By Tim Bryant, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Nov. 30--As the son of a judge, Reed Voorhees felt some family pressure to make law his career.
But another family connection -- to architecture -- proved stronger. After all, Voorhees' middle initial is "I," as in Ittner -- as in William Ittner, the architect whose school designs influenced generations of builders. Voorhees, who is Ittner's great-grandson, was close to his grandfather, William Ittner Jr., who was the Pentagon's assistant chief architect.
Voorhees' father is retired St. Louis County Circuit Judge Alphonso Voorhees. But Reed, as a child, didn't flip through law books, Instead, he tinkered with things, built models and drew. Given those interests and his Ittner lineage, a career in architecture was inevitable.
The eldest Ittner, who died in 1936, made his mark in architecture by designing schools with spacious libraries, gymnasiums and light-filled classrooms. Intricate brickwork is a characteristic of the schools' exteriors.
Voorhees concentrates his work on recreation centers for municipalities and schools. Like his great-grandfather, Voorhees makes a priority out of filling his designs with light and utility. Among his projects are recreation centers at the universities of Colorado, Louisville and Minnesota, plus Missouri State University in Springfield.
How did your family's background affect your career choice?
When I was young, I always liked building things. I liked taking things apart and putting them back together. As I got older, I felt like I had a knack at creating things. I like to tell people that growing up, I was very close to my grandfather. He used to have me do stuff around his house -- fix a sidewalk, repair things, and he seemed to have a very wonderful presence about him. ... architecture, as a profession, seemed like a really nice thing.
What connections can you draw between the long-ago Ittner school designs and the university-related work that makes up much of what you do now?
When Ittner began designing his schools, he knew there was a better way to plan and design the buildings to create a positive environment for the occupants. It didn't matter to him if they were low-income or upper-income, he wanted to create environments that had natural light and natural ventilation and views.
He was interested in the quality of space. But he was also interested in planning, the organization of those components. So not only were the buildings beautiful on the exterior, they worked extremely well on the inside because he thought through every detail and aspect of the function of the building.
That's what we are doing today with the buildings that we design, the sports and rec centers, thinking about how we can make them better buildings, how we can make them better environments, more exciting, more dynamic for the participants, more welcoming.
We like to say these buildings are emotionally uplifting and mentally stimulating. The schools that William Ittner designed were the same. They were about mind and body and spirit. He took a building type that was basically an oppressive box and transformed that typology into wonderful, beautiful, exciting buildings.
Considering how your great-grandfather answered mainly to public school systems, what constituencies must architects now take into account in a variety of designs, not just those for schools?
Every project type has a different structure for how the projects are administered with the individuals involved in the decision-making with the sports and recreation facilities.
We have to listen intently to the community, who are the users of the municipal recreation centers, for instance. We hold a lot of public meetings and get input from citizens that will become the occupants and users of the building because the building should be an extension from them and they should be a part of the process. They'll have a lot more ownership and commitment to the facilities if they're involved in the process.
You mentioned that universities use their new rec centers as a student recruitment tool, but how do students affect how the centers look?
With higher ed rec centers on campuses, the students are really the drivers of those facilities because they are paying for the buildings through student fees. When we get involved, we make them aware that we are listening to them and taking their input.
With our design expertise and our planning expertise and understanding the building type, our challenge is to create buildings that are beautiful and unique and different and exciting while meeting the needs that we hear from the constituents or the community or students that are involved in the process.
In your career, what's the ratio between fun and drudgery?
There are always times when we're up against schedules and crunching to get work completed. It can be a lot of stress and anxiety. But given the projects that I'm able to work on at this point, which are the rec centers, the sports facilities, I love the project type so much and the clients are such wonderful people to work with that the time and the effort doesn't bother me. It's just wonderful to be involved in such a great project typology.
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