did I find my bike lying on the ground when I came back after work to pick it up.

The beginnings of my geodesic dome in Vermont

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THE START OF MY ARCHITECTURAL CAREER

Marcel Breuer’s 1956 comment to Bob Gatje (Breuer’s partner – and later my boss): “You know, Bob, I don’t think we’re ever going to make a lot of money in this business. I’m not a very good ‘salesman.’ My philosophy has always been something close to your American expression about building a better mousetrap . . . But we’ll have some fun.”

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Part 3

A Change of Scenery

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A CHANGE OF SCENERY

In 1971, after four years at Breuer, I received a call from Juergen Aust, a friend who had studied with me back in Austria. He worked at a firm in San Francisco, which was doing mostly master-planning work. They had just opened an office in New York City and were looking for people to help them expand more into architecture. I had just fractured my neck in a bus accident on one of my ski trips to Vermont, and was laid up for several months. I thought that this might be a good time for some change. Juergen suggested to me that I go for an interview. The firm’s name was HKS.

Bob Hart had received a master’s degree in city planning at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a master’s degree in architecture at Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard, he went on to work at the firm of John Carl Warnecke, which had offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, and Hawaii. Bob was asked to join the office in Hawaii.

An accomplished sailor, he decided to sail his boat from San Francisco to Honolulu to take up his new position. There he developed many of the contacts that proved useful during his career (and mine). In Hawaii, he also met his future (second) wife, Liz, a secretary at the firm and an ardent supporter of Bob and his work. My move to HKS marked the beginning of my close and successful working relationship with Bob.

HKS 1971–1976 In 1967, together with Bill Stubee and Adam Krivatsy, Robert Lamb Hart had founded the firm of Hart Krivatsy Stubee, or HKS, in San Francisco and New York.

After I was hired in 1971, I entered into one of the luckiest and most satisfying periods of my professional life. HKS was the first of three firms in my career (after Breuer). It was followed

by Robert Lamb Hart, or RLH, and lastly Hart Howerton, or HH. It was the name of Hart that was the constant and guiding force throughout all those years and name changes. All along the way, in the background, the name of Albrecht Pichler was another constant.

Robert Lamb Hart in 2010

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When I started, at the age of 31, he was 42, eleven years older than I, and quickly became my mentor and inspiration. Bob is a very cerebral man with a wonderful, understated sense of humor. He always had the big-picture ideas, which I was able to translate into viable buildings. We made a good team.

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

One of the first clients I had the opportunity to work for was the Walt Disney Company. We were involved in the master planning as well as the development of architectural concepts for portions of Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Rumor has it that when he first came down to Orlando for a summer job, he worked as an alligator wrestler!

(He won’t confirm.) Rather than pursuing that line of work, he joined our firm, a move that later developed into a partnership . . . lasting to today.

David Howerton

Though extremely focused, and demanding, Dave was affable and relaxed in any setting. Bob once told me that Dave could be as comfortable conversing with the Queen of England as chatting with a worker on one of our construction sites.

RLH 1976–2000 Master plan diagrams for Disney World in Orlando, Florida

Following the fiscal crisis in the early 1970s (one of many during my long career), HKS was dissolved and in 1976 Bob formed Robert Lamb Hart (RLH) in New York City, with me as his right-hand architect. Dave Howerton became head of the San Francisco office (a one-person operation for the time being), later joined by Anne (eventually to become his wife), who also was a landscape architect. Greg Patkus, an architect who had been working in our Orlando office at the time, joined us in New York and became a valuable member of the firm for many years. Like HKS, our Orlando office had become a victim of the recession and was closed.

Our relationship with Disney, primarily Bob’s, lasted over many years, up to the present.

In order to do the Disney work, HKS also opened an office in Orlando, where we met David Howerton, recently graduated from the University of Virginia School of Architecture. He later received his master’s degree in landscape architecture at the University of California.

24

A CHANGE OF SCENERY

With the multiple disciplines such as planning, landscape architecture, architecture, and later interior design, becoming part of our practice, the firm’s slogan, “Designing Complete Environments,” became our calling card, as well as my own design motto. During those years, the firm expanded to encompass a staff of more than 60 between the two offices.

younger. The youth factor injected a new energy into our work.

I fitted into Jim’s team, continuing in my role as Principal of Design and acting as mentor to some of the new men and women. The firm subsequently expanded to include about 90 employees in New York and another 80 in San Francisco (as of March 2021). In addition there are satellite offices in Boston (led by Dwight DeMay), Big Sky, Montana (led by John Burkholder), and Minneapolis (led by Roland Aberg). These offices are headed by people coming out of the New York or San Francisco offices who continue to work as part of an integral HH team.

HH 2000 to the Present In the early 2000s, when Hart Howerton was formed, Bob, who was contemplating his retirement, decided it was time to find the right person to take over the running of the New York practice. Somebody with not only administrative ability (which I preferred to leave to others) but also design talent and personality. Bob told me that he had found just the right person in Jim Tinson, who had graduated from Notre Dame, and later from Yale with a master’s degree in architecture.

At the time, Jim was working as a principal at Cooper/ Robertson’s office. A buoyant, high-energy man with a very engaging smile, Jim had all the personal and professional qualifications Bob was looking for. But, Bob said to me, there might be one problem, “He looks so young! People might not take him very seriously.” As it turned out, his youthful looks weren’t a problem at all, but rather an asset. From the early 2000s onward, the whole office began to look younger and

Jim Tinson

25

Projects

26

PROJECTS

Disney In 2009, I led the design team for what turned out to be a fabulous hotel overlooking a lake at Shanghai’s Disney World, an extremely successful and popular addition to the Disney theme park. Ara Arnn and Min Hao, architects in our firm, were major contributors to the design, and Jim Tinson was the guiding force.

The Disney Company was a major client, not only in the early years but also later on, when, in 2008, they asked us to design a Disney resort community in New Hampshire’s White Mountains (yet to be built).

