Mr. Goettsch, your career has included partnerships and cooperation with many well-known architects, including Helmut Jahn, James DeStefano, Ricardo Bofill and Dirk Lohan. Only recently the firm Goettsch Partners, Inc. has emerged with your name in the foreground. Can you describe your role in some of the past projects, and what gives your work its particular persona? The 19 years that I spent at C.F. Murphy Associates and Murphy/Jahn, Inc. Architects provided me with the foundation for the way I approach the design process. The other "partnerships" that you mentioned were actually business relationships or temporary associations for specific purposes, but not significant architectural collaborations.		James Goettsch
The Chicago architecture scene is different than what it is in other cities. New York City, for example, is world-class in all respects. Though it may be an over-simplification, I feel that historically in New York, the architectural objective has been to construct a work of art but not necessarily a work of architecture. This has been going on since the late 1800s, when the debate among prominent New York architects focused on the question of style, borrowing from the past, whether it be Renaissance, Gothic, Neoclassical, etc. Looking back in time it seems that architects were preoccupied with style, with the question of what type of ornament should be applied to adorn a building rather than the search for an architecture uniquely appropriate for the time.
By contrast during the same period, prominent architects in Chicago were developing new construction techniques that provided the basis for a new modern architecture, such as deep foundations, the light cast-iron structural frame, the "Chicago window," air conditioning, elevators, and the shift away from historically derived ornament-if not the virtual elimination of ornament entirely-as in the Monadnock Building. The architects and the buildings that incorporated these advances became known as the First Chicago School of architecture. From this standpoint, the most distinguishing characteristics of the First Chicago School reflected an inclination to utilize new modern construction technologies; you could almost say there was an innate desire to advance "the art of construction" as a means to produce a modern architecture.
In the '50s and '60s the Second Chicago School, led by Mies van der Rohe and his former students working in Chicago firms like SOM and C.F. Murphy, continued to focus on an architecture that was derived from, and that elevated the use of, new construction technology. Although "god is in the details" is an overused phrase, this search for a technologically based architecture does highlight one of the primary characteristics of the Second Chicago School: the desire to advance architecture by advancing construction technology.
With respect to Goettsch Partners' approach to architecture, we continue to strive for a similar goal. I feel the primary difference between sculpture and architecture is that architecture has a functional requirement that it must accommodate. Fulfilling the requirement is where the architectural design process begins. For example, when we started work on the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Tower, we knew it was going to be a high-rise for a single tenant, and equally important was the fact that Blue Cross Blue Shield expected that they would need to double their space requirements within 10 years. We felt the building design should evolve out of these functional requirements. The architectural response to these criteria was reflected in the design of the building in two ways. First, the occupants in a typical high-rise building with vertically stacked floor plates have no awareness of or the physical connection to the floors above and below them, except by lightless elevator shafts and exit stairs. The design of the Blue Cross building introduced a daylight-filled vertical atrium that extends from the second floor to the roof. This atrium provides the Blue Cross organization with visual connectivity, an awareness of all the floors in the building, and in effect, an awareness of the Blue Cross organization itself. The open stairways and elevators passing through the atrium provide a physical connectivity for the organization. Second, the atrium also provided a way to incorporate the additional passenger elevators required for the future vertical expansion of the building, as well as a way to accommodate the expansion without interfering with the operation of the existing Blue Cross Blue Shield occupants.		Blue Cross-Blue Shield Tower
The requirement to house a single tenant in an expandable building was the foundation of the architectural concept. The next steps for us involved putting the building together in an artful way. As we designed the public areas of the Blue Cross building, we sought to visually express the major building components and the way they were constructed. The visibility of the moving elevators, for example, may appear to be a simple idea, but in fact, major technical and code issues had to be resolved in order to allow the shafts to be so open and clear. Similarly, the atrium stairs hung by steel rods connect the three-story meeting room spaces within the vertical atrium, and the stairs were carefully designed and detailed to reflect the manner in which they were constructed. The design approach on other multi-tenant high-rises we are doing for The John Buck Company is very similar. The Buck Company is competing with other developers to attract tenants, and the tenants choose buildings that best meet their economic, functional and technological requirements (data communication, power generators, tenant cooling, and so forth). Once those requirements are satisfied, the tenants start looking at the building's architectural qualities, including the lobby, the exterior design, the streetscape, the elevators, etc. Although tenants are primarily driven by the more pragmatic requirements, the building's architectural quality is still very important.		Office project in Suzhou
