Anne Schopf, FAIA

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: As partner and director of design at Seattle-based Mahlum Architects, Anne Schopf oversees the firm’s design ethic and sustainable design initiatives. Her projects have been honored in the AIA COTE Top Ten Green program, among other national and local honor award programs, and she was a COTE Top Ten juror in 2007. Schopf also serves on the AIA Committee on Design advisory group and is a member of the AIA Seattle Board of Directors.

Education: I went to Rensselaer Poltechnic Institute. I got my BArch there, and also a Bachelors in Civil Engineering.

Early career: I lived in Saratoga, N.Y., and worked in Saratoga and Glens Falls for a number of years, then came out to Seattle in 1990. I joined [Mahlum] and worked for about three years, and then took a six-month leave of absence. I just needed to travel and figure out if architecture was what I really wanted to do. I traveled through India and Southeast Asia by myself. After I came home, I called Mahlum back up and they said they were having a tough time in Seattle, but needed help down in the Portland office, so that was just another adventure. It was like having a new job in a way because it was a whole new group of people. I worked down in that office for about three or four years, then my husband got a job back up in Seattle so we moved back. I’ve been in the Seattle office since then, so I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for the last 17 years, but always worked at Mahlum since moving out here.

Favorite place to get away: Anywhere. If I can get away, anyplace is great. I’m going to the Caribbean in January to get away from the rain and the gray. I find that I need that more than ever living in Seattle. I need to get a dose of sunshine in January and February. It helps my attitude, so wherever that is I’m happy.

As a member of the AIA Committee on Design [COD], I have gone on a lot of their conferences, which have been great times to get away even though it’s professional. This last year we went to Miami and Minneapolis, but this coming year we’re going to Copenhagen in September, so I’m really excited about that.

Last book read: The book on my bedside is Water for Elephants, which I can’t even get into. I have a five-year-old, so what did I read last night? It’s a wonderful story about this donkey and a pebble. I don’t even remember the name. I’m reading Moby Dick, but it’s a pop-up book. That’s about all. Oh, and Charlotte’s Web; we’ve read it about three or four times in a row.

Involvement with COTE and COD: I am on the advisory group for the COD, but I’m not that active in the national COTE. I’ve served as a juror for the AIA Top Ten award program this last year and have certainly submitted projects to that awards program. I have been participating in different sustainability roundtables nationally and I served on the task force for the greening the national Honor Awards program, so even though I’m not an active member of COTE, I am committed to their ideals and support their work whenever I can.

I’m also a board member here at AIA Seattle. I’m the director of the built environment, so I oversee local committees, [one of which] is the Committee on the Environment, so locally I’m very involved with what we’re doing here.

The profession’s response to the 2010 Initiative and 2030 Challenge: I think it’s pretty diverse still as far as people knowing or not knowing what to do. I think it’s terrific that the AIA has signed on to the 2030 Challenge, but everybody is now struggling with what that commitment really means. What does that commitment mean for my personal practice, and can we as a firm commit to all our projects meeting this challenge? I think it’s been a really good call to arms and [is] raising awareness throughout the profession, but I don’t think people know how to do it yet.

Trying to share our experiences, our successes, and our losses is what we really need to do to understand how we can move forward on it. It’s huge. If you think about the reality of what it all means, it’s a huge task ahead of us. I don’t know if anybody has faced the reality of what it means. A great majority of our membership believes in it philosophically, but I’m not sure they have absorbed it into their everyday professional practice, our practice included. We’re doing great things, but I wouldn’t say it’s in every single one of our projects and I wouldn’t say that we’re driving it to the degree that we need to, so I think it’s a good challenge.

Client- or architect-driven process: It’s a delicate line that you have to walk with your clients to educate yourself and them around the issues and the solutions. It requires us to work very differently with our subconsultants, and there’s resistance from both the architect and the consultant sides to work differently because change is hard. We have to get used to working in a different way to produce a better outcome. It’s not just getting the client to say, “Yes, we want to do this,” but it’s changing work habits like patterns within your office and all those systems to get to that higher level of performance.

Does LEED® create more problems than it solves? I don’t agree with that. I think that it has helped raise the awareness within the profession and within the client community about the necessity of addressing these issues. I don’t think that people are always informed, and there is a certain amount of point chasing, but if you look holistically those are small things. When you look at the market shift that’s happened since the initiation of the program, we’ve come a huge way and I would say that the USGBC has played a large part in that. I think it’s irresponsible to [dismiss] the program. Making your clients understand that it is just a tool is our professional responsibility.

What do you say to architects who claim that “green” design inhibits creativity? I think it challenges us to be better. It challenges us to be more rigorous, to be more resource-conscious. No, it actually culls us to more creativity. It makes us think deeper and to more important issues and I think we’re up for the challenge.

Best practice tip: We are trying to work together in joining with our owners and consultant teams in a more integrated way. What we need to do is come together in the design process to solve these more complex problems. It’s not as simple as top-down decision making. I think that’s what’s challenging our creativity, but it makes us have to work in different ways. I would challenge everybody to think about asking your consultants first what they think a good solution would be and not jump to your own conclusions so quickly. We have to solve these problems together.

Perspective on COTE Top Ten Awards, as both juror and recipient: What I have seen in the years that I’ve been looking at the program, and certainly last year as a juror, is that the quality of the design work has steadily increased. Not only has the responsiveness to the environment and performance increased, but the beauty of the projects that have been submitted has increased. It’s becoming a much tougher program and much less divergent from the Honor Awards. I think over time a lot of the same projects will become recognized in those two programs.

Talking about the good and the bad in the LEED program, last year it was interesting because as we glanced through these boards to make the first cut, oftentimes those projects that were claiming a lower certification level of LEED were discarded. It’s almost like we were looking at projects that were Platinum or some projects that were Gold, but you [have] to be much higher in the LEED rating system now to get recognition at this national level. If you look back at the beginning of the program, those projects were really the cutting edge, but they weren’t really high performers yet in all areas, so the competition is getting tougher. That means that the work out there is getting better, which is what we want.

Advice to young architects: Follow your heart. Really. Architecture is a demanding profession. It does take a lot of your own personal energy and commitment and it can be a draining profession, so I would say take the time that you need to reflect on why you’re doing what you’re doing. Then, go at it at full force. I see so many pathways in architecture and different ways to have an impact with the built environment. One of our Seattle in City Council members is an architect, Peter Steinbrueck, FAIA. As an architect serving in local government, he has made a huge impact in the built environment and urban sustainability within our community and that is a tremendous gift that he has given us here in the city. There’s no one single path so that’s why I say follow your heart [where] the multiple pathways of architecture could take you because I think that’s where you could have the power.