Rendering of the New Hampshire resort

Elevation sketch of the New Hampshire resort

The finished hotel, which opened in 2016, with Disney’s theme park in the background

27

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Sea World, Florida From Disney World in Orlando, it was only a short jump down the road to Sea World, where in 1976 we designed Florida Festival, an innovative high-tensile-fabric roof structure over a very popular food and entertainment venue. This structure was inspired by the work of Frei Otto, whose pavilion I had visited at the Montreal Expo 67.

Florida Festival at Sea World in Orlando, Florida

Annapolis, Maryland Bob Hart and Bill Stubee had worked on the master plan for the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis during their time at John Carl Warnecke’s office. During this time, Bob developed a close relationship with Historic Annapolis, the historic preservation organization for the city.

The Annapolis Harbor, where we designed the new Harbormaster’s Building, as well as an exhibit of Annapolis’ history in one of the historic buildings facing the harbor

After we did some master planning for the historic city, they asked us to develop design guidelines for new construction in the historic district. The guidelines were meant to encourage not only Annapolis’ traditional architecture but also contemporary design. Bob provided the thinking and the words, and I did the illustrations. This was back in 1973, and as recently as 2015 we were asked to design a major expansion of the Annapolis Yacht Club, including remodeling of the firedamaged existing clubhouse.

The existing Annapolis Yacht Club after the renovation

28

PROJECTS

Nantucket Island, Massachusetts In 2005, among much local competition, we were selected to design the Great Harbor Yacht Club on Nantucket Island. It opened in 2009. Greg Patkus was the project architect, and I was the design leader.

A rendering of the Great Harbor Yacht Club, finished in 2009

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville was another city where Bob’s personal relationships (in this case with Bob Mathews, a well-respected developer in the area) were generating groundbreaking work. First, a project called Metro Center (not to be confused with the city of Nashville’s own metro center) was to be an expansion of downtown Nashville along the Cumberland River. The master plan, presented in the early 1970s, included everything that makes up a city: office buildings, housing, manufacturing, warehousing, entertainment, retail outlets, schools, sports venues, parks, and recreation areas.

Nashville House’s landscaped atrium – one of the first of its kind at the time

We were also asked to design the trend-setting first structure: an office building named Nashville House. This encompassed several three- to four-story buildings grouped around a skylit atrium, with a glass elevator connecting all floors. The atrium became a very popular site for social gatherings.

Other designs for innovative corporate office buildings followed, including those for General Accident Insurance and Northern Telecom.

General Accident Insurance Company, Nashville

I was either the sole designer or leader of the design team at most of the projects. Tony Winters, who at the time was working as an architect with a firm in Nashville, did the construction documents. I was very impressed with his meticulous work and convinced Bob to lure him to our New York office. He spent the next 20 years with us, until he formed his own office.

US headquarters for Canada’s Northern Telecom, in Nashville

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The General Accident Insurance Company in Greenburgh, New York

PROJECTS

In 1983, Bob Mathews, in his capacity as chairman of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, selected us to help design Nashville’s new airport terminal. Our credentials for airport design were limited, but we did have a reputation for producing innovative, thoughtful designs for a wide variety of settings. And, of course, there was Bob’s vast expertise as a frequent flier!

As the Design Architects, Bob and I were in charge of conceptual design and design development, and together with a local architecture firm, led a team of airport operations specialists.

The result was a user-friendly, welcoming airport terminal.

Nashville International Airport Terminal. At the grand opening, Robert Crandall, president of American Airlines, called it the best terminal in their system.

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

George Taylor Helping us to move into many other areas of the country was George Taylor, a well-respected developer. He had been part of the Sea Pines Company together with Charles Frazier. A friend and promoter of our firm, he put us in touch with a number of potential clients. George once commented to us that what he liked about our firm is that we rarely gave him what he asked for – but always what he needed. David Howerton reminded me of another one of George’s tonguein-cheek comments: “Once I can afford Hart Howerton’s fees, I’ll know I have arrived.”

Over the years, we learned a lot from him, just as he learned a lot from us. We completed two successful projects on the South Carolina oceanfront: Ocean Creek Towers and Kingston Plantation.

In California we designed a golf resort community in La Quinta for our client ATO. George’s many projects broadened our client base tremendously.

Beachfront towers at Ocean Creek in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

The Bahamas Just down the coast from South Carolina, and eastward into the Caribbean, I worked on the conceptual design for The Island House, a boutique hotel just outside the gates of Lyford Cay (where Lisa’s brother Guy and his wife, Béatrix, have a home in the Lyford Cay Club.)

The Island House, Bahamas

32

PROJECTS

Hawaii As usual for those kind of meetings, I was fairly quiet. Once all the talking was done, however, I pulled out my usual sketching tools and went to work. Bob and I showed our client how all those words and concepts might translate into real designs. The event rekindled our professional relationship with the Queen Emma Foundation, which Bob had developed during the time he was in Warnecke’s office in Hawaii a few years earlier.

In 1993 we were invited by the Queen Emma Foundation of Hawaii to participate in roundtable discussions about Hawaii’s future, called 2020 VISION. To exchange ideas with experts in the hospitality industry, including John Carl Warnecke, Wing Chao of Disney Resorts, and Adam Krivatsy (a founder of Hart Krivatsy Stubee), the foundation invited them and several others to come to Hawaii with their wives or significant others.

Bob decided to bring me along instead of Liz, which caused some snickering comments from Adam about Bob’s new bearded “wife.”

Our work with the foundation reinforced our reputation as a leading firm in resort development. To this day we are involved with projects in Oahu as well as the big island, Hawaii, for a variety of developers.

33

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Residential Projects Our master planning almost always generated architectural commissions. This was especially true for high-end residential work. While I was usually also involved in the master planning and writing of design guidelines, my real expertise was in the design of buildings. Our major residential work began with our master plan for Conyers Farm, the 1500-acre former Converse Estate in the back country of Greenwich, Connecticut.

This development, with its many traditional-style houses, would come to represent a major departure from my architecture training. Even though Austria has some of the world’s most beautiful traditional architecture, my training in school exclusively emphasized modern and contemporary design. Using traditional elements was considered inauthentic, or even fake. As my fellow Austrian architect Adolf Loos declared some 100 years ago, “Decoration is a crime.” Oddly enough, much of his own work was not devoid of decoration.

