by Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
Contributing Editor

Summary: Architects who work in-house for agencies, foundations, and corporations work closely with design firms not as designers themselves but as procurers of design services and the owner’s rep during design, construction, and occupation. This month, Stephen Kliment, FAIA, profiles two African-American architects who have mastered that role, Andrew Thompson, AIA, and Ricardo C. Herring, FAIA.

No matter whether the organization the in-house architect works for is strictly a public agency, a nonprofit organization, or a pure private for-profit corporation, all have earmarks in common. First, the corporate or public agency architect recognizes the task typically is to select design architects but not do the design, and to prepare the program, budget, and schedule but have the architect execute them. The in-house architect must therefore possess a strong sense of how buildings come together and what it takes to operate them; how to talk the architect's language but not try to spoon-feed design solutions; how to act as liaison with the internal branches, divisions, and departments in the company or agency; and, in sum, how to fashion the project team and make sure it functions as it should. Some professionals on the corporate and public side see little new construction. Their job is to make sure the facility or facilities function for their stated purpose.

Both subjects of this ninth episode in the diversity series work for large organizations linked to health care. Andrew Thompson, AIA, is chief architect at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City. Ricardo C. Herring, FAIA, is acting chief of the Policy Branch, Division of Policy and Program Assessment at the National Institutes of Health Office of Research Facilities, Bethesda, Md.

Both architects are African American, and each has risen to a level of prestige that any architect of whatever color would envy. But both had hurdles to overcome…

Andrew Thompson
As chief architect of New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he has served since 1998, Andrew Thompson is a key player in overseeing the physical and emotional environment of a large urban medical center in an era full of rapid changes in attitude toward patient care. His responsibilities encompass planning and design standards affecting healthcare at Sloan-Kettering, where he manages a staff of in-house designers and oversees the outsourced architects who work on major construction projects, including the Zuckerman Research Center, a new interventional platform that involves state of the art operating rooms.

When he first came to Sloan-Kettering, Thompson helped develop and now takes advantage of a highly detailed archive of databases and drawings—one of the most detailed of any hospital in New York. The archives comprise all Sloan-Kettering buildings on site from the time they were first built, including all modifications. “This way we can always keep on top of the status of any construction and help our maintenance staff on day-to-day issues.” Thompson told Kliment in an interview.

But the path wasn’t easy, as we shall see.

SAK. What activities typically make up your day?
AT. One of my duties is to ensure design standards and building codes are being met. In a sense, I look out for the well-being of the hospital. I report to the general manager of design and construction. He’s responsible to the director of design and construction who oversees our construction budget and the big construction jobs. In charge of all is the vice president of facilities.

My Blackberry alerts me to crises. Hospitals are 24/7. Whether it’s a leak or a construction noise affecting a patient area, there’s never any downtime, except for construction. We have research experiments running 24 hours. Patient care plays a critical role.

We work also with facilities support staff—electricians, plumbers, plant operations personnel—who run the vital infrastructure on the center—everything from temperature control to water leaks and minor in-house renovations. This goes for our patient areas, research lab areas, and administrative areas. All this has to be monitored on a constant basis.

SAK. Any limitations to the training and experience in-house architects gain at Sloan-Kettering?
AT. Not a lot of design, but you get lots of practical field experience. You see a building from a hole in the ground to adding furnishings. You have a lot of responsibility ensuring that the design guidelines are met from construction documents to the actual building. At the end of the project, you want to make sure the patients and staff have a comfortable environment.

We have everything from special environmental rooms for research experiments, to critical care areas for very ill patients.

SAK. What got you into architecture?
AT. I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. As a kid, I had these spiral-bound drawing books my mother bought for me and I used to always sketch my cars and planes. I used to build model kits. At James Madison High School in Brooklyn, I got into an industrial design program. That covered items such as building a quarter-inch scale house with all framing members.

When I left high school, I found out I didn’t have enough money to do what I really wanted to, which was go to architecture school. So I went into an alternative course, New York City College of Technology, where I picked up a two-year degree in mechanical engineering. That was in 1986. The course covered everything from designing gear boxes to doing robotics. The degree gave me leverage to enter in the A/E marketplace so I could begin to earn money for college. So I worked for about a year at Gibbs and Cox Naval Architects. I worked on a naval vessel in the structural design department.