Last summer a group of Emporis photographers toured the inside of the Blue Cross Blue Shield building, and one of the remarkable qualities of the building is its openness, so that workers have some feeling of working outdoors while being inside. Is this what was intended, and can you achieve this in buildings without atriums and with tighter spatial constraints? For the most part in office buildings, the emphasis on economy and efficiency causes them to be densely populated, and it's difficult to achieve a sense of openness. The Blue Cross Blue Shield building is an interesting exception though. Despite its density-at approximately 135 gross square feet per person-the atrium provides an oasis. The fact that you can look up and down the atrium and have such a long view within the building certainly helps provide a light, airy, open feeling. There is a certain level of luxury that can only be achieved with large, open spaces. It is much more challenging to achieve this level of openness in a typical speculative office high-rise, where each floor is visually and physically separated.		Atrium in Blue Cross-Blue Shield
In recent years your work has focused more on what is being called "green architecture," and your new office tower at 111 South Wacker was the first project to receive the LEED-CS Gold rating. Can you explain what this means and why it is becoming so important? 111 South Wacker was, in fact, the first-ever building to receive the LEED Core and Shell (LEED-CS) Gold certification, which does not account for the improvements made by individual tenants. However, the core and shell does set the tone for the building and suggests what a tenant might do. I think everyone feels an obligation to be more sensitive about the environment today, whether it's in terms of air quality in the workplace or preserving our nonrenewable resources. Whenever you buy gas for your car, you only have to look at the pump price to know there's a growing problem. Today most people want to do their part-and we're certainly trying to do ours-to work toward a solution. We always do our best to make the case for "green design." Although, it is ultimately up to our client to make the decision, it is our responsibility to be sufficiently persuasive to point them in the right direction.		111 South Wacker
Is it true that office tenants are demanding high LEED ratings? That is a good question. Yes, there are some developers, owners, tenants, investors and large pension funds who are saying that they only want to be involved with buildings that are LEED certified. Many developers in China are also embracing the LEED rating system. Interestingly, I am pleased to say that those who embrace the LEED program are usually large, publicly owned companies who are interested in their public perception, and I think there is also a feeling of obligation that the corporations have to act in the best interests of the community. However, there are more tenants who are not particularly interested in the LEED program and do not feel an obligation to support sustainable design. Acceptance of the LEED program is not universal, but it has certainly been picking up speed in the last several years.

Does the energy efficiency of a LEED-certified building pass on cost savings to the tenants? Designing energy-conserving features into a building is only one of several areas where you can get points toward a LEED rating. However, the LEED program is not focused exclusively on building energy conservation. It also takes into consideration sustainable design and initiatives that may only indirectly influence energy conservation. For example, a project can get a significant number of LEED points if it is located in an urban area with close connections to train or bus stations. The result provides the opportunity to save energy by providing occupants with easy access to efficient mass transit. However, reducing energy consumption in traveling to work will not have the same direct impact on the energy consumption of a building as if you were to incorporate a double-layer exterior wall. The LEED program is holistic, looking toward energy conservation as well as sustainable design strategies such as encouraging the use of renewable resources. One big obstacle is the fact that in multi-tenant office high-rises, the owner passes the energy costs on to the tenant. To date, when tenants select a building to lease, the basic lease rate is on what he bases his decision, and energy costs are not a factor in comparing the occupancy cost of one building to another.		Grand Hyatt Guangzhou
What developments are on the horizon for environmentally efficient architecture, both in the short and long terms? There is and will be a strong and increasing pressure to support energy conservation and sustainable design. In fact, I was just in a meeting this morning where we are beginning work on the expansion-or should I say the completion-of the Blue Cross Blue Shield building. The building was originally designed more than 10 years ago. With the time that has now passed, some types of mechanical equipment are no longer manufactured because they produced excessive pollution or used too much energy. The fabrication details of the original curtain wall will not satisfy the city of Chicago's new energy code, so there are dramatic changes taking place that have no visual impact. Almost every company marketing to the construction industry today-whether they are selling electrical equipment, glass, curtain wall systems or paint-are looking for ways to support sustainable design and to minimize the impact on the environment. Their marketing campaigns emphasize and often exaggerate these objectives. Some companies are more committed or more effective than others, but I think this is something that is going to snowball. Green design is no longer the exclusive goal of a bunch of people out in the mountains trying to live a simple life-it's a mainstream effort.