It was only after working in the US for several years that I came to appreciate more the beauty of traditional architecture and the many ways it influences my esthetic thinking and design philosophy.

The Johnson House, published in an architectural magazine

Although most of our clients in Conyers Farm and elsewhere tended to talk about their new homes in terms of style, mostly traditional, I knew they also wanted light, open, airy spaces, indoor-outdoor flow, and all the convenience and comfort possible. In other words, they also wanted contemporary design. My aim was to combine the two. Over time, these designs helped to build my own, and the firm’s, reputation.

34

PROJECTS

One of the first houses I worked on in Conyers Farm was for Brook and Nikki Johnson.

Knowing about my own farm, Ron asked me if I could find him a pair of donkeys, which he wanted to give to his wife as a Christmas gift. I was able to locate a pair in Ohio, which I then brought to Connecticut in my livestock trailer. Ron quickly put red ribbons around the donkeys’ necks before they jumped out of my truck. The sight of them made Cheryl almost cry with delight.

The house and grounds turned out to be exactly what the client had in mind. Nikki Johnson told us: “I love it when people say our house is beautiful and all that, but what I like most is just living here.”

Brook Johnson was convinced that everyone who saw the new house would want one just like it. He asked us to sign a note promising that we would not use that design elsewhere, which of course we didn’t. We would never have reused a design elsewhere. Our designs were unique for every client.

One of the more satisfying and successful homes we designed was for the actor and film director Ron Howard and his wife, Cheryl, at their 32-acre estate in Conyers Farm. In addition to the main house, with its indoor swimming pool, the estate included a guest house, an indoor tennis court, and several barns for a host of animals.

Front of T-shirt the Howards gave us, with Bob (lower right)

The Howards’ indoor swimming pool

Back of T-shirt, with me in the center and Greg next to me

35

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

After the house was finished, the Howards invited everybody on the team who created their home to a housewarming party. There they presented us with T-shirts illustrating the main players and their roles.

Bob is pictured on the front, demonstrating his vision for the house. I am on the back, wearing a french beret and holding a paintbrush in my hand, the “artiste.” The sheep lying at my feet show that there is more to me than just being an architect. (But more of this side of my life later on.) Greg Patkus, next to me, is shown with a slide rule, indicating that he was managing the project and keeping the client happy during construction. I couldn’t find Behzad on the T-shirt. He also played a big role on this project as well as on many houses in California later on. We forgive him for deserting New York for our San Francisco office. The acrobat floating off the tree on the left, on the front of the shirt, is Matt Matthews, the builder, who worked with us on many of the estates at Conyers Farm. This is a stunt that he could actually perform!

The Tarnapol House

As our reputation grew, we were asked to design many more houses in Conyers Farm and in the Town of Greenwich, working closely with clients who appreciated fine materials, craftsmanship and details. The most notable homes are shown on the following pages.

The Tarnapol House was located on an estate that included barns and paddocks for Tarnapol’s polo team.

The polo ponies being taken for a walk on the exercise track circling the site

36

PROJECTS

The Argenti House – drawing on the historic architecture of the Converse Estate

A house for TV producer Michael Moye, fitted into steep slopes and rock outcrops

37

The Batkin House

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

It has always been my opinion that elevation sketches and scale models should be as close to the reallife images as possible and shown in their natural setting. This, I thought, would give our clients the best impression of what their homes would look like once completed, and help to avoid surprises later on.

Here is an example of my sketch, and the finished house, for Charles and Monica Heimbold and their large family.

Jim McRobert and Greg Patkus were project architects for many of these earlier houses, as well as for most other projects. They were involved with the development of the designs and assumed responsibility for the timely execution of construction documents and site supervision. They dealt with the questions that always come up during and after construction, while I could mostly enjoy supervising the work and move on to my next design assignment. I worked closely with Jim and Greg for decades. I also worked with many other talented architects, especially in the later years, when the New York office grew to employ over 80 people. To all of them I owe a debt of gratitude.

These homes led to future commissions for houses all over the country.

My elevation sketch of the Heimbold House in Greenwich, CT

The finished Heimbold House, on a ridge looking over Long Island Sound, with Manhattan’s skyline in the distance – built without the trellis shown in the elevation sketch, which our clients thought would block too much of the spectacular view

38

PROJECTS

The Hamptons, on eastern Long Island, became the place to be and the place to build beautiful estates. The LeFrak House was one of the first we designed there. The picture of the poodle is a reference to Karen LeFrak’s passion for showing her champion dogs at the Westminster Dog Show. On the estate, the dogs had their own grooming room, greenhouse and play yard. Also, note the poodle weathervane atop the pool house to the left.

The LeFrak House, drawing on the shingle-style history of the Hamptons

39

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The Gruss Estate in Greenwich, CT, with barns and a private stick and ball field

For Martin Gruss we designed an estate in Greenwich that included barns and paddocks for the horses of his high-goal polo team, Pegasus.

Years later, we designed Martin and Audrey Gruss’s house in Southampton, New York.

The Gruss House in Southampton, NY

40

PROJECTS

The Baron House in East Hampton, New York, with views across the dunes to the Atlantic Ocean

When Ron and Judy Baron asked us to design a house in East Hampton, Ron said to Bob and others, “I’ve been told I should work with Albrecht.” I was only too willing to comply and began drawing plans and elevations.

They were then developed by the expanding design team at our firm. Doug Wright, Teddy McCarthy, and especially Jim Tinson, played major roles in the development of the design.

The Baron House Plan

The porte cochère

41

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Clubhouses A master plan we prepared for Gainey Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1981 led to the commission for our first golf clubhouse. This assignment opened up for us a whole new territory.

After the completion of the Gainey clubhouse, Greg Patkus placed a listing for our firm in the Metropolitan golf magazine.

