Detlef Mertins: It's interesting that those buildings are all quite different from one another, despite using the same structural idea. What motivated the differences? Why not just repeat the idea more directly each time?
Bruce Graham: Because an office building is not the same as an apartment building. The Hancock Center was a mixed-use building. The different needs of the various uses suggested the taping shape. One Shell Plaza was originally going to be in Cor-Ten steel but we thought to reserve that for the Richard J. Daley Center (Chicago, 1965) which faced it across the plaza.
DM: Were you interested in developing or refining anything architecturally?
BG: The main thing was that the structure define space.
DM: What determined the difference in expression between the Brunswick Building and One Shell Plaza?
BG: Money.
DM: Another architectural idea that recurs in your work is the open framework or structural cage. There's something of this already, but in a Miesian way, at Kimberly-Clark (Neeham, Wisconsin, 1956) and then more fully at the Business Men's Assurance (Kansas City. Missouri, 1964). Later, The Terraces at Perimeter Center (Atlanta, 1986) is a very exuberant demonstration and there were a number of others in between.
BG: Well, it depended on the uses of the building. Kimberly-Clark is a low-rise building and therefore we want to keep the structure very simple and to express the spaces inside. For example, the headquarters part is different from the overall office building. Up in Wisconsin, it seemed appropriate to look down to the lake and let the landscape come into the building. It was a country building, not a city building. There's a relationship there with the landscape.
The same thing is true at the Upjohn Building (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1961). It's the relationship of the landscape to the building. At the Sears Tower, for instance, you can't have the landscaping that you can have out in the country.
DM: So the cage buildings are about being open to the landscape. Would you explain a little bit more how the studio system works? How many people would be in a studio?
BG: It depends on the size of the project. A team generally consisted of about fifteen people. Then there was an interior design group as well. They were separate but would work with the architectural team on the interior design. Architects don't tend to be masters of the layout of furniture.
DM: So the teams would come up with a comprehensive vision, including the interiors and the selection of art.
BG: There was always a design partner in charge of a studio project. Always. He might be working with two or three different teams on two or three different projects.
DM: How did the studio system come into being?
BG: It started relatively early when Bill Hartman took over the SOM office in Chicago. We had studios then that were a little different than the ones that evolved later. But still, it was somewhat the same idea.
DM: How did Myron Goldsmith fit into the system?
BG: He came to us from California with another fellow. They needed jobs, so I hired them. I was doing a hotel near the downtown and the other guy kept criticizing it, telling me how bad it was. Finally Walter Peterhans—you know he taught with Mies at the Illinois Institute of Technology—came over and told him to shut up. That was the end of that. Myron later became a partner.
DM: Did Myron have his own studio?
BG: Well, the teams weren't necessarily tied to one partner. He was teaching part of the time and didn't do as much work as I did.
DM: Is it true that In the early days at SOM design credit wasn't given to partners for specific projects? As I understand it, Nat Owings wanted the firm to be known as a firm more than for its individual designers.
BG: At one point individual partners started to get credit. Walter Netsch got credit for the University of Illinois, and then I got credit for the Sears Tower.
DM: Was getting credit important to you?
BG: No. I regret that things changed. It was a tradition. And, besides, everyone knew, for instance, that Gordon Bunshaft was a certain architect in New York. Incidentally, he was the best architect in the New York office by far.
DM: How well did you know him? What was your relationship like?
BG: We were friends, but we never worked together because we were far apart. I admired him, and he liked my work. He wished he could do some buildings in Chicago instead of just in New York. In New York, do you see a building that looks better than Lever House? Forget it. That's the best looking building in New York. Gordon was a very good architect, and he was very nice. He built all over the world. in Europe, and I got to know him very well. We were close friends.
DM: He was an art collector, wasn't he?
BG: I'll say. He was a very good friend of a lot of artists. Well, I was too.
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