The firm's staff in pre-pandemic celebration mode (Emerick Architects)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
During this time of quarantine, many of us are looking back in some way. Some seem to be going through old boxes of childhood mementos, others simply reminiscing about travels taken or events attended, back when we could do that without worry. And if your architecture firm is celebrating its 20th anniversary, as is the case for Emerick Architects, it's an even better time to take stock.
The firm is a partnership in more ways than one. It was founded in 2000 by the husband and wife team of architects Melody and Brian Emerick. Over the past two decades, the firm has developed a laudable reputation for historic preservation projects and a string of both sustainable and eye-catching houses, increasingly they have also branched out to a variety of mixed-use commercial and residential projects, much of it new construction. I'm thankful for a number of old buildings they've designed the renovations for, like the Ford Building and Fire Station No. 7 in Southeast and the Sovereign Hotel downtown. Yet it's not strictly a renovation-focused firm at all. I'm also a fan of houses they've designed like Alberta Lookout Residence. And when I was looking for suggestions for my best-of-the-decade list a few months ago, a number of people suggested Emerick Architects' 1930 Alberta building, an Art Deco-inspired recent mixed-use structure.
Recently I talked with Brian and Melody Emerick by phone.
Portland Architecture: when and how did you meet?
Brian Emerick: The two of us met at the University of Oregon, within the first week of classes starting. We were both in architecture school, and a mutual acquaintance introduced us. We became fast friends and were in classes together. Pretty soon we were inseparable.
Melody Emerick: We got engaged in college, and married before we graduated. But we actually went to the same high school.
Brian: I’m a year older than Melody, and Hillsboro High School was pretty big, with 1500 kids. But were both in this advanced art program, and the teacher was an inspiring person in both of our lives. I actually did a drawing of Melody back then, when I didn’t know her, because she acted as a live model for one our classes. It’s something we connected over when we finally met in college: a love of art and curiosity about creating things.
The firm's founders (Emerick Architects)
After settling in Portland in 1994, you both worked at MCA Architects for a few years, but then you started Emerick Architects still early in your careers: you would have both been in your late 20s. It must have been an extra challenge that you were both taking the plunge, and because neither of you could depend on the other having a salaried job. Can you talk about that motivation to go out on your own?
Melody: We didn't know what we were getting into in starting our business—the risk we were taking which is the best approach for big changes in your life. I was at MCA and they offered Brian a job too; we worked there together from 1995 to '97. Then we started a family. I left the firm to be with our first daughter. They offered Brian a partnership, which was huge. It was a firm of 50-something. But that’s when Brian and I had a heart-to-heart talk. We had a list of reasons why to take the partnership. And only one for why we wanted to start our own firm: it was our dream. We just went for it.
Where do you think that entrepreneurial inclination came from?
Brian: My dad had his own business when I was growing up. It gave me the sense that this was something you could really do. He was really successful. That was part of the inspiration. Ultimately it wasn’t about money for us. We were all-in and passionate about architecture and creating great places in our community. But to call the most important shots, you need to be in charge of the company too. You have to be able to not take a job sometimes. There are a lot of decisions you make, some from a business lens but some from a mission lens. That was a big driver of why we wanted to start our own firm and do that.
Alberta Lookout Residence (Emerick Architects)
Even if going out on your own an be higher-risk, it gives you a chance to curate the work, right?
Brian: Definitely. At MCA I was around the 15th person and Melody was the 12th. They grew to 55 within a few years: all this aviation work all over the country. But the travel gets old pretty fast. I was working in NY and Chicago a lot, on these huge projects for United Airlines. Melody and I just realized we wanted to get back to working in our own community: not all this corporate stuff. It was great experience, but not us. And a few months after we left, 9/11 happened. If we’d hitched our wagon to the partnership, that would have been a huge challenge. It taught us to follow your own passions and dreams. But it made a rough start to our own business.
Melody: I was also nine months pregnant with our second kid. We paid our way through college and we had all this student loan debt. Nothing about this looked like a good idea on paper. But that’s the benefit of being young. We said, 'What’s the worst that can happen? We’ll just live out of our truck somewhere or beg for a job.'
Brian: You have less to lose. As you get older it’s harder because you have more to lose.
1930 Alberta (Built Photo)
You were able to secure some important commissions early on. Could you talk about making that happen?
