Marking a Milestone with KPF Co-founder Gene Kohn

This summer, leading international architecture practice KPF—recipient of more than 300 design awards, including six American Institute of Architects National Honor Awards—marked its 40th anniversary. In celebration of this milestone, PennDesign sat down with alumnus and KPF co-founder Gene Kohn (B.Arch’53, M.Arch’57) to talk about his studies at Penn, his thoughts on architecture, and what makes a firm great. 

Kohn’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Alumni Awards from Penn and the Dean’s Medal of Achievement from PennDesign. He is also the first architect to be named an Executive Fellow of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Kohn has served on PennDesign’s Board of Overseers since 1984, and served on Penn’s Board of Trustees from 1991-1996.

Kohn sat down for an interview with PennDesign at the KPF offices in New York.

Who were the most important people during your time at Penn?

When I went to Penn, it was in the middle of a transition between classical architecture and modern. After the first year, Dean [G. Holmes] Perkins arrived, and he assembled the most phenomenal group of architects, planners, writers, and historians to be part of the School. A student at that point was exposed to the best Professors—people like Corbusier, Gropius, Phillip Johnson, Geddes, I can name every great architect and planner. On the faculty eventually were people like Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Venturi, Giurgola, Lewis Mumford. The education was phenomenal.

Following my service in the Navy during the Korean War, I applied and received a fellowship. Graduate school was really fantastic, with Louis Kahn and LeRicolais, McHarg in landscape, Meyerson in Planning—the School then was by far the best. I would say the period when I was in school—both undergrad and grad—Penn was the center of architecture in the world.

At one point Corbusier, who spoke only French, came to give a lecture at Penn, and I was in the front row against the wall. He drew the entire lecture in colored markers—he would sketch the buildings, the sky, the ground. It was fantastic! Then he’d take each piece and tack it to the wall. I was taught that other people’s property were their own, and I’m not to touch it, but I’m sitting next to the great sketches of Corbusier. Class ends, and I get up to leave, but as I do, students from behind me are jumping over the chairs to get the drawings, and each one was taken by a student. I was furious. Now every time I see one, I get so upset that I didn’t take one with me, because I really loved his work and how he presented it.

When did you feel like you came into your own as an architect and why?

When you look back it’s one thing, but when you look ahead it’s quite another. You never feel totally complete; there always somebody you admire that’s out in front you, or above you, that’s doing better things.

In 1973, we had a major recession, and it drove down architecture to a point in New York that 60% of architects were unemployed. We started KPF in 1976, on July 4. It was a good luck omen—tall ships sailed up the Hudson and fireworks, and we thought it was for Kohn Pedersen Fox starting—because the firm took off.

I’ll tell you my favorite story about how a firm can get started and make one decision that is so right, that everything follows right afterwards. If you look back to the Depression, a lot of great firms got started then because, theoretically, the economy couldn’t go any further down, it could only go up. But the key was that people had time to talk to you. [When we started KPF,] I was getting advice from the President of AT&T and Neiman Marcus—about seven clients that I knew gave me advice on what to do with a new firm. And I learned that when people give advice, they want to see if come true, and so they all helped us get work in the first year or two.

The first job we got was with ABC, who advertised in The New York Times that they were buying an armory on the west side of New York to make into studios for soap operas. Both Shelley and I both knew someone at ABC, so we called. But just before then, we got an offer to do a project in Iran for one of the major banks, and I was very excited about it, but then I remembered something a friend of mine told me: When you start your firm, the key to your success will be the work you turn down. I said that’s kinda crazy, we don’t have any work. But I began to think about it. I had worked in Iran and knew the difficulties…maybe it’s not a good idea to start our firm with a job that will take us constantly out of the country. I turned it down on a Sunday morning, and that Sunday afternoon I saw the article from ABC. We got the interview, and won. We got this little job, and did it well, and from that job on, we did 17 major buildings for the American Broadcasting Company. Clients who wanted to have ABC for a tenant, like the one in Chicago, called me and wanted us to design a building there—a city where New York architects are typically kept out. We designed a building, 333 Wacker Drive, that became famous and drove the firm from a start to a major start. Before you knew it, we were [designing the] Proctor and Gamble headquarters, Goldman Sachs, on and on— all because we turned the job down in Iran, and instead did this little armory. At that moment, I did feel like we accomplished something.    

KPF has six offices around the world and a diverse portfolio of projects in more than 35 countries—corporate, hospitality, residential, academic, civic, transportation, and mixed-use. What drives you?

Architecture should be about what makes people happy, what brings out the best in people. Not about making sculpture, but making something that achieves for the people a much better quality of life.

What’s kept KPF going strong all these years?

Clients are the most important. It doesn’t matter how good you are, or how good your staff is. You need clients who are willing to do something of quality. The other thing is talented people. We have a lot of students from Penn who have been fantastic, I’ve been very proud of the people [who graduated] from Penn. 43 countries are represented in the firm, and what that does is create a fantastic sense of teamwork, collaboration, and learning. You get greater results from the mix of talent and diversity—and we exemplify that.

What advice would you give young architects starting out—or those starting their own firm?

You must work for KPF so you don’t have to compete with me! Seriously, it takes a lot of courage to start a firm—or not realizing that it takes courage. In building the firm to be great, my joy has been seeing young people come into this firm, growing, and doing fantastic work in different parts of the world. That’s given me the best thrill, and I would advise people starting out to hire people as good or better than you. To build a firm: that’s a team effort. Having been an officer in the military, a coach for [athletic] teams, and then worked with corporations, [I’d say] leading an architecture firm is far more difficult. The toughest leadership role is to bring all these creative people together, including engineers and consultants, to work together as a team to build something great. If you do that, it’s not only a great building, but a great accomplishment. They’re the things I’m most proud of. We’ve not only built a lot of fantastic buildings, but fantastic teams of people.