SAK. What happened to architecture school?
AT. I saved my money and enrolled at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn.

SAK. What was your experience, being one of the few African-American students?
AT. I came there in 1987. At that time I can honestly say that “certain” students were not given a fair shake, thanks to stereotypes and perceptions. Now, I never put myself in any class or category. I said, “I’m just as good as any student here,” and I did my work. I commend those professors who worked in my development that pushed me ahead.

SAK. How did the students react when they ran up against those stereotypes and perceptions?
AT. Some students of color got very discouraged. The minority enrollment at Pratt of African Americans, Hispanics, and students from the Caribbean and Africa was not very high when compared to the rest of the student body.

It was hard at first to find students who looked like me. When I talked to other students about that, they were hurt and upset. But our consensus was “Look, we paid the money for tuition, we’re here, let’s finish and let’s get through this and earn the respect we are entitled to. No matter what our race or color—we can get the job done.”

SAK. Did you organize?
AT. In my last two years at Pratt, we formed our own chapter named the Black Architecture Student Coalition. It was an African diaspora gathering of all architecture students to discuss issues and put on exhibits. Those things really weren’t supported by the school at the time. It helped bring together a lot of students and made for good networking. So when Pratt students left to become Pratt alumni, they would still have that good contact back with the student body.

Pratt’s administration helped us out once they saw how hard we were working, because here was an organization that came up from scratch—no help, except for the late professor Sidney Shelov, who gave us space, helped us out with some of our exhibits and was a link to the administration. He was a great mentor who helped us keep our eye on the prize. He even helped us out with jobs. So in the end, I had a very enlightening learning experience.

SAK. What did Pratt do to boost the ratio of students of color?
AT. Pratt did some heavy recruiting back in the early ’90s to bring in African-American students just because of where the school was located—in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill. Brooklyn Tech [a top New York City high school] was right there. Pratt pulled many students of color from there.

At Pratt, the majority of African-American students have financial need. A lot of them have to work. Some students also had families. They can’t put the full effort into the work that they normally would. Some faculty see this and try to work with them to get each situation resolved, because some of these students are very talented. Many professors don’t understand the students’ circumstances. They don’t understand why they’re having a hard time.

SAK. What about minorities on the faculty?
AT. The minority base when I was in school somehow seemed always concentrated toward the administrative side. I saw administrative people who do the clerical work or maybe as student advisors. I never saw them on the teaching side.

SAK. Why is that?
AT. It’s basically due to the school’s recruiting practices. During my teaching assignment in the late 1990s, I spoke to Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture Dean Tom Hanrahan and said he needed to recruit African-American professors in this school to give it a broad base. He said it was a concern. Other schools of architecture were having the same problem. But they don’t know what to do when it comes to recruiting African-Americans for the academic field, to really do this aggressively.

I’ve heard from colleagues in practice. If they had the free time at night, they would teach one or two classes a week. They said they would love to give that back to the school. That goes for me. I taught a variety of classes that included one class two nights a week in an intensive AutoCAD class that ran from six to nine. My work schedule at Sloan-Kettering, prevented me at times from leaving early to teach. Yet the students are very much into their work despite the late hour.

SAK. What is a long-term solution for getting more black faculty into the architecture schools?
AT. Heavy and aggressive recruitment.

SAK. But you can’t recruit if there’s no one to recruit.
AT. You have to go out there, see the mindset, and go to networking functions. The idea of teaching never occurred to some people. If you have a lecture based on an African-American architect, I guarantee you will get a large base of the city’s African-American architects to attend. I go, circulate, tell them the prospects, the benefits. And somehow pitch some of what the pain will be, what the salary will be like. At one point, Pratt had three black professors in the undergraduate architecture school—me, Rodney Leon, and Yolanda Daniels. We all left—Rodney to go into private practice at AARRIS Architects, I to Sloan-Kettering, Yolanda to teach at Columbia and to found her own firm, Su Mo Architecture. Today, I don’t know if there are any black professors at the school.