Brian: We jokingly call it out Founders’ Club. We were fortunate to have a great residential and a great commercial project right out of the gate, which enabled us to get the machinery rolling and some accomplishments under our belt. The fist was a super-awesome custom home out in Yamhill County. The clients had been our neighbors across the street here in Portland. They’d sold a software company in the dot-com boom and retired early. They selected us to do this house was on 40 acres. It was before LEED, but very sustainable. He was on the Nature Conservancy board. We harvested all the rainwater, rebuilt this historic barn as part of the complex, did geothermal heating. It was a really cool substantial project to be entrusted with.
Melody: Almost every single thing in that house was custom-designed. We got to know trades people and that set the tone for us: environmental, custom, artists, being connected to a place.
Brian: The other Founders Club project was with Venerable Properties and Art De Muro. He became a repeat client. We did a full seismic upgrade to the Porter Building, a quarter-block 1920s building on Glisan. I volunteered with the Historic Preservation League of Oregon [now Restore Oregon] and became the AV specialist for the shows they did at the Aladdin. I knew Art through that and got in touch with him. He entrusted us with this big project, their largest at the time.
The Porter Building, completed in 1922, renovated in 2002 (Emerick Architects)
Melody: Those two projects were critical because they set the tone for what you see in our work: custom, thoughtful design, environmentally focused, adaptive re-use, community-based. We did a whole handful of projects with Art as well as other clients: renovations like the Ford Building and Grand Central Bakery, and many homes.
I know that you're not strangers to working from home because you worked out of your office for those first three years, right?
Melody: We were on 31st and Clinton. The business was in that house for three years while employing a couple of employees and having a toddler and baby running around.
Brian: Our parents thought we were nuts buying a house in Southeast. Coming back into the city wasn’t that popular at that time. It’s crazy if you go there now, how different it was. Back then, there wasn’t even a coffee shop.
Melody: I remember we did two houses for Art Alexakis and he came to our bungalow to look at the plans. He said, ‘This was my neighborhood too.’
Brian: He’d also just recorded an album with Everclear at Kung Fu Bakery recording studio on Division during that time.
Melody: Our history, it’s been the people we’ve worked with. We’ve worked with some really fun people. The people who come to us really, really care about their house or their building or their neighborhood. That’s been really rewarding. It could be a schoolteacher. It could be a new business owner. It could be another creative professional. We’ve even worked with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
You've also made yourselves your own client, designing and building your own house in the Hillsdale neighborhood in 2007, which we covered in a post. I remember visiting it back then, and it was ahead of its time in terms of sustainability.
Melody: We had the dream of doing our own home for ourselves. We kept trying to find land in Southeast since that was the area we knew and loved and we just couldn’t. We struggled. Finally a realtor said, ‘You have to cross the river.’ It’s the divide that no one crosses. But we found one acre of land in the forest in SW Portland. We went for it. It was in an environmental zone with a lot of restrictions, which was perfect for a couple of architects to try and navigate. At that time LEED for Residential was a pilot program. We were able to get Gold status for that house. That was 2007. The first projects we did were really popular which helped launch us to more projects and bigger projects. With our house, we continue to get a lot of comments on it.
The Emericks' 2007 residence (top: Sally Painter, bottom: Built Photo)
How much residential versus commercial do you do, and how intentional is that?
Brian: Mostly it’s been a 50-50 split. In recent years, it’s been a bit more commercial. Here in the studio, for the most part everyone works on both project types. Each informs the other. The residential team brings a level of detail and craft to our commercial work. There’s not always the budget to support all that, but it’s a mindset of detail and execution. On the residential work, most residential firms aren’t the size we are. They’re more like sole proprietorships. We’re bringing a more efficient approach. Our team likes working on both.
Do you want to do other types of work?
Brian: One we really wanted to try and hadn’t done much before was an infill development. That’s something we’ve been more successful with in the last five years or so. Most of what we do now is pretty close in to city center or in historic neighborhoods. It’s nice to be able to show that you can do high quality urban infill.
Melody: The Alberta Building was one of those. We identified quality infill work as something important to us as a project type. We’re also working on a large affordable housing project.
Can you tell me more about that?
BE: It’s called the Anna Mann House and it's in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Southeast. It’s taking a manor house and adding a larger complex. It’s an interesting challenge to work with the neighborhood and the Portland housing bureau. It’s a cool opportunity. I’ve spent time on the Landmarks Commission and Restore Oregon’s board. A lot of time there’s this perception that historic architecture is elitist and not accessible to the common person. To take this resource and make a big equity move and give access to the Laurelhurst school district, it’s a pretty cool opportunity.
