women’s the
issue
The Architect
Ellen Cassilly
Principal, Ellen Cassilly Architect
Born in St. Louis, Ellen has lived in Durham for 25 years, 20 of which she has spent as the principal of her own firm. Her husband of 14 years, Frank Konhaus, is the co-owner and founder of KONTEK Systems and is now the executive director of Cassilhaus, the artist residency program that the couple runs out of their home on the edge of Duke Forest. What were some of your dreams as a young woman? Did you always want to be an architect? As a very young girl, I thought I might grow up and design greeting cards for Hallmark in Kansas City. After the father of my best friend had a heart attack from clogged arteries, I considered designing medical instruments to clean them out. Who were your mentors; who inspires you to this day? My mentors were my four older sisters and brother: Being that my father was a builder, it seemed like the focus in my family was that you were either more in the construction/real estate side of the world, or you were in the therapeutic, counseling side of the world. In many respects, architecture embodies that. Particularly folks who focus on home building and home design. There’s a lot of getting to know your client and figuring out what they need and want and walking them through the steps. A person whose work I really admire is Jeanne Gang, an architect [with Studio Gang] in Chicago. She’s invested herself in the community, has worked on different scales of projects and has a really innovative use of materials that is quite inspiring. What’s your day-to-day like, and what gets you out of bed in the morning? Working on community-based projects that create outdoor gathering spaces for the community invigorate me, [like] any of the projects in Sarah P. Duke Gardens or Durham Central Park. I also love breathing new life into abandoned or underutilized buildings. The GRUB project in Durham’s West End is a great example of this. A really good day is when I can sketch on a project [and] go visit a construction site in process. Share a time when all your hard work really paid off in a meaningful way. When we were fundraising for The Pavilion in Durham Central Park, and we had a parade with bamboo poles topped with bright, silk cloth, and we marked each column location with the bamboo pole. The community was so energized I simply knew that we were going to raise the money that we needed to build [it]. Then, a number of months later when the farmers market was in full swing and Foster Street was closed and full of people, I walked down the street with tears rolling down my face. What’s a philosophy you live by? Baby steps, trust yourself, and keep thinking about the big idea. 44
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