The State of Things; Phillip Freelon

This is the State of Things I'm Frank Stayshow. Architect Philip Freelon likes to think big. When he started the Freelon group in Durham, it was because he wanted to design large public spaces like airports and museums. As one of the few black owned architecture firms in the country, you might have excused him if he wanted to start out small, but that's not how Philip Freelon thinks. He's built a track record of success for big projects that put him in a position to design the important African American cultural centers across the country. And yeah, you're right. I couldn't even go a minute without adding that he's married to jazz great Nina Freelon. But there's no doubt he's a big talent in his own right. On today's program, meet Philip Freelon just ahead on the State of Things. From the American Tobacco Historic District, this is the State of Things I'm Frank Stayshow

and speaking of the American Tobacco Historic District, I have to say I work in a very cool place. It is great to come to work here, studios located inside this stylishly renovated factory warehouse, exposed brick, large windows, plenty of natural light. It's something that actually I've come to take for granted and it's too bad. It's a beautiful building, but I really don't give a lot of thought to design in the structures that surround me and that's kind of sad. But then again, I'm no Philip Freelon. Philip Freelon is the founder and president of the Freelon group in Durham. A small architectural firm made up of about 60 employees and one of the few African-American owned firms in the world.

Freelon Group Portfolio includes cultural community facilities, university buildings and even award-winning public parking structure. But in recent years, the firm has become well-known for its striking designs of African-American history museums across the country. The Freelon Group has some exciting projects in the works and today we're happy to have the company's president with us in the studio of Philip Freelon, welcome to the program. Welcome, I'm glad to be here. Good to have you. You're one of the remaining families, the last members of the Freelon family we've had on this program. So it's good to check you off the list and have you here. A great treasure. And these days, North Carolina is lucky to have you in your designs as part of this tar heel landscape, but you're originally from Philadelphia. Yes, I am. It's born and raised there. My parents were born there as well. And so I've been working my way south for a few years. How long were you there? Well, I left Philadelphia after high school to go away to college and that was in 1971. You went to Hampton? I went to Hampton. Where are the illustrious Lindsey Thomas as an alum as well?

Yes, yes. I started my architectural training there for the first two years and then I moved a little bit further south to Raleigh and finished my first degree in architecture at NC State University. How was the transition culture shock from Philly to the tidal, tidewater area? No. It wasn't a shock. I was, remember, worrying about coming to the south, having grown up my whole life in the Northeast. But when I got down here, particularly the move to Raleigh, you know, it seemed very easy as if I was a southerner in spirit almost. And I found the warmth of the people and the laid back atmosphere quite suitable for me personally. And I really enjoyed it. It was a verse culture shock because returning to the Northeast, that's when I found the transition a little bit more difficult. Really? What was difficult about that? Well, when I went to graduate school in the Boston area, I was just reminded of how some folks in the northern cities are not as friendly and the harsher weather.

Folks weren't necessarily ready to speak to you in the elevator or on the street. And so I just noticed right away that it was back to the normal for the Northeast. Tell me a little bit about your high school experience in Philadelphia because you had kind of an unusual experience in the sense that you were exposed to design and architecture in high school. Not many kids are. That's right. I feel very fortunate in my high school days to attend central high school in Philadelphia, which is a public school, but it was, I guess what they would call a magnet school now, where it drew from all across the city the best students. And we really got probably the equivalent of a prep school education in the public school system because there were two schools like that, one for boys and one for girls. And so I didn't really notice it until afterward that it was a great environment for high school, including the college and being very well prepared for that.

Now did you resist that? There are kids. And I know from my own daughter's experience, the idea of being in the gifted program separated her from her friends and she just, now she thanks us, but then it was war. No, I felt like I wanted to be there. My father had attended the same school and my older brother was there. We overlap one year. So I would have been embarrassed if I hadn't made it. And they really did support you. You've said that your parents are very supportive of you, moving on and stuff. Absolutely. My mother was an education. She was a teacher herself and both my parents had college degrees. And so education was really an important aspect of our upbringing as it is for most kids, I guess. And more importantly, they looked for areas where we showed interest and then really fed that. Really on, I had an interest in drawing and building things and model making. And so when I sort of found my way by accident into the design and drafting courses in high

school, it really seemed like a great fit for the things that I was interested in. No, they might have reason to believe you had some talent since your grandfather was Alan Freeland, great Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance artist. Yes. I recall visiting his studio and being encouraged by him and my parents to continue with this little bit of artistic talent that I guess they noticed early on. And I knew of his work in education as well. So being surrounded by that sort of support, it seemed natural. And I also had an interest, a strong interest in the sciences and in mathematics. So when I found out a little bit about architecture, it seemed like a really perfect blend for the things that I love to do, the art and then science blended together. Tell me a little about your impressions of your grandfather's work. I think maybe you were around six when he died, so you didn't know him long.