This listing, coupled with the rest of our portfolio, prompted Lowell Schulman, a developer, to have us design his golf clubhouse in Bridgehampton, Long Island. Our vast experience of having designed one clubhouse was enough. As a result, we completed the design of our second clubhouse, for the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton, in 1988.

The golf clubhouse was the first building we designed in Gainey Ranch, and in the process developed the look for the rest of the development. It was here that we learned a lot about clubhouses in general and golf clubhouses in particular.

Gainey Ranch golf clubhouse, looking across the golf course to a mountain skyline (not far from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West)

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The clubhouse interior: bringing the outside in

PROJECTS

Atlantic Golf Clubhouse, Bridgehampton, NY, with the golf course designed by Rees Jones

The clubhouse was a great success and established our name as preeminent designers of golf clubhouses. Many similar commissions followed, first in the Hamptons and the New York metropolitan area, and then in the rest of the country.

The best of golf ! On the cover of Links magazine

43

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The Tuxedo Golf Club, in the historic community of Tuxedo Park, NY, one of America’s oldest country clubs

Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, NY, overlooks the Great Peconic Bay

Westhampton Country Club in Westhampton, Long Island

44

PROJECTS

Golf Club of Purchase, NY, with Long Island Sound in the distance

The original design for the Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, NY, eventually built, but not quite to our design

Bayonne Golf Club in Bayonne, NJ, overlooks New York Harbor, with Lower Manhattan in the distance

A rendering of Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, NY, which opened in 2015, with the Whitestone Bridge and Manhattan’s skyline in the background

45

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Santa Lucia Preserve The Preserve is an exquisitely beautiful place, featuring rolling hills dotted with live oaks – the classic California landscape – and redwood forests. The master plan called for a maximum of 280 houses to be built. Some 90 percent of the land was set aside as an ecological preserve; only 10 percent was available for development. House sites were meticulously selected by David Howerton and Tom Grey, the Preserve’s developer, on foot and on horseback. At the time, I was consulting with the San Francisco office on the design of many of the houses there, and led the design team for the golf clubhouse and restaurant.

In California, not far from Pebble Beach, the firm had the special opportunity to help turn the 20,000-acre Rancho San Carlos, in the Carmel Valley, into the Santa Lucia Preserve, a landmark of environmental preservation.

One of our first challenges was to develop design guidelines. The client invited leading architects – including Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Robert Stern, Moore Ruble Yudell, Tom Beeby, Joe Esherick, and Bob (and me) – to participate. Each architect was asked to select a particular site and work with its potential owners to develop a design or design guidelines. These could then be incorporated into the overall design guidelines for the Preserve.

Golf clubhouse at the Preserve

46

PROJECTS

We chose a site in the redwood groves, which had been tentatively selected by prospective owners Joan and Bill Grabe.

A few years later, they hired us to design their home on a different site.

These are images of three other houses I designed at the Preserve.

The Hodgson House

The Grabe House, in its new location, high on the hill looking toward the Pacific Ocean

The Zepf House, nestled into one of the redwood groves

Part of our submission for the architectural guidelines – the model for a house on the steep slopes above the redwood forest

47

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The Move to the Mountains

•

Use smaller building elements than in other zones which are fitted more closely to the site to assure a low profile and avoid long straight lines or planes,

•

Use hipped roofs and/or clipped gable ends rather than tall open gables.

•

Incorporate a variety of textures and colors that, seen from a distance, blend the building into its site, minimizing its presence.

•

Eave lines are to be one story in height for a minimum of 60% of the building perimeter.

•

When long buildings or clusters are proposed, new plantings are to be introduced in sizes and patterns that fragment the building mass into smaller elements and blend it into the existing tree masses.

In the process of designing the guidelines, we identified several • On many sites, the planting of new aspen groves or large evergreens would distinctly different site inconditions.

These allow greater landscape flexibility in designzones that wouldand be acceptable Aspen Zones. included evergreen sites, meadow groves, Predominantly stone buildings would be zones, appropriateaspen in this zone with con- steep tinuous stone foundations which step with the slope. In general, stone and sites and others. developed sample designs for each timber are toWe be built in this open landscape rather than predominantly log one buildings (See Figures 26 and 27). Stucco-type materials may be used as a surof them. face, if detailed as a cladding over heavy masonry walls. Refer to Appendix

Colorado In the early 1990s, our firm was invited to participate in the design for Bachelor Gulch, a new ski community adjoining Beaver Creek Resort in Colorado. It took some time to win over the confidence of local experts, who were sure that we Yankees from New York couldn’t possibly know as much about ski resorts as the local talents who had spent most of their lives in the mountains. This early skepticism was overcome after we developed a close partnership with the president of Vail Resorts Development Company, Jim Thompson, and as the first examples of our work appeared on the land.

G- Page G-6 for an example of acceptable interpretations of these guidelines.

Plant new Aspen trees to extend woodland around house.

Use of wide, sheltering hipped or clipped gable roofs.

Low roof pitch to retain snow in winter.

Situate house as close to edge of woodlands as possible.

Stone foundations to blend the structure with the site.

• Highly visible year round - colors & materials are to be selected to blend with the land.

John Burkholder, a landscape architect at our firm, with excellent sketching and skiing abilities, played a major role in convincing Jim to choose our firm to plan and design Bachelor Gulch.

While the discussions with Jim Thompson and Bob John Burkholder Hart were going on, John scribbled away on his sketch pad. When he eventually held it up, everybody exclaimed: “YES – THAT’S IT!” and we got the job. Together we developed the master plan and design philosophy, as well as the architectural design guidelines, for Bachelor Gulch.

Ease graded areas into existing terrain.

Figure 27 - The Meadow Zone - An Application of the Building Guidelines

A sample illustration for one of those zones BACHELOR GULCH VILLAGE DESIGN GUIDELINES

3-27

J A N U A RY 2 5 , 2 0 0 0

The cover of a book by Don and June Simonton about the history of Bachelor Gulch, depicting the gatehouse we designed – the first project demonstrating our guidelines for Bachelor Gulch

48

PROJECTS

John Burkholder played a major part in making our entire mountain practice a success, and in 1993 moved west to run our newly established office in the Vail Valley. He became a member of the design review board for Bachelor Gulch, representing our client, and spent many thankless hours trying to improve the design submissions of other architects and developers. Though his education was in landscape architecture, he ended up knowing more about architecture and building in ski country than most architects I know.

