Shawn Basler, a New York-based architect, founded his firm Basler Mosa Design Group in 2000; seven years later he merged with Perkins Eastman, one of the world’s biggest and most dynamically growing architectural practices. He is now co-CEO/Executive Director—with Nick Leahy and Andrew J. Adelhardt III—of this 1,100-strong global force headquartered in New York City and operating a total of 24 offices, seven of which are outside of the U.S., namely in Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai, Singapore, Vancouver, Toronto, and Guayaquil in Ecuador. In addition to designing many international projects, Basler shares the responsibility for fostering the firm’s growth around the world.
Among the firm’s built works, both large and small, are such projects as Republic National Bank, the National Museum of the American Indian at Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, Flatiron Institute, Tenement Museum, and TKTS, all in Manhattan, as well as Cairo American College, Kuwait Justice Complex, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, and The Wharf in Washington, D.C. Recent and upcoming works include Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan, Park Hyatt Marrakesh in Morocco, and the Health-Science campus for Kuwait University, discussed in more detail in the following interview with Shawn Basler. He graduated from Kansas State University College of Architecture and is a Dean’s Advisory Council member in his alma mater. We also talked about the architect’s upbringing, career path, and some of the bold decisions that ultimately led to Basler’s current position—sharing the helm of Perkins Eastman.
Vladimir Belogolovsky: In one of your interviews you said, “For us, no project is too small and no project is too large.” Isn’t it unusual for major firms to work on small projects?
Shawn Basler: First, we did not grow to be the size that we have become by only doing big projects. You grow a firm by developing relationships. And often it is the small jobs where intimate relationships are created with the client. Small projects can make the biggest impact on their communities. For us what’s important is to have an interesting design opportunity. The question is: Is it going to have an impact socially and culturally on the people around it? And it is, of course, important for us to work with people whom we enjoy spending time with. That’s our barometer. Yet, we don’t do single-family residences, for example. Although, I have done them when I ran my own practice. Here we are focused on commercial and institutional projects.
VB: Some of your biggest projects include university campuses and even new town master plans. But if not houses, what are some of your smallest projects?
SB: A good example is our company’s close relationship with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center here in New York. We’ve been collaborating with them for 25 years by first working on very small projects, primarily on renovations of their existing facilities. The assignment was to test ideas on improving patient and guest experiences by redesigning a reception area or a lobby. These small projects are capable of changing the perception of a whole healthcare facility. It was while working on these small projects that relationships were formed to create the trust needed for earning bigger commissions. Recently we completed the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
The second example of what originally appeared to be a relatively small-scale project would be TKTS in Times Square. The way it transformed the area around it by creating an icon became important for the whole city. It really made an impact by coming to one of the most recognizable intersections in the world and making it even more of an attraction. Other projects are in the educational sector. In the past couple of years, we completed two net zero schools. And in India, we made a difference for the families of the construction workers where our projects are being built. We created learning mobile units called Crèche. They can be deployed to provide education for the kids of these families. To build those facilities we reached out to a charity organization and then worked with various government agencies.
VB: Let’s talk about your own upbringing and how you first discovered architecture.
SB: I grew up in Ste. Genevieve, a little town in Missouri with a population of just around 4,000 people. It is one hour away from St. Louis; which in my eyes was a big city. My family owns funeral homes in my town and I knew early on that I was not going to take over the family business. My younger brother eventually did. Now he is the fourth-generation owner of the family business. What I did, however, learn from my father was—how to run a business, how to express empathy, and, all in all, people skills. But for me it was clear from early on; I love to draw and apart from working on a farm in rural Missouri, I had a chance to work at an architect’s office right in my town. I was still in high school then. It was just a five-person firm that worked on local commercial projects. I was learning the trade there. One of those projects was a home for the disabled. It was important to work for the community that I knew so well firsthand. That’s when I first learned that architecture was not simply about cool shapes. It was about having an important social impact.
My older cousin went to architecture school at Kansas State University, so I followed her there. The school has a dynamic and diverse faculty coming from all over the world with a good balance of theory and practice. And there is a diverse and international group of students. It was very multi-dimensional and very creative.
VB: Where did your career take you after school?
SB: I graduated in 1995 and moved straight to New York. I had visited the city before and really liked it. I originally started working at the studio of Michael Sorkin where I worked for just a little while but we did beautiful crazy drawings and exhibited them at the GSD on the occasion of Michael’s lecture there that year. Then I interviewed at Brennan Beer Gorman Architects, a company founded less than a decade before I joined them. They grew quickly and in addition to their headquarters in New York, opened offices in Washington, D.C. and Hong Kong. Within just six months of being there, I was traveling to Jakarta and Bangkok, and working a lot with the Hong Kong office. The bulk of their work was in hospitality and mixed-use projects. That’s the direction in which my career went.