SAK. How did you get your first job after you left Pratt?
AT. I actually found a job while still in school. I couldn’t find work with a traditional architecture firm. I went on interviews, fixed up my portfolio, but I felt firms were looking for a certain design aesthetic. I landed a job at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in their Engineering Department. I worked there part-time during school and full time after I graduated.

I was working in the same type of department I’m in now—facilities. I worked there four years. After I graduated Pratt, I gained a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University. That was a good experience.

SAK. You went from a temporary Port Authority job to a permanent job. How did that happen?
AT. They liked my record there, so I worked in the facilities section for another six months. Then they switched me to permanent status. I got the call from a friend in the engineering department at the Port Authority. He said they were working on the light rail system project within JFK airport. They needed people. He pitched the position to me. It wasn’t actually a permanent position, but what they used to call a job shopper [today called technical consultants]. I accepted the offer. It would be a great learning experience. I started working on initial design proposals for the light rail system. We designed stations, changes to the terminals at JFK, new roadway systems. Just like today at Sloan-Kettering—different systems made the entire design come together. I learned how to work on projects at a very large scale.

I did that for five and a half years.

SAK. Something must have happened to get you to leave and come to Sloan-Kettering.
AT. Office politics. As a consultant, I could move around if I wanted to. The politics got to be frustrating: I couldn’t design the way I wanted to design.

So I began to look. I got a few offers. But my salary as a consultant was very good, and it was hard for small firms to match that. I still had bills to pay and student loans. That’s when I found this ad in the paper for what grew into my present job. It wasn’t for chief architect. I came to Memorial Sloan-Kettering as the architectural archivist. I took care of the archives, started to convert them to electronic format. I worked with all the plant operation and construction staff architects in getting them the documents they needed. I did that for about a year.

Then I was promoted to my present position. They were very pleased with my work and saw how I interacted with all the disciplines. It put me in a more integral role. I had support staff, plus our outsourced architects who reported to me. I reviewed drawings, dealt with department of building issues, archive issues.

SAK. How many minority staff are there in the Sloan-Kettering facilities department?
AT. It’s a good number.

SAK. What have you done to attract and promote more minorities?
AT: I really haven’t had the need to at this time. In the past, I’ve looked toward organizations. One is NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects). I looked there first to see who’s in New York in search of work or who’s willing to come to New York. Other sources have been networking, an ad in the paper. I look at the resumes. I never exclude. I look for the person who fits the qualifications.

SAK. At the end of the day, how would you focus on increasing the number of black architects entering the profession?
AT. Number one is work environment. Promotions, raises, bonuses, incentives, should all be put out there. It shouldn’t be based on your race or office politics.

In some instances, they are. I hear again and again from my colleagues around the city, my alumni friends. They went through this. They were passed over again and again and the other guy next to them has gotten the promotion they liked. Why? Because they said they were better connected, better than you are. You know they go to the office parties the boss goes to that you don’t. Those imbalances should be corrected.

SAK. You’ve talked a lot about what firms should do. What do black designers themselves need to do?
AT. Right, it also has to be inside. Black designers have to be more assertive, more aggressive. Me, I’m a very aggressive person. I don’t tick people off, but I tell them what I want. And I think being assertive and being fair gets you what you want in life.

A lot of people ask what it’s like living in an unsympathetic environment. I don’t take that attitude. If I want that position, I know I can handle that position, let me go to my boss and tell him I like that position—“here are my qualifications.” If they don’t take it, you take your wares somewhere else. Colleagues I know who have that same philosophy as I, have moved very high up the ladder. They’re doing very well today. I set goals in life. If you shoot for those goals, you get what you want.

But you have to stick to them. If you somehow forget about your goal, or you think your goal is no longer important, you won’t reach that goal and you’ll end up in limbo.

SAK. What’s for you beyond Sloan-Kettering?
AT. My goal is to run my own firm. I’ve gotten all that work experience at the Port Authority and now here at Sloan-Kettering. I’ve seen my family history. My grandfather worked until he was 70, then built his house in Belize in Central America. He built this home with money he saved, and lived a good life until he passed away at age 85. My father is doing well after working for the Brooklyn Museum for many years. All those years have taken their toll on him but he has his assets. Both these men never finished high school or college, but have done well for themselves.

