Meet AIA Pittsburgh’s Newest Fellow
Name: Kent Suhrbier
Firm: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
Family: Paula, Nina, and Raisa
Years in practice: 32
Education: Bachelor of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University
Your first job: Apprentice at Winchester Stained Glass Studios
Project you’re proudest of: Tricky question as I try to evaluate each within its specific circumstance, but the one that has taught me the most is the Reduction Residence. This is a modest home in Pittsburgh, realized with reasonable means and a unique design process that removed, edited, and subtracted rather than added.
Favorite tool (can be digital, drafting, physical,…): A good 2b pencil. The array of digital tools available are ridiculously powerful and absolutely essential, but we still must guide them with simple intent.
Favorite building: Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute. You can study it in depth and appreciate the clarity and intellect of it, but the visceral in-person experience is sublime.
Favorite outdoor space: Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA. This is a childhood memory of what I now appreciate as a perfect edge condition (except in Greenie season).
Architect you’d like to have coffee with: Alejandro Aravena, I am guessing the coffee would be strong. His practice creates incredible work, solving difficult problems with tactile materials and unexpected forms.
What do you like to do when you’re not working? Live music anytime, anywhere. To really decompress, I go bike-packing with a collection of old friends, the perfect weeklong meditation.
If you hadn’t become an architect, what would you have been? Glass Artist somewhere in the Catskills.
What’s on your iPod/Pandora/Spotify? I listen to a wide range of music, but Friday nights are usually vinyl night in our house. Right now Waxahatchee, The Beths, boygenius, The Last Diner Party, and Allison Ponthier are all in rotation.
The secret to my success: Not really a secret so much as a willingness to work hard, and a desire to learn something new every day that I am fortunate enough to do this.
Advice to young architects: If you want to invent and create, set out to make every mistake once, but repeat as few of them as you can. Then you are trying, but also learning.
Advice to architects interested in pursuing fellowship: It is an interesting paradox, while it is an “individual” recognition, Architecture is a team process, and the community needed to support an application is quite extensive. Your work will speak for itself, but you will also need a broad community that will speak on your behalf.
What was most surprising or challenging about the FAIA application? The process was as intense as advertised, but it also was cathartic to reflect, distill, and articulate a core ethos. It surprised me that this reflection really led me to look forward to the unfinished work and the ‘next’.
Architectural quote to practice by: “Every presentation is only as strong as the weakest drawing / image / diagram in it” – I have this credited to Norman Foster, but I believe it is paraphrased…