Away from Home: Exploring the Challenge of a Diverse Practice (Practice‪)‬

For six years, the Houston architecture firm Curtis and Windham focused on perfecting its first love: the design of traditionally styled single-family homes. Partners William Curtis and Russell Windham reached a turning point five years ago, however, when they learned of plans to rebuild a burned-out 1860s Catholic church in historic Jefferson, Tex. It took 15 phone calls to convince the church's building committee to grant them an interview as candidates. But once they landed the commission and later delivered a successful project, they began to regularly add institutions to their mix of work. "You do the things you have to do to build up a practice," Curtis says. "There are certain lessons you go through on how to get jobs and make money. We feel like good architects are able to design a wide variety of building types." For many residential architects, diversifying into institutional work is a basic necessity in order to grow their business, compete for clients and employees, and even out economic cycles. But they're also drawn to the different set of challenges and issues that come with institutional work. Rather than working directly with the end user, suddenly they're juggling committees and building consensus. One week they might be designing a college dorm, another week a park visitors' center in an unfamiliar ecosystem. "You never get stale," says Susan Maxman, FAIA, of Susan Maxman and Partners in Philadelphia. "You're always trying to problem solve and think of new ways to do things."