Building The Practice
In 1952 University of Denver, chronically short of money, decided that for financial reasons it must close the School of Architecture and Planning - despite its fine national reputation and demonstrated ability to attract new students. Sternberg was deeply disappointed by the decision but it came at an opportune time for him personally. His practice was growing. He built a first class team of associates, including John Schaffer, Helmut Young and J. D. Willis. Sternberg also needed to assure an adequate flow of work. He decided that architectural commissions in the major cities were largely given to long-established firms with business or "society" connections. He realized that his opportunities to secure commissions lay in the small towns and rural communities of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.
He began to travel extensively, speaking to community groups, meeting leaders, becoming familiar with local problems and aspirations. He genuinely liked and admired these independent Westerners. They in turn seemed to enjoy his dedication, his off-beat thinking and his passion for designing useful, economical and attractive buildings to meet their needs. But still, as he would write later, "few people came knocking at our door asking us to design their new buildings. I had to know when jobs were coming up and who were the important people to contact to be considered for them."
From 1949 to 1977 – the firm of Eugene D Sternberg and Associates designed approximately 400 projects. His clients came from small towns and rural communities in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming as well as the greater Denver area. The firm designed schools, community colleges, hospitals and nursing homes, clinics, offices for Rural Electrification Associations, County Courthouse additions, labor union offices and churches.
Read more about this topic: Eugene Sternberg
Famous quotes containing the words building the, building and/or practice:
“The real dividing line between early childhood and middle childhood is not between the fifth year and the sixth year—it is more nearly when children are about seven or eight, moving on toward nine. Building the barrier at six has no psychological basis. It has come about only from the historic-economic-political fact that the age of six is when we provide schools for all.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)