I designed several homes at Bachelor Gulch, including Jim Thompson’s.

The entry to Jim Thompson’s house at Bachelor Gulch

As one can see, the fashion at that time, and also what was encouraged in the design guidelines, was the heavy use of massive stone and rustic logs.

The Vangilder House at Bachelor Gulch, sited on a steep slope in the heart of the new ski runs

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Following the completion of Jim Vangilder’s house at Bachelor Gulch, he hired us to design his equestrian estate in Jackson, Missouri.

Jim Vangilder’s indoor pool and new home in Jackson, MO, where he kept some of the horses he used for cutting horse competitions in which he participated

Back to Colorado. One of the developers who had bought a building site for a house realized later how steep the slope was. Seething with frustration, he claimed that the site was unbuildable and handed it back to Vail Resorts, our client. Vail Resorts then asked us to come up with a design to prove that a house could, in fact, be built on the site. Having grown up in Austria, where some buildings sit on slopes of 45 degrees or more, I did just that. When potential buyers saw the design at the Vail Resorts’ sales office, they promptly bought the site, together with our design.

The Lessin House at Bachelor Gulch, overlooking ski runs leading to Beaver Creek

50

PROJECTS

Not far from Bachelor Gulch, we helped to develop the Red Sky Ranch golf community.

The golf clubhouse at Red Sky Ranch

I designed two of their clubhouses. Jim McRobert, as the project architect, produced the construction documents and made sure that our project came in on time and on budget.

Both clubhouses were a great success, notwithstanding the fact that one morning the massive stone chimney of one of them collapsed into the kitchen below. Nobody was hurt, just our pocketbook and that of our structural engineer.

Lionshead at Vail, Colorado

I also did conceptual designs for work at Lionshead, which today is the Arrabelle at Vail, a luxury hotel and prime portal to Vail Mountain. We also were master planners for new ski villages at peaks 7 and 8 in Breckenridge, where I produced concept designs for what is now Ski Hill Place, a grand mountain lodge at the base of Peak 8.

Planning study for Breckenridge, Colorado

51

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Utah Red Pine Village

In 2003, we established a satellite office in Park City, Utah, working for East West Partners and the Talisker Corporation, to oversee the multiple Hart Howerton projects at Deer Valley and elsewhere in Utah.

Upper N'hood

Mountain Village South N'hood Lower N'Hood

Hillside N'hood Frostwood N'hood

Golf N'Hood

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© 2010 HART HOWERTON | PLANNING, ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, P.C. The designs and concepts shown are the sole property of Hart Howerton. The drawings may not be used except with the expressed written consent of Hart Howerton.

© 2010 Hart Howerton

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Village Framework June 28, 2010

The Talisker Club, a ski-in/ski-out private club in Empire Pass, Deer Valley, UT

Montana In the early 2000s, we helped Spanish Peaks in Montana develop their master plan. I designed the golf/ski clubhouse as well as associated cabins.

The clubhouse, planned for golf in the summer and skiing in the winter

The Spanish Peaks clubhouse

52

PROJECTS

Spanish Peaks cottages

These were followed by the design of the main lodge. The financial crisis that began in 2008 put a serious damper on development and stopped most construction, at least for a while.

the country. We are continuing to work for Cross Harbor and its founding partner, Sam Byrne, on many of their projects at Yellowstone Club, Spanish Peaks and Moonlight Basin, as well as other parts of the country. The Spanish Peaks Lodge is now under construction and will be finished in 2021, to be known as The Montage Big Sky Hotel.

That’s when another one of our clients, Cross Harbor Capital Partners, came in and purchased the private Yellowstone Club in 2009, and Spanish Peaks and Moonlight Basin in 2013.

These were combined to form one of the largest ski resorts in

John Burkholder moved to Big Sky and established an office for us there as well.

53

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The Montage Big Sky luxury hotel at Spanish Peaks

Big Sky Village Center study, still on the drawing board

A house at Moonlight Basin, Big Sky

Moonlight Basin at Big Sky

Ron Rainone, an architect in our New York office, played a large role in making my designs for these houses at Moonlight Basin a reality.

54

PROJECTS

East Coast In early 1987, the Gleneagles Golf Resort in Scotland hired us to prepare a master plan for a four-season resort at Lake Placid, New York. John Burkholder worked on the master plan, and I designed the hotel. This is one of the unbuilt projects still on our shelves.

Model of the proposed Lake Placid Hotel

Word had got around by now that our firm (called Hart Howerton by that time) had become one of the leading ski resort consultants in the world. The Belleayre ski area in New York’s Catskill Mountains was one project in which we became

involved. Beginning in the late 1990s, we were asked to design a resort at the foot of the mountain.

Commenting on our proposal, the governor of New York was quoted as saying something to this effect: Here we have the unusual case where developers, politicians and even environmentalists all came together and agreed on a plan for a successful development, acceptable to all. Though many locals welcomed the project, arguing that it would bring much-needed jobs to a largely impoverished area, other people objected to the plan on the grounds that the mountain should be kept pristine. Lawsuits continue.

There are many more mountain resort projects on the table, such as plans for the Killington ski area in Vermont, the Resort condominiums at Taos, New Mexico, the Mammoth Mountain ski area in California, and a few smaller resorts.

A scale model of the hotel at Belleayre Resort, NY, called Wild Acres – a four-season resort

Section study for Mammoth Mountain ski area in California 55

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Callaway Gardens Not far from Warm Springs, Georgia, where Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his Little White House, lies the vast property of Callaway Gardens, a private park of 2,000 acres, known for its environmental stewardship.

Callaway Gardens master plan study

In 1999, we began work with the Callaway family to develop a real estate strategy for the development of some of the land while preserving the rest. This was not unlike what we did for the Santa Lucia Preserve in California.

