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@ Bryan Jones
2024-10-12 12:32:06My engineer dad, who spent his time on better ways to enrich uranium at the national lab in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, suggested that my average math and decent art skills might be better suited for architecture than engineering. I followed the family tradition and enrolled at Auburn University College of Architecture Design and Construction. They had a program for less gifted dyslexic test takers called Summer Option, where you took your entire first year of design labs in one summer. I survived and thrived through the grind and, somewhere on the journey, realized my personal take on good architectural design is centered on recognizing life patterns and the ability to design the stage and context for the patterns to happen in a cool way. I had a gift for pattern recognition and enjoyed creating "cool as shit" designs as we baby architects described them.
Architecture is perfect for me. As an architect, you are the person people ask for help to change how they want to live. You listen, observe, analyze, and come back with ideas on how best to effect change in that location. You exchange value to explore people's lives and help them set the stage for pure life. Living in good design can be life-changing for clients and rewarding for the team that helps make it happen.
After working for a challenging boss for eight years at a national corporate interior architecture firm, I had enough experience to realize that my project ideas were as good as my boss's but would be more personally entertaining. I went on my own in the last century, initially bootstrapping enough work to live, working with a college best friend. I would commute from Atlanta to Birmingham and couch surf in his apartment Monday through Thursday, selling to friends and my buddies' fraternity brothers. (Thank you to the Auburn chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon). We kept it up for a year and then split up.
I returned to Atlanta and kept grinding on in-town custom renovation projects until I had an opportunity to do a build-to-suit office project for a client investor. I found a university mate with experience for the first commercial project, and we started Jones Pierce in 1998. Twenty-six years later, two studios continue to work with individuals and their homes, businesses, foundations, clubs, and personal investment properties.
I am most proud of my professional accomplishments when we receive testimonials about a project that changed someone's life. Clients write us letters, give us hugs, and call back ten years later. It never gets old.
Several projects have challenged me personally over the years. A design for a residence led to Passive House certification in Yestermorrow, Vermont. The Joachim Herz House for the Herz Foundation was our first project with an international foundation. Druid Hills Golf Club master plan and the first building phase is our first club project. All these were project types outside our focus but within our capabilities.
Our proof of work over time also caused the most personal growth and expanded opportunities over a longer time horizon. I love what I do for groups and clients who design personal spaces and places. I am honored to lead my studio tribe, which loves what we do, and the constant grind to improve as much as I do. Over time, the clanging projects came, and we pivoted and captured learnings to improve our processes.
Our pivot points came as we practiced. I hate to use the C word: CRAFT. Learning how to design for owners to spend their cash instead of the unavailable fiat in the housing crash. Improving our delivered projects by designing in high-performance building standards. Figuring out how to adjust our process in milestones to evolve the design budget simultaneously and allow clients to consider their mindful investment of a lifetime. Establishing methods to help property buyers evaluate remote properties to pick the right one to achieve site-actualization. Evolving principles developed to work with the individual to groups of individuals in clubs or foundations. Combining the personally learned principles of Bitcoin with the principles we use to produce our architecture for the sovereign individual.