I know you're also working on projects like a winery in Dallas, Oregon and an expansion of the historic Viewpoint Inn in the Columbia Gorge. And there's the Hallock-McMillan Building along our downtown waterfront: the oldest commercial building in Portland. What do these and the other projects say about the firm today?
Melody: It’s hard to define what we do because the work is so different and interesting. We love these challenging puzzles. Going from a quarter-block on Alberta to this winery where everything is hand-built to the Hallock and McMillan: it keeps the curiosity and challenge for us and helps us attract quality talent in the studio and hold it. I think because the work’s so interesting, the business is the vehicle to do the architecture, but the architecture is the mission.
Division Street Residence (Lincoln Barbour)
What about the firm's size? I'll bet you could have grown more than you have.
Melody: We’re a firm of 15. We’ve always been very purposeful of our size. We want to be big enough to be able to do a range of projects. But it’s a size that allows us to hold the quality we want. It’s a challenge to actually resist the chance to grow, but for the people who work for us, it’s a huge trust they put in us to keep a diverse portfolio and fun environment.
Brian: Rather than grow, we’ve decided to curate the work. Going all the way back to MCA, being in a firm that was 15 was really fun, and by the time it got to 55 it was more of a corporate experience. There’s just a certain firm size that keeps it creative and fun. Melody and I want to be able to practice architecture too, and not become just a business manager.
I respect that. It reminds me of how so many sports-team coaches leave the small- market teams or less prestigious programs they’ve successfully built into winners, only to fail at doing the same with a large-market pro team or blue-blood college team. Or how some pro sports-team coaches take on more responsibility selecting players only to drift away from the essence of what they do: coaching.
Brian: It’s almost un-American in a way to say, ‘No I’m going to stay small.’ But maybe it’s actually more rewarding to coach a small-market team than to take on all that extra pressure and take you further away from what you love.
Melody: Our initial goal was to do work in the place we love. Portland was very different then [in 2000]. It was this hidden gem. We just wanted to have a place here and do the best work we could. Now there isn’t a neighborhood we haven’t worked in. If we were 50 people, we probably would have had to look outside Portland for business.
Vintner's Home, Yamhill County (Custom Built Photography)
What about your different skill sets? Running an architecture firm and being an architect take a lot of different skills, from drawing and client relationships to entrepreneurial stuff, etc. What do you each do best?
Melody: Great question. They share a surprisingly large number of traits, actually. Running an architecture firm, or a small business for that matter, forces you to keep your eye on the big picture, take calculated risks, know when to edit down to what is most important. No matter the size of your business at some point you will need to lean on others that know more than you and share your goals. You need to take the time to ask questions that might be hard, and really listen to the answers. You need to make big decisions quickly and then move on. You need to sweat the details that set the tone for the character of your company just like you would a building. There are personalities involved and you need to know how to navigate the emotions around stress and dreams and money and time management. All of these skills are without a doubt valuable as an architect and business owner. For Brian and I, the biggest strength that has helped us as business owners as well as architects is our ability to stay positive and focused on the goal even as we navigate lots of setbacks.
Lake Oswego Residence (Jeremy Bittermann)
Related but different question: what can you say about working together as romantic partners? Not every couple would be able to do it. Is there anything to which you attribute your compatibility as business partners?
People ask us all the time how we work together and if we have any tips. Over the years we have discovered lots of things that have and have not worked for us and frankly this can be a moving target, as it can change based on what it going on at work or at home. Probably number one for us is we have discovered more dates is the secret to our happiness. Wednesday night date night has been a staple almost since we started the business. We were too broke in the beginning to afford a babysitter and dinner, so we would put the kids to bed early, open a bottle of wine and cook up something. We still block out Wednesday nights and generally go out, but we look forward to them just the same. Which is actually funny because we spend so much time together, but time to just be us without having to be parents or leaders of a company grounds us and keeps us connected. As far as personalities, I tend to be the big picture person and Brian tends to be the details person, and that has worked too. We both know we are after the same goals, and we appreciate that each of us goes after those a little differently. Between us with our different strengths we feel we are lifting the other up to be their best, which in turn hopefully helps us create our best work. And without the amazing team that works for us, none of this would be possible.
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Wonderful people, both. I have gotten to know them a little from my involvement with the Architectural Heritage Center. Your interview only bolsters my high regard for them.
Posted by: Fred Leeson | April 10, 2020 at 03:33 PM