Your recent work, for the most part, seems to be divided between the greater Chicago area and Asia. Why these two areas in particular? We are trying, with some success, to get work in other cities within the United States. We now have mixed-use projects in Milwaukee, Phoenix, Baltimore and Sarasota. We are doing an addition to an art museum that I worked on with my wife, Nada Andric, 10 or 12 years ago at Bard College in upstate New York. Bard has some interesting buildings by Gehry, Polshek, Venturi and Rafael Vinoly. We're doing several buildings for Blue Cross Blue Shield in Texas. We would like to work more outside of Chicago, and we're trying hard to do so. Internationally, we have worked in Eastern Europe and South America in addition to Asia. We are doing work in China and India because there are so many opportunities in those countries, and we have significant experience in the building types that are in great demand in those countries. We are also looking into opportunities in the Middle East, and I believe that we will have some projects there soon. In Chicago, we have had the good fortune to get our share of large and/or significant projects because people know our capabilities. When we go outside of Chicago, our firm is not as well known as many of the firms that we compete against, and to some extent, we are limited to working in the geographic locations where there are opportunities that match our skills. One of the Skidmore partners summed it up 10 or 15 years ago: We're like buffalo hunters, and we have to go where the buffalo are.		Chengdu Chicony Plaza
What are some of the differences between Asia and America in terms of what is required of architecture and what clients are asking for? In the U.S., buildings are an investment vehicle, and the amount of money available to invest in each project is limited. Clients know exactly how the buildings should function, and they expect a given rate of return on their investment. In terms of project costs, there is not a lot of room to maneuver. In China, the investors do not impose the same limitations on project costs, and there is tremendous enthusiasm for doing things that are appealing and dramatic. Because the budgets are not as well defined, there is more latitude for what you can do architecturally. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to be involved in those types of projects and the design energy that they create within the office. Nevertheless, our building designs need to flow out of the function and construction requirements of the project. Many of the buildings in China are exaggerations of an architectural idea without the restraint of function or budget, and the goal is to do something dramatic for its own sake. However, I am pleased to say that conditions there are improving rapidly, and today, some of the most interesting buildings in the world are starting to show up in Beijing and Shanghai. We've been working in China for about 12 or 13 years now, and every year the conditions change-and for the most part, they are getting better.		SIPAC Tower in Suzhou
The Nanjing International Center, which is under construction right now, I believe, is your largest project to date. Can you tell us about that project's history and your vision for it? Yes, that client came to us with a fully developed but rather muddled-looking building design with three vertical forms bundled together; the center one was taller, with symmetrical shorter ones flanking it. The client told us that he didn't like the look of the exterior wall his architect had proposed, and he asked us to redesign the exterior. I have to say, we had some sympathy for him-we didn't think the building looked very good either. However, we told him that while the exterior appearance was a concern, a more fundamental problem was the way the building was organized. This building comprises about 4.3 million square feet, including an eight-story podium providing a 1 million-square-foot retail mall, twin towers-one with condominiums and the other with condominium offices, serviced apartments and a hotel-and the 950-foot-tall center tower providing 1 million square feet of office, another hotel and luxury apartments. The previous architect had organized the building so that every function was accessed through a single entry. We have found that the most important part of a mixed-use project is that each individual use or function must have its own specific entry, and it needs to be located in a way that is appropriate for the intended use. The entrance for a 1 million-square-foot mall has to be front and center and obvious to everybody. The entry to a luxury residence wants to be in a more discrete area where there's less traffic. So, arranging the entrances and rearranging the massing was a very challenging assignment. One of the things that helped us was that the client came to Chicago, and we were able to take him to Water Tower Place and 900 North Michigan to show him how some successful mixed-use projects are organized. I would like to add that the client has been very grateful to us for helping to reorganize the project, and he continually demonstrates a respect for our opinion in ways that we don't always experience when we're working on other projects-whether in China or in the U.S.		Nanjing International Center
Goettsch Partners is descended directly from the practice of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the three or four most influential architects of the modernist movement; that is to say, your firm was actually started by him. How important is the legacy of Mies today in the firm's work, and how does it express itself? For our firm, this is a complicated question. Technically you are correct that the firm is the descendent of Mies' firm; although, it is through almost 70 years and a series of name changes and ownership transitions. With our firm, the Miesian heritage is raised primarily because of a former partner, Dirk Lohan, who is related to Mies by blood but not by architectural philosophy. Toward the end of Mies' life, his work and, to a greater extent, the work of his followers was often criticized for the severity of the architecture that was uncompromising in the use of steel and glass and a minimal aesthetic. Dirk's career began at the high point of this criticism, and he concentrated his efforts on trying to "humanize" Mies. As a result, I don't think the work of the firm after Mies' death could be called Miesian. In effect, the direct, recognizable Miesian heritage came to an end. I don't believe Mies' ideas about architecture were static, but I doubt that he would have attempted to "humanize" his approach. However, I do think there is an indirect link to the Miesian heritage. Mies came to Chicago in 1938, and incidentally, we recently discovered