The Calibre Awards Gala is the most important social event on the annual calendar of the IIDA Southern California Chapter. For 28 years now, the Calibre Design Awards have been unique in celebrating design excellence by recognizing the outstanding contributions and collaborative effort of the entire project teams that worked together to make the award winning projects outstanding. This year’s event took place last Friday (the 13th) at the famous Beverly Hilton Hotel, also venue of the – perhaps more famous – Golden Globe Awards.
Each year at the Gala, one individual is awarded the chapter’s highest individual honor, induction into the “Circle of Excellence.” This year’s honoree is Barbara Dunn, FIIDA, CID. A principal at Gensler’s Los Angeles office who recently celebrated her 35th anniversary with the firm, Ms. Dunn is a recognized industry leader and award-winning Certified Interior Designer. Throughout her career she has produced innovative, successful workplaces for her clients, becoming an internationally recognized expert on law office design. Her projects have been widely published in the industry press as well as in the Daily Law Journal, The Wall Street Journal and California Law Business.
She is passionate about mentoring the next generation and consistently works to inspire design professionals to challenge themselves and to elevate the industry. Barbara served as president of the IIDA Southern California Chapter, which under her leadership was awarded the Best Large Chapter of the Year. She has been inducted as a Fellow to both the IIDA and the College of Law Practice Management.
She currently serves on the board of the Southern California Chapter of CoreNet Global as the vice president of education. CoreNet Global is a non-profit association headquartered in Atlanta, GA, and operating in 50 countries. It represents almost 10,000 executives with strategic responsibility for the real estate assets of large corporations. The organization’s mission is to advance the practice of corporate real estate through professional development opportunities, publications, research, conferences, designations and networking in 47 local chapters globally.
Barbara also serves on the board and executive committee of the Santa Monica Museum of Art that is reinventing the museum’s mission as it prepares move to downtown LA. Having grown up in Chicago, she credits the Art Institute of Chicago with inspiring and refining her appreciation of art, and her work with the museum reflects that lifelong love.
officeinsight sought and was granted an interview with Ms. Dunn in the hope of presenting a more personal view of the recipient of this year’s Circle of Excellence Award and her career.
Bob Beck (BB): What are a few things that have changed in interior design and in your work, or in the industry as a whole, since you began your career?
Barbara Dunn (BD): “What stands out for me is that things are definitely faster, but less permanent. Things are more mobile and fluid. I think clients are smarter about office design now and firms are less hierarchical. We used to design for the C-suite – and we did it all – I remember picking plants and the pots they were planted in. We spec’d the china and flatware for the executive dining room. Everything.
Now the approach is quite different. We’re designing for employee engagement and for the client’s experience, and we’re going deeply into the organizations, using things like visioning sessions and focus groups. Now we involve the entire staff in the process through town hall meetings because we’re trying to create a space that resonates with the people who are going to work there, and also a space that expresses the client’s brand, so that our clients’ customers who come there are having an experience.
Then there’s the whole technology thing, which continues to be the big disrupter. We didn’t even have desktop computers when I started. We drew things by hand; we used a pin bar system that was the manual precursor of how the computer aided drafting programs work, with layers. So just as the technology we use has changed dramatically, so has technology changed our clients’ spaces and how they use them.
I remember a project we did for Northrop Corporation. We had to design workstations that had huge IBM Displaywriters [Ed. Note: an early word processor] on the desks. That’s when the whole idea of the corner worksurface came up and the dot matrix printers were very noisy. In fact we had to design special printer cabinets lined with anechoic foam to absorb the sound. Now it’s a whole new world. The discussion now among futurists is all about how technology and things like artificial intelligence will impact work…is a robot going to take your job?:
BB: What has been the most influential event in your career?
BD: “For me it was winning my first business development pursuit on my own. I had always been curious about business development – and this first one was a law firm, of course, (laughs) – it was early on. But I loved the feeling of winning. There was not a better feeling in the world than winning that job, because it really made me understand that I could be the master of my own future. That I could pursue opportunities I found intriguing and really be able to bring long-term value to Gensler.”
BB: Can you talk about your most inspirational female leader?
BD: “When I think about who influenced my approach and how I think about things, I have to say it’s my mom, Rosabelle Dunn. She was incredibly tenacious. When she was 26 years old – she already had two toddlers, my two older sisters, and she was pregnant with me – she contracted polio. She was in the hospital and pregnant and her legs were paralyzed. She shared a room in the hospital with another polio patient whose arms were paralyzed and they worked together and helped each other out.
But my mom willed herself back to be able to walk, and while she had polio-related issues for her whole life she just refused to resign herself to a wheelchair. In a way she was an original feminist. Unlike a lot of other housewives in the 1950s, she worked full time for 30 years while raising my sisters and me. And we all ended up pursuing careers.”
BB: What is the most impactful thing a designer can do to make his/her projects more successful? How do you gauge success of a project?
