How many young up-and-coming entrepreneurs would turn down an opportunity to work for Philip Johnson, one of the world’s leading architects, in the Big Apple? Even after the collapse of Penn Square Bank and the resulting black eye dealt to Oklahoma City back in the early-1980s, that is exactly what Rand Elliott did. Instead he chose Oklahoma.

 

Today, Elliott is a premier architect in his own right, winning 10 American Institute of Architects Honor Awards and nearly 200 other design honors. Recently we caught up with him in his downtown Oklahoma City office to chat about the state of all things architecture and touch base on some of his latest projects.

 

 

Philip did me a favor. I needed that little vote of confidence as a young guy, to shake me up a little bit after I went out to search for some alternatives.

 

He shocked me when he offered me the job. First it gave me great confidence that the most famous architect in the world at the time wanted to hire me. But ultimately I think it was my dad’s voice asking me if I had worked hard enough. He had a saying that no one ever died from working too hard.

 

It caused me to re-envision my own circumstances. So I started over and thought differently about what I was doing. I became reconnected.

 

 

I started my own company when I was 27 and unmarried. All I had was energy and ideas. I wouldn’t have done it any other way, but it takes time. Now here I am at this point in my life and my career and I feel like I’m just getting started. All of this other has been a foundation. I feel like just now am I beginning to get a real sense of self.

 

 

Yes, and now there are lots of people around the country saying, “I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing it right. They just broke ground on a $750 million high-rise in downtown Oklahoma City and everybody else is hiding their heads in a hole.”

 

 

Classen Curve is going along beautifully. Some of my real estate friends have told me to my face they thought we were crazy. I just laughed and asked what they think now. They said ‘it’s fabulous.’ They’ve never seen anything like it in Oklahoma City, the notion that it would be inward focused and making something great out of this long, sinewy site.

 

It is very much a new idea for Oklahoma City. Tom Blanton is doing all of the leasing and early on he said his focus would be on local tenants and that’s what Classen Curve is focused on. His goal and Aubrey’s (McClendon, Chesapeake Energy’s CEO) goal and our goal is to have the best retailers we have in our community at Classen Curve.

 

We don’t have an exclusive plaza like Kansas City or Dallas. We believe Classen Curve could be that kind of a project. So far, the number of tenants that are coming to us is just fabulous.

 

 

It’s a modern retail center. Tell me the last time you saw anybody build a modern retail center. It’s a very fresh idea. I relate to this in a number of ways. My mother was in retail in the ladies clothing business in a place called Al Rosenthal’s downtown when I was a kid. She always talked about window shopping and on the weekends we’d drive somewhere, get out of the car and we walked and we would go window shopping.

 

We’re going to bring window shopping back in Classen Curve. The square corners cut out of the buildings are for display and those will be something special. One of our colleagues said it feels like Main Street, and I thought it was a great description.

 

The other thing that’s so special is it doesn’t tell you everything from the street. There is a little bit of surprise and curiosity that goes with this and that’s part of a retail experience that has some value to it.

 

 

We’ve been collaborating with Aubrey for 21 years. In fact he just sent me an email of the first article about the first project, dated October 3, 1988, from the Daily Oklahoman about Chesapeake buying this building and that Rand Elliott was going to renovate it.

 

I have a number of long-time clients that I’ve done multiple projects for and I have become part of their personal life, their business life, friends as well as professional colleagues.

 

When you’re around a town awhile, you have those relationships and you do work and I’m always interested in the projects that will grow peoples’ businesses.

 

 

I was around in the 1980s and on one Friday we had 22 people and on Monday we had 4. It was the most unpleasant, excruciating period in my life. And I don’t want to go back there.

 

There are two motivations as I see it, fear and greed. And I’m not greedy but I understand fear.

 

Fear is a very healthy thing, generally. It motivates you if you’re not already motivated or it motivates you more. I will work my fingers to the bone before I will allow the economy to overcome me.

