A.J. Montero PARTNER, NBBJ COLUMBUS
INTERVIEW - A.J. MONTERO
I found Peter to always be extraordinarily kind to people he didn’t know. Not as kind to people he did know, which was an interesting dynamic. Once he got to know you he could be very straightforward in the way he would critique things, but you never took it personally because he took time at the beginning to get to know you. He didn’t have time for the niceties, you could say, of leadership style. But it never struck me as being personally insulting. It was always a challenge, almost a gauntlet, to make Peter happy, because you had a lot of respect for him. It wasn’t about making him personally satisfied but about making the design better.
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I distinctly remember him in the middle of the night sleeping on top of a desk. Not under the desk — on top of it. Mind you, at this point he wasn’t a young man but, man, that guy was a workhorse. He wouldn’t leave until he was satisfied with things. He would go off with the young guys and work all night. It was us and it was Peter somewhere. When he woke up he would walk around with his hair all crazy and his shirt untucked on one side, like “What are you guys doing now? Anything good?” One thing I learned from Peter was this weird combination of arrogance and confidence. Arrogance in the very best sense of the word, that as designers we have to have a certain confidence to say, “This is what I think, I’m a trained architect, I’m trained in aesthetics and form.” Now, that’s a very arrogant thing to say, but that idea helped a lot of designers navigate between a big, corporate firm and individual expression.
His legacy is not all positive. For instance, his interest in form-making was a big, primary concern, at least outwardly, to people. Many of us knew Peter was looking at the totality of program, but he was never convinced that a program had to be jammed into a series of boxes for efficiency or whatever. Beauty could be a big part of it, but of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, he gave me insight into what it means to get older in the profession. I remember having a conversation about this specifically in the middle of the night — you’re only “old” when you stop thinking about new ideas and embracing new things. That’s why I have to constantly remind myself that I never want to be that old guy in the studio telling the younger designers, “That’s crap, and this is the way it’s done.” Peter would never say that, and if I catch myself saying things like that, it’s time for me to hang it up.