And its famous azaleas

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PROJECTS

I designed a new visitor center, an indoor-outdoor pool, and a conference center and several cottages, carrying on the theme of landscape flowing through the buildings.

Indoor–outdoor pool

Callaway conference center

Visitor Center at Callaway Gardens, known as the Virginia Hand Callaway Discovery Center

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Mountain Air, North Carolina Following the great recession of 2008, we were asked to design a resort hotel by our good friend Randy Banks, the owner/developer of Mountain Air. This was a private club community in the high mountain peaks of North Carolina with its own private airstrip.

The plan was to revitalize the club, bringing an infusion of new generations of families to continue the legacy of the community.

My drawing for Mountain Air, a mountain resort in North Carolina, still on the drawing board

Reynolds Plantation, Georgia

Reynolds Plantation master plan study with the Lake Club (above) and the Creek Golf Clubhouse (below), Greensboro, Georgia

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PROJECTS

The Greenbrier, West Virginia In the late 1970s, we began to work with the real estate division of the Greenbrier Resort in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to help develop potential real estate projects.

This resort is one of the oldest in the country, established in 1778, only two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence! It was then called The White Sulfur Springs Resort. In 1913, the name was officially changed to The Greenbrier.

We also assisted with the design of the golf clubhouse and were the sole designers for a number of golf cottages at the Greenbrier Sporting Club.

Over the years, we designed several private residences on top of the mountain, including one for Nick Faldo, the famous golfer.

Golf cottages at the Sporting Club, a part of the Greenbrier Resort

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Alexandria, Virginia One of the objectives of our firm was to design a wide variety of projects. While much of our work involved the hospitality business, we also designed many other types of projects, including an airport terminal, headquarters office buildings, and cultural venues. One of them was the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia.

It started in 1984 with a master plan for the whole school complex, with some remodeling of existing facilities, followed by the design of the completely new Center for the Arts.

When we began our work there, the school had just started the process of turning from all-male to co-ed. This created many new challenges relating to operations as well as physical design.

Co-ed mixing – not quite working yet in 1984

Westlake, Texas In 2002 we got involved with the new high school for Westlake, Texas, a newly formed charter school for pre-K to 12th grade. It was designed for the International Baccalaureate program.

‘Green design’ and sustainability had become ever more important to the firm and to my design. For working drawings and construction, we associated with a Fort Worth firm.

Westlake high school cross-section

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PROJECTS

Olney, Maryland Master planning for the Olney Center for the Arts, in Olney, Maryland, culminated in our design for their theater. Tony Winters played a major role in the design, for which I was design team leader.

The theater, part of the Olney Cultural Center

The Hill School, Pennsylvania The prestigious Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1851 as the first family boarding school for boys. It took almost 150 years for it to become co-ed in 1998. In 1995,

we were engaged by the school to prepare a master plan and design concepts to identify potential improvement projects for the school.

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Silo Ridge, New York the way many architects do. But I did engage in the design development and construction document phases, working closely with the firm’s project managers. These were some wonderful people, who were in direct contact with clients, the consultant teams and the builders. As the firm grew, we naturally brought in more designers who could expand on the architecture that made our reputation. In later years, my role in the firm evolved from acting as design team leader to guiding and critiquing the work of others.

In more recent years, starting in 2012, we were asked by our client Discovery Land to prepare a master plan and design concepts for Silo Ridge, a gated community near the town of Wassaic in northern Dutchess County, New York, not far from my home in the town of Milan.

Because I was able to design and draw fast, and because I liked what I did, I tended to work one-on-one with Bob and Dave and their clients, and later on, with Jim. I never really trained assistants, delegated assignments, or built my own staff,

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PROJECTS

Looking back on my 50-plus years with Hart Howerton, I can only say that it has been a great firm to grow old in – and at the same time stay young.

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Part 4

My Not-so-Secret Other Life

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MY NOT-SO-SECRET OTHER LIFE

My Life as a Sheep Farmer

a year later we bought a weekend house in Dutchess County.

That’s also when my second life as a farmer began. (It’s also when I stopped smoking.)

Margrit, who grew up in Switzerland, had wanted to be a zookeeper as a child. At the farm, however, she eventually settled for sheep, plus a few chickens, geese, and of course several dogs and cats. At the beginning, we were both living in New York City in a rental apartment on Riverside Drive.

Margrit owned a graphic design studio nearby and used to walk her dogs (soon also to be my dogs) in Riverside Park. She got into the habit of picking up stray dogs and finding homes for most of them. One day, she ran into a stray chicken in the park, which presumably had escaped from a voodoo rite.

Margrit brought the chicken up to our weekend retreat, where we quickly hammered together a chicken coop.

We added a few more chickens and – voila! – Morehouse Farm was on its way.

Jonathan

In 1976, the bicentennial year, I met my second wife, Margrit, at a bicentennial party in NYC given by my best friend in the US, Jonathan Mehrer, my tennis and golf buddy.

It was love at first sight for Margrit and me, and my luck continued. She became my soulmate for 47 years!

We soon started living together, and

Morehouse Farm in winter

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

We now wanted to add some real livestock. Sheep certainly were an easy choice because they produce mainly wool rather than meat. It also helped that Margrit was an avid and expert knitter. Now the sheep we decided on were not just ordinary sheep, but Merino sheep, the ones that grow the finest and most valuable wool in the world.

Our sheep-farming days started in October 1983, when we went to the National Merino Show in Harrisburg, PA. We were there as observers, but ended up buying the winning flock, consisting of one ram and three ewes ( female sheep). So, how were we going to get them home? Of course, to haul a ewe you just have to rent a Ewe-Haul. Right? Right. This, then, was the beginning of Morehouse Farm Merinos.

Communicating with my Border Collie, Sage

Over a few years, to this group of four sheep we added many more. The flock grew to include as many as 600! And I became a full-time farmer (with help) in addition to being a full-time architect (with lots of help).

Margrit, with her background as a graphic designer and knitter, took care of the yarn business. It was her passion and she worked at it almost round the clock. She had learned to knit in kindergarten when she was only four years old. Her imaginative designs for hundreds of knitting projects can still be found on our website: Morehouse Farm.com.