BD: “I think you are your client’s business partner. In order to do great work you really need to have a solid understanding of your client’s business. And you need to take some initiative to understand what your client is going through, what kinds of challenges they face, who their competitors are, what their recruiting issues are, what kind of new technologies are influencing their world. You have to know what you’re designing for.
Let’s face it, when you’ve been invited to the table the client has already pre-qualified your design skills and acumen. So it’s really about how well you can translate the client’s information into space, and how you can provide them with some clear performance and cost/benefit measures. They are a business and the question for designers is how do you make their business flourish.
As for how to gauge success, I’d say repeat business is the best way to gauge success. I like to think about the concept of the ’trusted advisor.’ If you become that trusted advisor, they let you come back…and not only come back, but as I’ve seen with some of my clients, you build a confidence level with them over time and they give you more design freedom and allow you to push the envelope more and be more innovative.”
BB: What do you do to stay inspired in your work and in life?
BD: “My passion for the visual arts is my inspiration, and it has opened my eyes to all kinds of different ways of thinking. Ever since I was a little girl I have been a devotee of the Art Institute of Chicago. I’ve had eye problems and had to wear glasses since I was three years old, and every week I had to go downtown to the eye doctor and the eye doctor’s office was right across the street from the Art Institute. I would beg my mother to go there as often as she would let me. We would wander around the halls looking at all the magnificent paintings and it was something that always captivated me.
At the Art Institute there were these beautiful dioramas, called the Thorne Miniature Rooms. They were of rooms of American and European interiors from the 17th century to the mid 20th century, and they were done in incredible detail and great beauty. I remember walking through the Thorne Rooms as a little kid, and I think those rooms really influenced my decision to enter the field of interior design.
I have drawn since I was little, and I still enjoy it very much. I think when I quit this crazy gig and retire I’d like to get back into making art again. In the meantime, I’m on the board and very involved with the Santa Monica Museum of Art, recently rebranded the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, as we move to the burgeoning new arts district and reinvent the Museum.”
BB: What keeps you going?
BD: “Gensler keeps me going, because Gensler is an organization that has always encouraged learning and entrepreneurship. We are expected to research and to innovate, and that’s a strong message from the firm. It’s a little bit like the ‘publish or perish’ dictum in academia. Gensler has a research program now where anyone in the firm can apply for a research grant, and I applied for one with the professional services practice area and it was granted. The research was fascinating to do, and it goes hand in hand with understanding your client’s business.
Ed Friedrichs [Ed. Note: former CEO of Gensler] was a great proponent of ongoing education, and that kind of attitude has permeated the firm and continues to grow. It makes it a unique place to be and to work. And for me it’s a powerful motivator – to make a difference in the world – it makes you want to get up in the morning!”
BB: To what degree has law office design changed since you began your career, and where is law office design going in the next 5-10 years?
BD: “You know, just when I thought maybe I was going to get tired of doing law firms, they’ve really started to transform. It is a slow change, but they are asking a lot of questions now, and they are really trying to think of ways they can change. I think the great recession was a real eye opener for firms. It caused a lot of firms to start thinking differently. The really progressive stuff I’m seeing isn’t so much in the United States as overseas – especially in the U.K., where rents are so expensive.
But the more I work with attorneys, the more I understand the needs of their work. Last summer I had a chance to work with a group of summer associates (interns) who spoke at length of their need for quiet and for work spaces that allowed them to really concentrate. At least at the level of global firms I’m working with, the cases are extremely complex, and the need to focus is intense. When one comma in the wrong place can be a big problem, the ability to focus on the work is vital. And that need speaks more to the idea of private offices.
We are seeing some trends that are different from older ways of planning. For example, we are seeing the concept of a universal size for offices of all attorneys gain acceptance because it has advantages over the more hierarchical idea of rank determining office size. Also the lack of need to plan for huge libraries and file rooms has freed us to use the interior space around the core more effectively for office space. We’re also starting to see more remote work, especially partners working remotely, although I don’t see a lot of firms that have figured out how to translate that into cost saving concepts like hoteling. And there are real issues around mentoring if the partners are absent a lot of the time.
And finally I’m starting to see the concept of attorneys in open plan. I say to them, “They’re wall-less offices…office without walls” I say it in jest to avoid totally freaking them out! I think the firms are trying to be more fluid, more collaborative. Every firm we’re working with now is doing more social, café type areas for hospitality like you might see in a high end hotel or such. Recruiting is a very big issue for the top firms so distinctive amenities they can offer to make their firm appealing are high on their agendas for us. We’re starting to see some acceptance of concepts that are already well established with some of the tech companies and all – more buttoned up, but similar concepts.”
With leaders like Ms. Dunn it is easy to see why Gensler continues to thrive, and it is extremely easy to see how the Southern California Chapter of IIDA arrived at the decision to award her this year’s induction into the Circle of Excellence. In the course of our interview, we touched on many subjects tangential to the main trajectory of this article, and as a result I will be doing my best to convince Ms. Dunn to contribute to future articles in officeinsight. In the meantime, I sincerely thank her for sharing these thoughts and congratulate her on the well-deserved honor she has just received.
