Broad success as an architect, metal advocate, academic and teacher
When Larry Speck, FAIA, relocated to central Texas in 1975 he delved into its metalworking craft community, which was established by Germans who settled there in the middle of the 19th century. “You could get beautiful standing seam metal roofs; I can still remember working with the old craftsmen,” he says. “Going to their shop and watching them fold metal, it was great being connected to them.
Their tradition lives on and there are lots of good sheet metal shops.” Interacting with them and their shops berthed his interest and intrigue in metal, and metal has been an active component in many of his diverse, award-winning projects since then.
Growing up on the Gulf Coast of Texas, “I always wanted to be an architect for as long as I can remember,” he says. “I’ve just loved buildings since the time I was a little kid. On summer vacations my family allowed me to find buildings that I wanted to see. We would go on treks to see buildings and I loved looking at them.”
Speck attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., as an undergraduate receiving two degrees, one in art and design from the School of Architecture, and one in management from the Sloan School. He went on to earn his Master of Architecture from M.I.T. as well. “I chose M.I.T. because they had a really good architecture program,” he says. “I received a second undergraduate degree in business just in case; I had a Plan B. I have used that business degree over and over and over. There was a lot of management going on when I had my own firm and when I was dean. Architects are business people, we don’t like to talk about it, but we are small businesses, and it’s handy to have that business knowledge.”
In 1990 Speck became associate dean of the School of Architecture at University of Texas (UT), Austin, Texas, and in 1992 he became dean. During his nine years as dean, the school saw its budget increase 6 to 12 percent each year and its endowment increase six-fold, achieve top 10 ranking among Schools of Architecture in U. S. News and World Report and attract extraordinary new permanent faculty.
He ran his own firm, Lawrence W. Speck Associates, Austin, from 1975 to 1999. “During that time, I partnered with Austin’s PageSoutherland Page on certain larger projects, and rather than grow my own office, in 1999 I became a partner with them and folded my office in.” He is now one of that firm’s five principals; the 450-person firm has offices in Houston, Denver, Dallas, Austin and Washington, D.C.
Concurrent with these practice successes, Speck helped found the Center for American Architecture and Design in the School of Architecture at UT where he was director from 1982 to 1990. He organized six national symposia, helped publish three books and created the journal, “Center,” serving as editor or co-editor for four of its first five issues. The Center and its journal continue to thrive today.
Over the last decade Speck has expanded his teaching range at the UT School of Architecture, increased the scope and quantity of projects in his practice, contributed to national and international architectural journals and served on advisory boards for two U.S. governmental agencies, two national environmental nonprofits and six schools of architecture.
Metal convention
Having used metal modestly on some residential projects, it wasn’t until Speck worked as a lead designer for the Austin Convention Center, completed in 1992, where he first reaped and realized the full benefits of metal.
Speck and his team evaluated using metal panels for a significant portion of the building and metal shingles for another huge portion of the building. However, he found out that there weren’t a lot of companies making these metal building components in the early 1990s where “you could just get it off the shelf.”
He wound up installing panels from Cologne, Germany-based Pohl for the convention center’s metal-panel rainscreen system. “It hadn’t been done in the United States then,” Speck says. “I think we were the first application. Pohl even sent engineers over from Germany; they were interested in getting into the American market. We worked closely with Pohl on this rainscreen system. I loved doing this project; it was tons of fun. There is a well-marked clip system for the rainscreen. We employed it, it was a little expensive, but it was great.”
For the metal shingles, Speck utilized San Antonio-based Berridge Manufacturing Co. “At that time, metal shingles were unheard of and we had acres and acres of this convention center to skin. We worked out this metal shingle system and spent $10,000 to have Berridge make a dye, because they didn’t have anything that would produce this. We got the shingles quite economically. The Pohl panels were anodized aluminum and they still look great after 20 years. The convention center has received a lot of acclaim. To this day, that building looks letter perfect.”
With the second phase of that convention center, which Speck did in 2002, he optimized metal’s usability as part of the 400,000-square-foot expansion. “We used metal prominently in one particular pavilion, a major entry point facing the city,” he says. “We designed a steel-framing system that is really beautiful and elegant; the structural steel becomes the expression in the building.”
Texas temperament
Working in Texas, thermal performance has weighed heavily in Speck’s buildings, and metal has been able to beat the heat. “Austin has been a hotbed for the green movement,” he says. “People are trying to live more ecologically responsibly and making buildings that are thermally high performance is part of the community. But before LEED and before the word sustainability was used, we had high-performance, energy-efficient, ecologically responsible designs.
“In Texas, we have a lot of worries about mold and condensation, and a rainscreen system keeps all of that well outside the waterproof envelope of the building. Metal has been very helpful in developing lightweight rainscreen systems, and we have used those in almost every building we’ve done in the last 20 years.”
Five years ago, Speck finished a double-skin building in Houston for the FBI that that had both a metal and glass skin. The glass casts a shadow on the metal and the metal reflects the heat. “We have a little gap behind the metal screen, so you can exhaust what heat is in that plane,” he says. “It’s a thermal performance issue. Metal is a beautiful material; I love the shiny quality of it. I like its lightness, especially for taller and bigger buildings. Metal is strong, lightweight, performs well and is low maintenance too.”
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Arch Connect
What’s on your iPod while you work?
I don’t listen to music at work. I am a “silence guy.”
What do you do on weekends?
I’m a gym rat on weekends. I also work on my writing and research projects at the university.
What is your favorite book?
I love to read. I’m always reading. My favorite book is always the one I’m reading at this very minute. David Eagleman’s “Incognito” is a great book on neuroscience.
What’s your favorite app on your phone or iPad?
I love GPS on my iPad. I travel a lot so when that plane touches down, I just hit that GPS even if I’m not driving, like in a taxi. I want to know where I’m going.
Where is your favorite place to vacation?
I like to go somewhere new every time, I don’t like to repeat much. But one place where I’ve been to many times is the central part of Italy. There are some very interesting small towns there.
What historical figure would you most like to have dinner with and why?
LeCorbusier was a very well-known French architect and I actually lived in his apartment in Paris for a while in my 20s. I tried to figure out “what was this guy like?”
What advice would you give to future architects?
Enjoy yourself. Feel like you are doing some good for the world, because you can do that in architecture.