For the past 15 years, the Farm has had the help of a wonderful Mexican family whose work ethic is second to none. Their support made things run more smoothly.

Margrit with her favorite dog, Figgy

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MY NOT-SO-SECRET OTHER LIFE

In addition to running a yarn business, we decided to raise and sell breeding stock. To do this, we had to show the sheep at livestock competitions. And not only show them, but also

One of many such banners

Trimming and sculpting the sheep for the shows (with some help!)

win. And that’s what we did big-time, winning almost every competition we entered.

We owned a massive trailer with living quarters, which we used to transport the animals all over the USA. We became renowned for having the finest Merino sheep in the country.

Our livestock trailer with living quarters

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

On one of those trips delivering sheep, we stopped at a campground out in Wyoming. All but one of the rams had been sold. Since sheep have a very well developed flocking instinct and hate to be alone, this remaining ram began to “baaa” incessantly. When one of the neighboring campers finally yelled out, “Shut that f…..g ram up!!” we decided to pick up our sleeping bags and blankets and join the ram in the back of the trailer to calm him down. It worked, and the rest of the night was peaceful.

Swiss!” But I finally convinced her that after all the years in the US, she was more American than Swiss – and so was I (more American than Austrian). So on June 3, 2011, we took the oath.

This country has been very good to us.

In 2006, Margrit began writing a beautifully illustrated book, Morehouse Farm: Merino Knits, which was published by Random House in the same year.

In 1987, we decided to import two Superfine rams from Australia, the country that produces the most, and the finest, Merinos. Our yarn business and breeding-stock sales were flourishing. We were selling the stock, as well as semen from our two Australian rams, all around the US. In 2011, after 40 years in this country, we decided to become American citizens. Margrit always used to say, “I will always be

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MY NOT-SO-SECRET OTHER LIFE

Ewes at Morehouse Farm, demonstrating their strong flocking instinct ( for protection)

Three of our original four sheep

The farm, which started as a weekend retreat, now became our primary residence. I still commuted to my office in Midtown Manhattan, making a trip of two and a half hours each way.

Later, I bought a little studio apartment on 42nd Street to make life easier. I had become a full-time architect during the week and a full-time farmer on weekends (as well as on all of my vacations and holidays).

Margrit passed away in 2015, after a five-year struggle with cancer. Just before she died, we both received a lifetime achievement award from the Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Growers Association.

We went to greenmarkets in the city twice a week, and on some weekends we sold our products at craft shows. At the annual Lincoln Center crafts show, we even brought a few of our sheep along. The shearing demonstrations by our helper, Erin (more about her later), were a great success with kids and adults.

Lifetime Achievement Award

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A happy Margrit and a happy ram after winning first place at a show

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

I was very moved by the show of sympathy, not only from friends and family but also from colleagues at Hart Howerton.

Dave Howerton, for one, drove all the way up to the farm from New York City to spend an entire day with me.

It was an extremely low point in my life, but Morehouse Farm Merinos lived on. By this time, the yarn business was all online.

No more sheep shows, greenmarkets, and craft shows.

From the time she was a girl, Erin Pirro had helped us with showing sheep at livestock shows and running our stalls at farmers markets and craft shows (she shore the sheep at Lincoln Center). Erin knows her sheep – she grew up on a sheep farm in Connecticut. After Margrit passed away, she took on management of the yarn business, under my oversight.

She even convinced me to let our business participate in yarn shows again. An expert knitter herself, Erin brought creative drive and good business sense to the yarn operation, including to our website.

Me with Erin Pirro, the new manager, in 2020

A crowded Morehouse booth at the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY

And in my “spare time” I picked up beekeeping, another fascinating and rewarding occupation

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THERE IS LIFE AFTER DEATH

There Is Life after Death My guardian angels were with me again in 2016, when I was introduced to my third wife, Lisa Krug. (No relation to the famous Krug Champagne.)

Lisa, who was an editor for New York publishing companies and a writer and editor at the United Nations, is also the editor for this book. She and I share many interests, but having seven cats in the house is not one of them. Yet this city girl is slowly getting used to the farm adventure. Her idea of farm life is to sit on the porch with a glass of wine in her hand, watching the sheep amble along the pasture, and I am only too happy to join her.

On the first night we met, dining with friends at a Rhinebeck restaurant, Lisa had the audacity to send back her mussels because they weren’t fresh enough. OK, I liked her immediately.

Another strong-minded woman! It was a match made in heaven.

I even became a grandfather, since Lisa’s daughter, Chantal, and her husband, Charles, have two children, Tom and Elisabeth. I have no children of my own, so playing with the grandchildren has become an entirely new experience for me.

In a few short years, we’ve traveled to many places throughout the world. One of our first explorations was a trip to California, where we stayed with Bob and Liz in their beautiful home that Bob designed, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I was able to introduce Lisa to our San Francisco office as well as many of our California projects, including the spectacular Santa Lucia Preserve.

Lisa and me during a visit to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco in 2017

Teaching Tommy how to become an architect

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Betty has her heart set on race car driving

WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

A couple of years later, we traveled to Switzerland, where we visited Margrit’s sisters, Maja and Irene, and their families. I got a chance to ski in the alps again. What a paradise!

In 2019, we also traveled to Austria, where my surviving classmates and I (and Lisa) celebrated the 60th reunion of our technical high school class.

Skiing in Switzerland in 2019. Almost as beautiful as Austria. Why did I ever leave??

Of course, Lisa and I also visited my hometown, Villach, as well as Graz, where I had studied more than 50 years earlier.

Gerhard Kastner, a fellow student from the past, and his wife Reinhilde, my cousin, kindly invited us to stay at their home. It was all a very emotional visit for me.

Later that year, we traveled through the spectacular canyon country in southern Utah. From Zion National Park to Bryce Canyon and Arches National Monument, ending up in Venice and Paris (of Las Vegas!).

