Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Bartlett
Hi Stephen, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born in Baltimore and grew up just outside the city in Pasadena. As a child, we would listen to O’s games from my grandmother’s front porch in the shadow of Memorial Stadium, where you could hear the crowd roar in synch with the game on our transistor radio. Later, I frequented Sunday afternoons at the Famous Ballroom on North Charles Street where the Left Bank Jazz Society hosted concerts. Our family is from Baltimore, and we always considered it our home city even after I moved away from the area as a young adult.
In the 70’s, I studied Architecture at the University of Maryland. I worked in DC after graduation, and then moved about for many years, doing a master’s degree at Harvard and working in Boston, Los Angeles, and Brussels before reuniting with old friends at Ballinger in Philadelphia 25 years ago.
Creating buildings in Baltimore is really a homecoming experience for me.
Although our office is in downtown Philadelphia, I have had the chance to design major projects for clients throughout Baltimore over the past 20+ years. I have led the Ballinger team on projects for Johns Hopkins University, UMBC, Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a new home for the UMB School of Social Work is now under construction. Ballinger has also designed buildings for the UMB School of Nursing and the UMMC Shock Trauma Center. We are honored to have contributed to the built environment of the city through some of its most important institutions.
I have always believed that the buildings an architect creates are the reflection of the sum of their experiences, and a richer path platforms more creative work. Each stop in my career offered a very different experience and perspective that informed my professional and personal development, but none offered the breadth of opportunity and excellence that I found at Ballinger. It has been a meandering path, but one with a good ending.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I don’t really believe that smooth road careers exist in creative fields, but I also recognize that I have benefitted from wonderful opportunities and most of the bumps in my own road were a result of my oversights and limitations. My skills and training have enabled me to support myself and raise a family while developing professionally, which I do not take for granted. I am very driven to work and create but have also been really fortunate, and I try to pay it forward to the next generation.
Practicing architecture is a team sport, and my successes have almost always been the result of teamwork and the talented colleagues I get to work with. Particularly as I mature in my career, I find myself mentoring and empowering others to grow into my role and benefit from my guidance and experience. My internal struggle now is often to maintain faith in the strength of their ideas and intuitions to leverage their creative energy in the design process. I can and sometimes do pull back control over the design direction, but my most satisfying role is to foster the next generation of architects and designers in our practice. I share my “boomer” worldview and open myself to theirs, and the results can be really powerful. I help them to make ideas real, and they take me to a place I would not have gotten to on my own.
The new School of Social Work building for UMB is a design that would never have happened without a diversity of voices and opinions around the table. It will be an expressive beacon in the city that is also highly functional, provides long term value for UMB, and will use net zero operational carbon. I lightly curate the design team’s creative input and try not to rely only on my way of thinking.
People may imagine the career of an architect being a contemplative one of quietly drawing ideas in a sketch book, patiently drafting blueprint drawing sets to send to a builder, and then just showing up for a ribbon cutting! It is actually a profession that is about real-time problem solving, constant deadlines, and people management. The full team required for a project to be successful is much broader than just the architects, interior designers, and engineers; it also includes clients, construction crews, specialty craftspeople, and materials suppliers. The ability to create a strong design vision and then work within this large team to get and keep everyone on board to realize the initial vision in the final building is the asset an architect needs most. Each new building is a unique prototype, and new challenges and opportunities arise with each project. Team leadership and creative real-time problem solving are an architect’s most essential skills.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Founded 146 years ago, Ballinger is one of the oldest continuing practices of architecture and engineering in the country. We have a team of 250 architects, engineers, planners, and interior designers working together at one office location in downtown Philadelphia. We manage our business in a creative studio environment where collaborative teams design buildings for learning, healing, and discovery.
We create places where people come together to pursue a noble endeavor and form community in the process. We believe in the power of in-person collaboration, and create stimulating environments where people can exchange ideas and work together. Given that so much of our communication can and does happen virtually, workplaces worth building are ones that are uplifting and inspiring.
Our buildings are stimulating, beautiful, functional, and sustainable. We work with visionary institutions and organizations to create places that empower those shaping our world. Through vision and partnership, we design for inspiring and ingenious futures we all hope to share.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I mentioned that I learned about jazz in Baltimore as I was growing up, and it remains a lifelong passion. I still play piano and saxophone regularly and gig a few times per month in a traditional jazz band called, “Miss K and The Hot Notes”. Music is both a wonderful and terrible hobby. It demands your complete undivided attention, which is great to pull you out of all things ‘work daily grind’, but it also is an exercise in humility as one is never really satisfied with their playing and always striving for better tone, quicker fingers, and richer harmonics. I am again fortunate to have the company I keep, as my bandmates are quite good, and I am lucky to have them. It is another team sport!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ballinger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ballinger_ae/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ballingerae
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-bartlett-07b61523/
Image Credits
Personal Photo: Mark Sommerfeld
Additional Photo 1: Ballinger
Additional Photo 2: Ballinger
Additional Photo 3: Jeffrey Totaro
Additional Photo 4: Jeffrey Totaro
