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Clemson only one source of local architectural talent
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Thompson Penney, president and CEO of local architecture firm LS3P and a former national president of the American Institute of Architects, is one.
Architect Chris Karpus of West Ashley-based McMillan Smith & Partners and section director of the AIA’s Charleston chapter is another.
Principals Sidney Stubbs, Charles Muldrow and Samuel Herin of Mount Pleasant architect firm Stubbs Muldrow Herin are still others.
They are all graduates of Clemson University’s School of Architecture, as are a number of local architects.
However, as large as Clemson’s architectural impact may seem—after all, the university has South Carolina’s only accredited architecture school—Clemson graduates do not dominate the Lowcountry market, according to Robert Miller, director of the Clemson Architecture Center in downtown Charleston.
“There are a mixture of architects from a variety of prestigious schools, including Ivy League schools,” Miller said of the Lowcountry’s talent pool.
One of the largest architecture firms in the Southeast, with offices in Charleston, Columbia, Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh, N.C., and Wilmington, N.C., LS3P’s architect staff—numbering about 100 companywide, with 30 in Charleston—consists mostly of graduates from schools in the Carolinas, notably Clemson, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and North Carolina State University, according to Penney.
Yet the University of Tennessee, Georgia Tech and other regional schools have also contributed graduates to LS3P, as have Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pratt Institute in New York and a few other schools from across the nation.
Dinos and Cherie Liollio, principals of James Island-based Liollio Architecture, are Auburn University graduates, as is Demetrios “Jimmy” Liollio, founder of the 50-year-old firm.
Myles Glick, a principal of Charleston-based Glick/Boehm, is a University of Cincinnati graduate. Fellow principal Gary Boehm is a product of Notre Dame. Other architects in the firm are alumni of the University of Virginia and Auburn, in addition to Clemson.
Aspiring architects expecting to become building-design superstars shortly after joining a firm have much to learn about the architecture business, seasoned pros point out.
As with other professions, architecture rookies have to pay their dues. They must master less glamorous, often tedious drafting tasks before becoming the next Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei or Louis Kahn.
Many new college graduates seek instant gratification from the profession, observed Glick, who has been in the business more than 30 years.
“Young people today have a sense of entitlement,” he said. “It’s not just in architecture, but in other professions. They graduate from college and right away expect to make partner.”
A talented job candidate willing to play a role with the firm and work well with others is the kind of architectural candidate Glick and Boehm seek.
Salaries for architectural rookies vary, but paychecks for new architects are generally not lucrative, even though they can put in 80-hour weeks.
Salaries tend to be lower in Charleston than in other comparably sized cities around the country, but that holds true with other Lowcountry professions, Karpus said.
In addition to design, drafting and creative problem-solving skills, strong interpersonal skills are crucial to an architect’s success. Because they work with a number of other people—clients, other architects, contractors, architectural review boards and government representatives—architects require a knack for communicating, understanding and just plain getting along with others.
“You have to be a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a counselor and a good listener,” Glick said, adding that these skills are necessary to help clients articulate exactly what they want.
“The first thing we look for in a candidate is attitude,” Penney said, adding that there is no room for prima donnas bent on “building monuments to themselves.” Those who set their egos aside and concentrate on serving the client will end up being more valuable to the firm and to the community, he said.
“These days in architecture schools, there is more emphasis on designing communities rather than just buildings as objects,” Penney said.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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