Me, I’ve moved to the third level. First, I’ve completed college, completed my graduate degree. Second, I’ve risen to a very well respected professional level. Now, third, what do I want? Go to 55 and look for a pension? No, I want to run my own firm, retire when I need to retire, and be happy with what I’ve done. And build buildings.

Ricardo C. Herring, FAIA
The better part of Ricardo Herring’s 35 years of professional experience has been in the realm of institutional architecture, project management, and program management. Today, as a top architect in the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Herring heads the Policy Branch in the division of policy and program assessment. He develops and promotes long-range goals for NIH, and carries out major programming, design, and construction review functions.

Early in 2007, Herring returned to NIH after a two-year stint in the Office for Facilities Management and Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (NIH’s parent agency). As a senior facilities program manager, his job was to develop and carry out department-wide policies that shaped day-to-day facility management and operations for several HHS agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration , Indian Health Service, and NIH.

Herring joined NIH in 1989 as senior architect and resident architectural expert in the facilities planning and programming branch at the division of engineering services. He also served as its historic preservation officer. Prior to NIH, Herring was a supervisory architect with the U.S. Department of Labor, in charge of planning, design, rehabilitation, and construction of Job Corps Facilities nationwide.

Herring has 12 years in the private sector, including 5 years as a project manager with McDonald & Williams/DeLeuw Cather Parsons on the Northeast Corridor Improvement Program, where he was in charge of programming and designing Amtrak maintenance facilities from Washington to Boston.

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended D.C. public schools, Herring earned a BArch from Howard University in 1973. He is a registered architect in two states and the District of Columbia. The basis for his AIA fellowship election in 2001 was for “advancing the living standards of the American people by setting architectural design guidelines for state-of-the-art biomedical research facilities that are vital to the healthcare of the nation.” See below for details.

Asked by Kliment to name three career accomplishments he’s most proud of, and why, Herring said:

1. Becoming an architect
It’s a miracle I’m an architect today. My greatest accomplishment is getting started to becoming an architect. It’s not because I graduated from the School of Architecture and Planning at Howard University, or successfully passed the architecture registration examination. No, it’s what I had to do to get there as a teenager in the 8th grade who decided he wanted to become an architect. At that time the odds on me succeeding were essentially zero. I had to overcome racial de-facto discrimination, poverty, and the negative perceptions others had of me.

I understood the hurdles and made the sacrifices. I did all I could to improve my scholastic skills, above all in reading, language, and math. I was behind in school so I went to summer school in the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades to catch up. Instead of going out to parties or playing ball, I would spend hours on end at the District of Columbia library reading every book I could find about architecture and architects. I was fortunate that my woodshop teacher who introduced me to architecture took me under his wing and tutored me after school, and critiqued my designs. I would practice my drafting and design skills on large brown paper bags from the dry cleaners. My drawing board was a plywood board that I put on my bed. I was designing and drafting buildings after school instead of looking at TV; in fact, we could not afford a TV.

My biggest obstacle was that nobody believed in me and no one imagined that I would become an architect. One time when I was in 11th grade, my parents were told by a leading African-American education organization that based on my scores on the preliminary SAT I would never become an architect and or be successful at Howard University. They thought I should pursue another profession at the junior college level. I was passionate about architecture and becoming an architect and I believed in myself, no matter how discouraged I got and no matter what others thought.

2. Making a difference in the lives of disadvantaged youth at Job Corps
As supervising architect for the Job Corps, I was responsible for planning, design, construction, and renovation of Job Corps facilities. Job Corps is the nation's largest residential education and training program for disadvantaged youth. It has guided over 1.5 million young people away from lives filled with poverty, unemployment, crime, and welfare, and steered them towards a promise of self-confidence, independence, and productive employment. There are 107 centers in 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

When I came to the Job Corps, most of its buildings were substandard and not designed for residential or vocational education use. Most of them were over 50 years old, with many life-safety and health deficiencies. Maintenance and operations were a constant problem. Federal funding was scarce. I improved the quality of life for Job Corps students around the nation. I established policies, design guidelines, and procedures that led to replacement of those substandard facilities. I wrote and compiled minimum standards for existing job corps facilities, which establish building codes for existing buildings. These minimum standards helped to establish funding priorities that have led to replacement of a great many substandard buildings. I established the Planning and Design Guidelines for New Construction of Job Corps Facilities that have led to relocation and construction of new Job Corps centers around the nation. I made sure the guidelines stressed ease of construction, so students in the Job Corps construction trades could actually construct new facilities.

