Defying Categories: A Q&A With Lawrence W. Speck

From Austin’s airport and convention center to projects across Texas at large, when it comes to designing buildings, LPA’s newest senior creative believes in forging cities.

By Zac Petit

Today, Lawrence W. Speck is synonymous with the development and growth of Austin — but that’s perhaps only due to the fact that he once left the Lone Star state.

Speck’s parents weren’t keen on him heading east to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he was eventually left to pay for his education on his own. In Cambridge, he discovered he could take as many credit hours as he could handle for a flat fee … so he made the most of his funds, completing seven years’ worth of degrees in five years, including one in art and design from the School of Architecture (where he would also earn his master’s).

While at MIT, Speck studied Parisian streets abroad. The history of Rome. The design of Boston. Then, he took the sum total of it all back to his home state, where he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and launched his own practice, drawing subsequent inspiration from a Fulbright Senior Scholarship in Australia and a lifetime of travels around the globe.

These days, Speck is known as a key architect of Austin’s evolution and a celebrated educator whose tenure continues at the University of Texas School of Architecture, where he served as dean. Speck joined LPA as a Senior Designer earlier this year, and here he reflects on his long career — past, present and, true to his lifelong focus, future.

Why architecture? Take us back to the start.

I grew up in a rural area — a small town between Houston and Galveston, population 900 — and we didn’t have any architects. We didn’t have any buildings of any distinction. But for some reason, even as a little kid, I just loved buildings and I would find pictures of them and I would want to go there. It’s in my DNA. At a certain point, someone told me that architects are these people who make buildings. I thought, Damn, that sounds so cool. I would love, love to make buildings. And so that’s what I always wanted to be.

Of your earliest projects, which do you feel are most memorable today?

When I moved back to Texas, I was doing little bitty projects. I was registered, so I just started my own practice. I was doing additions to houses and kitchen remodels, and then I finally got a house — a 100% start-from-scratch house. Shortly after that I got a very small apartment building. Those projects were all I had, but somebody told the publisher of Progressive Architecture in New York that he should talk to me. He came down to Austin and I showed him those two projects; he put one on the cover, and both ended up in the magazine. If that hadn’t happened, I don’t know what my career would have been like. It was such a break. But the really great thing about it: There was a landscape architect in Michigan named Clarence Roy, and his firm was Johnson, Johnson, and Roy.

The City of Austin was doing the largest planning project they’d ever done, the Town Lake Comprehensive Plan, so Clarence came down to Austin to check it out. He wanted to respond to that RFQ, and he was looking for a local partner. He’d seen the magazine, so I was the one architect in Austin he knew something about. He just knocked on my door, and we got the Town Lake Comprehensive Plan.

What did you contribute?

I had lived in Boston, and as a small-town boy I fell in love with the city. The urbanism is amazing. Then I lived in Paris two different times doing research projects, so I was really analyzing urbanism in the city. One of the things I just totally believed in was high-density residential mixed use. It’s what makes a city — people living and working and inhabiting 24/7. It just was not a thing in the U.S. There was a little in Boston and a little in Philadelphia and a little in New York, maybe some in San Francisco. But in sun-belt cities, nobody lived downtown. That was a pretty hard sell, but one of my contributions. Also, I was a big green-space guy, so was interested in the integration of nature and urbanism right up against each other. That’s the best. And that’s really what the Town Lake Comprehensive Plan did.

Tell us how you approached the Austin Convention Center project (1992).

So, the thing that was interesting to me about it was that it was going to be a stimulus for the development of downtown. We had a fledgling music scene, but if we didn’t have visitors coming in with disposable dollars, we were never going to build a good music scene. As far as our residential goals, we knew there was no precedent for it; it’s not like people were knocking on the door to live downtown. But we could get hotels to come downtown, and the hotels were a way of us easing into that. But first we had to have a convention center as a stimulus.

I think none of us imagined what would actually happen in downtown Austin — it just took off, and the residential mixed use took off way more than anyone could ever have imagined.

You’re talking about a lot of strategic placemaking. Did you look at these projects as planting seeds for the future, or were you just focused on successful single outcomes?

No, no, I’m a city builder. To me, it is never about just one building. Sometimes that’s difficult for a client to quite understand. But they’ll benefit if it’s all about building their neighborhood — and that all works to support their building. A building can’t really thrive on its own. So, it’s always about building a larger city.

Tell us a little bit about the Austin airport (1998) and what some of your biggest design goals were there.

It was really about making an airport for Austin — not a generic airport, but one that would speak to our community. For example, airports often are very claustrophobic and just too small. At this one, you could see the sky in two directions. We wanted to create the feeling that when you were indoors, it felt like you were outdoors. We were also the first airport to have live music. Now a lot of them do, but we wanted to bring the culture right into the airport. We had all local food when we opened, and no chain restaurants or anything. It was just, “Let’s make a place that’s about us.”

What do you feel are the biggest opportunities for design and the built environment in Austin right now?

Well, I’m really excited about a project that’s just getting started where we’re thinking one step further than mixed use. Mixed use brings in retail, food, beverage and that sort of thing, along with offices. But what if you really thought of cultural institutions, entertainment, recreation, fitness … the complete lifestyle? I think that’s how we’ve got to start thinking: The building I’m designing is a residential building, but there needs to be community spaces. Maybe there needs to be artist residences. I’m a little rebellious against the whole idea of building types. One thing that’s weird about my career is that I’ve done every building type you can imagine. We have to start thinking of buildings that don’t fall into categories.

Looking beyond Austin, what do you feel are the biggest opportunities for Texas at large?

I’ve done a fair amount of work in Dallas and in Houston, and some in San Antonio, too. I do think the other cities in Texas need to be more mixed use, more residential mixed use. I would say the biggest challenge in Texas is in urban design.

To ask a broad question, why LPA? Why now?

After my old firm ended, I didn’t want to stop practicing. I’m still full of passion and ideas and I want to be able to continue to practice architecture, but I wanted to find the very best opportunity. There were a number of firms that had come to Austin recently, and they were all possibilities. But LPA is the right culture fit for me. The sincerity, the attitude, the authenticity. I love the interdisciplinary engineers and landscape architects and interiors, everybody working together. I love the commitment to sustainability that I definitely share. It was just a really good fit. Plus, I’d previously worked with LPA Austin Managing Director Sophia Razzaque, and I loved working with her.

What are you hoping to achieve with the projects you’re going to be taking on next?

Probably the biggest thing I want to achieve is to be able to make LPA a player in the development of Austin. Many people would say my former firm was not just a player, but the player in helping to shape the city. And we need more of that, because architecture is the key, and we have to have great firms. Some of the other firms that are coming in, I don’t think they’re city builders. I don’t think their culture is sincere enough about really improving people’s lives. I really feel like LPA can be a firm that shapes our city. And I want to be a part of that.

Zac Petit is LPA’s editorial director. Previously, he was a contributing writer for Fast Company and editor in chief of the National Magazine Award–winning publication PRINT, among others. His articles have appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian and many other outlets.