that his first office was in this very building [the Santa Fe Building] where our firm is now located. This was a surprise but not a significant link to Mies. Our link to him is through firms led by students and followers of Mies. When he came to Chicago, Mies brought and established a certain approach to architecture that was passed on through his teachings at IIT as well as his buildings. A number of firms in Chicago were led by his former students and/or employees of firms such as Skidmore Owings & Merrill and C.F. Murphy Associates. These firms, in turn, influenced other architects. I feel that my connection to Mies-if there is any-is through C.F. Murphy, where I worked, and through my mentors, including Gene Summers, there who actually knew and worked very closely with Mies for many years and on some of his most well-known buildings, such as the Seagram Building. Helmut Jahn worked with Gene Summers, and I worked with Helmut for many years. So for me personally, the connection is indirect, but I do feel that it is significant. Mies' influence was characterized by what most people refer to as the Second Chicago School of architecture, which was related in many ways to the First Chicago School in the late 1800s. In each instance, the architects pursued an innovative architecture that was based on the latest construction technology. Our firm today pursues architecture in a similar manner: Our buildings evolve out of their functional requirements and are enhanced by the technology utilized to construct them.		UBS Tower
A common feature of some of your buildings is the cable-suspended glass lobby wall, which was used in UBS Tower and a curved version in 111 South Wacker. What are the advantages of this system from a functional and economic standpoint? Well, from an economic standpoint, there are not too many advantages because it is expensive. When we first started talking about a cable-supported wall on UBS Tower, the client was very surprised to learn how expensive it was. We joked about it being an example of Mies' famous quote: "Less is more." It looks like there's less there, but it's going to cost you more. Nevertheless, there are certain advantages. From a functional standpoint, everybody is conscious of security these days, and there are different ways that you can achieve a secure environment. One way is through a combination of small cells, where everybody is isolated and screened; the alternative is to bring everything out in the open and make it very transparent and accessible to all. Clearly multi-tenant office buildings lend themselves more to this idea of transparency. 111 South Wacker is on a relatively small site, so by reducing the distinction between interior and exterior, it automatically makes the streetscape feel like it is a part of the lobby, and the lobby, a part of the streetscape. I think it's very natural, and I'm pleased that 111 and UBS Tower have received such positive feedback. We have to thank The John Buck Company for their support in pursuing innovative design solutions and for the opportunities that they have presented to us.		Lobby wall at 111 South Wacker
Tell us a bit about the architect-client relationship. How do you sell your own ideas to a developer, and how do you translate the developer's ideas into architecture? Merging those two questions, our design approach starts with the functional idea that generates the rationale for the building. In each project, we try very hard to satisfy the functional requirements in a unique manner and then provide an architectural response that is derived from the functional requirements. For example, consider the vertical atrium in the case of Blue Cross Blue Shield or the extremely long column spans at 111 South Wacker, where the perimeter columns on most floors are 40 feet apart, and at ground level, we transfer them to 80-foot spans through the parking ramp that is expressed above the lobby. Because the developer has to attract a tenant to finance his building, we have to respond to the tenant's needs if we are going to end up with a viable project. The Blue Cross Blue Shield building was a case where the tenant was the developer, and we got the job because we solved both their short- and long-term objectives. So the projects start with the function, and then in terms of the architectural details, we try to put the pieces together in a way that the owner generally gets more for his money than what the construction dollars reflect. If you look at the curtain walls on our three downtown high-rises - Blue Cross Blue Shield, UBS and 111 - and compare them on cost-per-square-foot basis to other recently completed Chicago buildings of comparable size, you find that the curtain wall costs are actually less-sometimes substantially less-and yet to look at the buildings, most people would think that the cost would be more.		155 North Wacker
It has been approximately one year since the name of the firm was changed to Goettsch Partners. Did the name change reflect a fundamental change in the way the firm functions, or was it more of a ceremonial change? Four or five years ago the firm was composed of a number of different teams pursuing a variety of projects, with mixed results in terms of our architectural and business objectives. Today, we are a cohesive group, collectively focusing on a limited number of project types with a strong commitment to achieving a consistent aesthetic. By narrowing the focus, it has strengthened the firm in many ways. We have increased our net fees substantially, and the number of employees has increased proportionally. My five fellow partners are all exceptional in their own ways. No one can match Steve Nilles for his technical knowledge, commitment to design and desire to excel. James Zheng, our youngest partner, is dedicated to our effort in China and is the most well-rounded, hard-working architect I have ever known. Larry Weldon, heading our technical services and building enclosures group is equally committed to achieving both our design and technical objectives, and he can match up with any of the independent curtain-wall consultants. Michael Kaufman, who has led our repositioning and institutional work, is unmatched in his ability to earn clients' confidence, which allows us to pursue our design objectives. Jim Prendergast heads our interior architecture practice, and in two short years, his efforts, energy and commitment to achieve clients' objectives with a strong design aesthetic have resulted in a number of high-profile assignments.		Park Hyatt Guangzhou
In addition to the partners we have a talented, dedicated group of principals, associate principals and associates who are fully committed to the firm's success. We are excited about our prospects for the future.

Interview by Daniel Kieckhefer (April 2006)