Then with another person in the firm, I helped to develop the Middle East market. But then they went into a period of financial instability and started closing some of the offices, including the Hong Kong location and they wanted to close the office that I was co-leading in Cairo. We were young and ambitious and did not want to give it up, especially since we had just won several commissions in Egypt, including a luxury hotel for Marriott. That’s when I decided to move there. Soon the office had 35 people, while my partner was here in New York running a much smaller operation. That’s how Basler Mosa Design Group (BMDG) was started. It was 2000, and soon a lot of work followed. Then we ventured to such new frontiers as Dubai. We first went there in 2001.
VB: Were you primarily a designer or was your focus to go after new work?
SB: Everything! It is still my work today. [Laughs.] Of course, now I have to be selective on what projects to work on as a designer apart from managing it. I typically initiate the design and give it direction. Then I step back and maintain the client relationship.
VB: What was the reason for merging BMDG with Perkins Eastman?
SB: Work started waning in Egypt due to the economy slowing down and we were becoming very busy in Dubai where we worked with Sheikh Mohammed early on. Yet, most of the time we contributed as concept architects in collaboration with other much bigger firms. So, after a while, the work became unsatisfactory. We were quite small—about 20 people—to complete a large project on our own. It became somewhat frustrating. During that time, I reached out to Brad Perkins whom I knew through mutual friends, at the time when he started growing his firm into an international practice with a strong focus on China. It was 2005 and we realized that we could start building an alliance together. We needed more people and credibility and he needed more exposure and opportunities, especially in the Middle East. So, we formed a joint venture company. Eventually, we came to a decision to join forces under his company’s name. Our ambition is to redefine what a large company can be by building a well-balanced global practice based on good design achieved collaboratively. In 2007 we were acquired by Perkins Eastman. Initially, I became the head of the firm’s Dubai office.
VB: Has this growth through acquisition become a trend for large firms?
SB: We have always grown both organically and through acquisition. Since our founding, we have acquired 25 companies, five in the last 18 months—from very small, consisting of just a couple of people, to larger ones, such as Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn, a 75-person practice that was acquired in 2011. Our playbook is always the same—there has to be a business reason to pursue projects that we otherwise can’t do on our own. This is possible with a larger platform, more diverse skills, and a bigger contact network. But more importantly, our cultures have to align. In a good merger, 1+1 equals 4. Looking back, I am thinking—up until 20 years ago we were quite small. Up until 15 years ago we didn’t have a broad portfolio of built works. And the 2008 financial crisis taught us that we had to be even more diversified than before. Since 2010 we have had some of the best years in the history of the firm. Again, we are growing to build a more balanced and resilient practice. Of course, now that we have a solid portfolio it opens a lot of doors, but it is really good and fresh ideas that sell, not what was built in the past. We are hired for our ideas and creativity and for our ability to deliver them. In that sense it doesn’t matter how big you are, you stand out for your ideas and creativity.
VB: Is there one particular project that you are most preoccupied with personally right now?
SB: There are several. We are finally opening Park Hyatt Marrakesh in Morocco this year. I was its main designer. Then there is a luxury boutique, Fifth Avenue Hotel at 250 Fifth Avenue. It is independently owned and branded by a New York-based family. Their involvement was phenomenal, coming to our office every single week for a year. We worked very closely with the father, his wife, sons, and daughter. It is their first hotel. The building is a former bank designed in the early 1900s by McKim, Mead & White with a new tower next to it. We did all the preservation of the existing historic building to a jewel-like condition. We look forward to the opening this fall.
And I just got back from Kuwait where we are working on the new campus of Kuwait University. We’ve been working on it for about three years and we spent at least eight years chasing it before that. It is such a rare chance to design and build an entire campus. The university has been around for a long time but it is scattered throughout Kuwait City. The main goal was to consolidate all their facilities in a single location. We won the bid for the health-science campus, which is the hub of the entire campus. We designed five colleges, a 700-bed teaching hospital, a major research center, a recreation center, student and faculty commons, a mosque, and housing. It is a six-million-square-foot project. The design stage is complete, we are now working on construction documents. Excavation should begin this year and the construction should take seven to eight years.
VB: What do you think was the reason for winning this bid?
SB: Most of all we resist creating architecture for other architects. You see it everywhere—buildings that are devoid of place and culture. Our idea is building for people. We do strive to create interesting architecture that’s unique but what are the elements that make it about the place where you build? For example, in this new campus, our focus was not only on the buildings and classrooms but rather on the interstitial spaces. That’s where real education takes place. The point is to promote the dialogue between the students and faculty. And, of course, we did not go after this enormous project on our own. We formed a design consortium, which included both international and local consultants. But we are the leaders of this very large team. We love to collaborate and we believe that good ideas come from a lot of different places. On big projects, there is enough room for everybody.