 

I come from a farmer and aggrerian stock, which is to say that when the axle broke or the tire went flat, you didn’t have anybody to help you, you just did it yourself. I feel like I have that DNA.

 

What I learned in the ‘80s is you can never be prepared. I also learned that you can survive and I also learned that you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to overcome it.

 

I would also say that this little shift causes everything to get back in balance. For those that are only greedy they are the first fatality, for those that fear is the motivation it actually created opportunity for you. This has created new opportunities for us.

 

For us, it becomes more small projects, I’m doing everything from a house in Amarillo, Texas, to a private chapel. The house in Amarillo is a couple that found me on the internet because they were looking for someone who had Midwestern and Southwestern sensibility to do a modern house.

 

 

There would be two things. All architects are built the same way. The one building type I would like to do before I pass into another life is a church and I’m about to do it. I’ve had a friend for 15 years and he said one of these days he wanted me to do a private chapel for him. Two weeks ago I came back from out of town and had a phone slip from him that said ‘I am ready.’

 

The second part is museums, which are incredibly exciting.

 

I don’t have a specific preference for projects, other than to say that I like the odd ones. We just received a Texas Society of Architects award last week for an industrial building in Houston for ImageNet.

 

I love the snow barn at Will Rogers World Airport, which is made to house equipment that removes snow from the runways. I love really odd projects. If you were to ask me if I’d rather do a warehouse or a museum, I don’t know, I may want to do the warehouse. I love doing parking garages, and we’re doing the second and third ones for Chesapeake right now.

 

Anybody with a billion dollars can do a cool project, but if you have very little money can you do a cool project? That is the difference between architecture and people who are playing at it.

 

 

 

Jamie Jacob [an aerospace engineer at Oklahoma State University, of which Elliott is an alum] and his team have developed four different turbine blade designs and one of them outperformed the other and the report is 90% complete, it is performing better than Jamie’s original thoughts were in May. So I’m incredibly excited about that. We are applying for a major grant to take it to the next level, which is to do a physical turbine mockup.

 

When OSU dedicated the football stadium’s new west end zone with Boone Pickens, we went over to the engineering department at the lab and he saw the wind tunnel test and saw the process going on. He was excited about the progress that had been made.

 

It will never move as fast as I’d like for it to move but it is moving and we feel like the grant interviews will be during November and we will go forward.

 

 

Ultimately I want it to be built. Does it have to be on a 50-story scale? No. Would it be great to adapt this to five or 10 stories? Yes. I would just like to have the opportunity somehow, some way, to incorporate this technology into a project. We know it will work. (Check out this video with Boone Pickens discussing Elliott's Turbinomics concept.)

 

 

It’s not necessarily new but a continuation, and that is our responsibility ot the environment. I celebrated the first earth day in 1970 in college and my hair was longer and my jeans were bell bottoms and I had a mustache. I was educated at a time when being responsible was part of the educational process. It wasn’t called sustainable, it wasn’t called green. There was no brand, it was called being responsible.

 

Now the green movement is ingrained in our society. Fear causes you to look at things differently. Turbinomics is a great example of the next big thing, which is truly understanding the integration of technology with common things that we need and have for life on earth, to be housed, to have a place to work. The technology is so rich and so exciting that when we begin to blend those things they become something of great importance.

 

As a creative person, I can’t imagine a more exciting time to be around and place to be around. No longer is location critical to creativity. Your brain does not know what state you are in. To be in Oklahoma and have the rootedness I have here and at the same time to be thoughtful and mindful of things that go way beyond the boundaries of this community, and to incorporate those into our projects is very inspiring.

 

There’s a great quote from architect Bruce Goff, and they asked him why in the world he was in Norman, Oklahoma when you were with Frank Lloyd Wright, you’re just wasting your time. He said if he was in New York City he would be distracted. His point was he wanted to be focused on what he was doing, not be distracted by things that he could be distracted by.