To offset scarce Federal funding, I utilized the Job Corps Vocational Skills Training Program (VST) to build or rehabilitate several Job Corps facilities. The VST program was very economical and the government paid only for materials and design services. A great benefit of VST was that this training provided students with valuable skills they could use and market forever afterwards.

3. NIH Planning and Programmatic Guidelines for Biomedical Research Facilities, Laboratories and Vivariums
I led the effort to create the first contemporary architectural design guidelines for NIH biomedical research laboratories and vivariums (animal research facilities). I wrote and compiled the NIH Planning and Programmatic Guidelines for Biomedical Research Facilities, Laboratories and Vivariums. Prior to this, NIH laboratory buildings were not designed to accommodate changes in direction of research or emergence of new technology; each NIH laboratory was designed for a specific researcher with a specific research protocol. This was costly and inefficient. I developed design parameters based on generic requirements of the research or the science to be performed in NIH laboratories, yet allow for customization to meet the individual researcher’s needs.

Today, the design guidelines have resulted in flexible laboratory space that will allow NIH to adapt to changes in research protocols and meet the vast advances in biomedical research and technology. My guidelines publication advances the profession of architecture by influencing and improving the planning, design, and construction of biomedical research laboratories and vivarium facilities throughout the nation. As noted above, the work was the basis for my election to AIA Fellowship.

SAK. How do you account for the low ratio of African-American practitioners in the profession, in the schools of architecture as students and as faculty?
RH. When I became a registered architect over 30 years ago African Americans made up 2 percent of the registered architects in the nation. Today African-American registered architects make up a little over one percent. Yet there has been an enormous increase in female architects over the last 30 years. Four women were in my class when I graduated. Today, most of the young architects in my organization at the NIH are women. Female professors of architecture and 50 percent of the school of architecture at Howard consist of females; this was unheard of 30 years ago.

Since the rate of African Americans entering the profession has stayed about same, the dramatic increase of female architects has simply ended up lowering the percentage of all male architects, including black architects.

SAK. Do you see any a target ratio for black architects?
RH. I’m not sure if it’s possible for the number of black architects to rise above 2 percent. When Paul Taylor, AIA, was president of NOMA, he felt that African-American architects should be at least 11 percent of the profession. If this number is based on the percentage of the African-American population in the U.S., I am not sure that’s realistic. You cannot equate a one-to-one ratio of profession to national population and say that is what the percentage of African Americans in the profession should be.

SAK. Who needs to act, and how, to bring the numbers more in line with their professional accomplishments?
RH. Successful African American architects in the marketplace are the keys to maintaining and growing the number African American architects. We need to expand our markets into corporate America nationwide and globally. Black architects must sustain their practices and prepare a new generation to succeed them when they retire or pass away; they must lead the way in the design of major projects and not be satisfied with a secondary role. Young blacks who are passionate about architecture will take note of the African-American firm that produces great architecture, and become architects themselves.

Corporate and public officials need to level the playing field and provide equal opportunity to all. Federal public officials must be sensitive to fairness and diversity, and comply with Federal laws and regulations when procuring and managing design services. That means, for instance, Executive Order 11246 and Federal Acquisition Regulation FAR 22.8 so they can advance diversity when contracting for design services. Using small business set-asides is another way to expand diversity. So is the practice of lecturing to professional societies such the AIA and NOMA. Public officials and corporate architects should develop internal policies, standards, and guidelines to encourage diversity hiring.

SAK. As a graduate of Howard University, where do you see the HBCUs in advancing the careers of architects of color?
RH. The role of HBCUs is essential to advancing careers of architects of color. With the courts and executive branch retreating from diversity and affirmative action, there has to be a place where people of color can get a quality education in their profession. HBCUs are vital to networking within the African-American community. I owe Howard University my career and I often go back when called upon to serve on design juries or to lecture.

You have to really want to be an architect to go through the rigorous educational programs, the IDP process, and the architecture registration exam, and low pay when you start out. For me, I would have gone through hell to become an architect.