Bryce Canyon

Class reunion in Austria, in 2019

Arches

Venice and Paris in Las Vegas

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THERE IS LIFE AFTER DEATH

A trip to Rome, a must-visit for every architect, was taken in September of 2017. I was finally able to see many of the architectural monuments in real life that I had been sketching for Bob Hart’s book two years earlier.

The Spanish Steps. My sketch from Bob’s book and the real thing to the right, with Lisa in the left corner. Unfortunately, sitting on the steps is no longer allowed.

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Bob Hart, my dear friend and longtime inspirational force in my life, made a huge contribution to this book. It was my privilege, a few years ago, to do sketches that appeared in Bob’s 2015 book, A New Look at Humanism in Architecture, Landscapes and Urban Design. Here are some of my favorites.

Taliesin West by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Scottsdale, AZ

London’s Crystal Palace, no longer standing

Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal in New York, now the lobby to a hotel

Rockefeller Center in NYC

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Nashville House in Nashville, TN

THERE IS LIFE AFTER DEATH

Brooklyn Bridge in New York

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater

In his book, Bob analyzes the main humanistic themes that have shaped architectural thinking and planning for centuries.

For me, design is something I do more-or-less instinctively, without being able to put the process into words. Designing is a very emotional pursuit. It’s like putting my soul on the drawing table (and so, by the way, is writing this book about myself ).

Taktsang Palphug Monastery in Bhutan

Although computer software has been the rage for some decades now, with ever newer and more sophisticated programs hitting the market, I still prefer the feeling of my hands on paper. Working out many conundrums, lofty ideas and the often-conflicting demands of clients with pen, pencil and magic markers, I find that I can be more solution-oriented and creative. Many of our clients actually prefer the human touch these kinds of drawings offer. The drawings are often more persuasive than computer-generated presentations – at least at the initial concept stage.

Bob’s book also emphasizes how designers, like me, experience huge satisfaction when people, our audience, reap enjoyment just by looking at, and of course living or working in, successfully designed environments. The more successful and popular these built environments are, the longer this enjoyment will last – maybe forever. Is that what immortality is all about?

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WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Final Thoughts Writing my memoir during the past couple of months has been a wonderfully gratifying and emotional journey. It was Bob Hart who had encouraged me to put it all down on paper, and Lisa who helped make it possible.

The first few years of my memoir are actually more the memories of my mother, who often talked to us children about our early lives. She lived long, to 83 years, and surely could have written an interesting story about her own life. My father could have done the same, but he died of ALS at the early age of 52, when I was 17 years old.

My sister, Hilka, who now lives near Hamburg, Germany, and is three years older than I, was also able to fill a few gaps in my memory.

My parents in 1955, two years before my father died

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FINAL THOUGHTS

In retrospect, I can truly say that I am a lucky man.

To be able to have not one, but two, professions that I love: architecture and sheep farming, the latter thanks to Margrit. And to have a new love, Lisa, and a new family.

Long past the age of 65, when many people can’t wait to retire from the jobs they hate, I am still active and passionate about my life and work, at the young age of 80.

Milan, New York, 2021

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Epilogue

By Jim Tinson

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EPILOGUE

This book tells a story of personal and professional lives intertwined — a sensibility reflected in Albrecht’s work and the relationships he has had with generations of clients, friends and colleagues. Transcending ink to paper, his roles as an architect, an artist, a husband, a mentor, and, yes, a sheep farmer, culminate in a life unlike any other. Yet it still stands, for all who read these pages, as a model for pursuing a creative and fulfilling life. Instead of a retrospective that speaks to the past, Albrecht has shared a journey to inspire the future.

While these chapters rightly focus on the milestones, when I reflect on working with Albrecht, I am most often struck by the “moments in between.” Although our profession is typically measured by final results, the daily efforts and problemsolving, rarely seen outside the office, ultimately shape a practice. Appreciating his gift for unlocking even the most challenging conditions, I think of his quick studies to carefully test the development potential of a new site, his sketching alternatives to aptly set a building within a sensitive context and his stepping in to assist a team struggling to organize a program in a way that is both elegant and functional. Those are the moments that do not end up in photographs or the pages of a book, but leave a lasting impact. In fact, connecting the personal and professional, some of my favorite times with Albrecht have been standing together at his farm hosting Hart Howerton summer parties, surrounded by children as he teaches them how to shear a sheep.

All of us who have been fortunate to know, work and collaborate with Albrecht are indeed lucky to be part of his story. I am grateful for the encouragement and perspective he started sharing with me before we even began working together. Our first meeting was not over a drawing board, rather, it was during lunch at a spot near our office in Midtown Manhattan. Bob had wisely advised that to really understand the firm, I first needed to know Albrecht. I recall arriving unsure who I was meeting or what I would learn, but leaving inspired by the foundation that was in place and for what was to come. This book is a bit like that lunch.

Cheerful and gracious, he told stories of the past, the work that has distinguished the firm and the people he has engaged with through the experiences captured in this book. Just as his drawings do so skillfully with our clients, in one afternoon he brought to life the unique interdisciplinary vision that continues to define how we work. As these pages testify, Albrecht’s individual talent is immense, but the impact he has had in helping establish a culture — a way of thinking, communicating and collaborating — is immeasurable and enduring.

To be continuously curious is a virtue. Through his book, Albrecht illustrates how his personal interests, passions and remarkable journey are integral to his creative work.

Informed by his own life experience, he has set an example that continues to shape our practice, our people, and the places we create.

Jim Tinson New York, NY

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I give special thanks to Deirdre Gould, Madison Silvers – and especially to Hyun Song, also known to us all as Dara, Hart Howerton’s Graphics Director – for their enthusiasm for the book, the hours spent away from their “normal” work, and, of course, for their beautiful sense of design.

Some of the images and photographs shown in this book are used for example imagery only and may be owned or copyrighted by others. As such, use is limited to this publication and no right to publish or reuse the images is granted or inferred.

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Cover design by AP is how I signed many of my drawings, and AP is what many of my colleagues called me. It was a lot easier to pronounce than Albrecht or Pichler.

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