Did you see his art? I mean, did it make an impression on you? It did. We went into his studio and the oil paints were still there on the pallets and so we were very careful not to touch those, and I watched him work. And he would talk to us, not so much as young children, but just as almost like human beings, not small children. And I remember him talking about observing the environment and paying attention to what's around us. And for me, it felt like the beginning of being aware of the surroundings, natural and the mandal environment through his sort of encouragement and asking us to just listen and watch what's around us. You know, coming from him that must have been a powerful lesson, maybe not at that age, but he was a man famous for absorbing the criticism he took for painting his surroundings and not painting what was not his surroundings.

He famously did not paint African landscapes and tribal landscapes and subjects, which was the trend at the time among African American intellectuals and artists during the 20s and 30s. This is the time when recapturing your roots was supposed to be important and he rejected that. Yeah, and I found out more about that, obviously, when I was older. And I respected that because it really made sense to me for a person to follow his passion. And even though he had several works over the years that were themed in the struggle and in the African tradition, in African American tradition, the bulk of his work was in the French Renaissance style, Impressionistic style, not Renaissance, Impressionistic work. And you know, it was beautiful. And so he was looking for beauty and fulfillment in his own eye and really stuck to that. So that's a lesson that you took with you.

And you also talked about when other intellectuals, WVB Du Bois and others would just kind of show up. I heard stories about folks visiting the house from my father. And so that sort of rich tradition was something that I think fed all of us in my siblings as we came up. You went to Hampton and then you, as you said, you went to Raleigh, you went to NC State. Why'd you make the change? Well, I was encouraged to continue to pursue my goal of ending up at MIT for my master's degree. I sort of had that in the back of my mind. And the head of the department in Hampton at the time had contacts at a number of universities because he was on accreditation teams that visited professional schools of architecture. And he encouraged me to visit different places. I came to NC State and they recruited me to come and continue my training here. And I did. You talked about all the forces and the influences that came together to make it seem like

architecture was the right fit. When did that happen? Did it happen after you got to state or had you pretty much made up your mind by then? Well, in the architecture profession, you almost have to decide what you want to do before college because the curriculum is set up almost from the beginning, and also the entrance requirements for architecture school oftentimes are higher than for entering the university in general. And so I had a pretty good idea, well, I made it my mind would be an architect sometime during high school and really was able to focus in on that ever since. Why was that? Was that because it suited your talents or did you have some vision in mind for the kinds of structures, the kinds of things you wanted to design? No. In fact, in high school, I didn't know any architects. I had never met an architect, hadn't met an architect until I got to college. So what I thought I knew about architecture was more what a general public might think. And so there was some misconceptions about it.

But as I got into professional training and learned more about it, architecture turned out to be something different, but even more wonderful in my mind. And so the more I learned, the more I became convinced that this was just the path for me I felt I was born to be an architect. Well, we will find out a little bit more about what you learned about architecture, and you can instruct us on the state of things. My guest this hour, Philip Freelon, president of the Freelon Group, architectural firm in Durham, just ahead, Philip's thoughts on creating architecture that tells the rich history of African American culture and how he met the woman of his dreams, jazz singer Nina Freelon. All of that on the state of things from North Carolina Public Radio, broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills. Stay with us. This is the state of things broadcasting from the American Tobacco Historic District.

I'm Frank Stasjo talking today with architect Philip Freelon, founder and president of the Freelon Group in Durham, one of the most sought after architectural firms in the country and one of only a handful of black owned firms in the world. Tell us a little bit about the misconceptions, what we think about architecture. I think of an architect as someone who will design and plan mostly a building, maybe my house or it could be a complex like American Tobacco. What did you learn? Was that your idea going in and what did you find out once you got to school? It was a superficial notion that architects design houses and make what we used to call blueprints, those fascinating drawings that were unusual to me and intriguing. When you get to professional design school and architecture school, the process starts

at the very beginning, almost unlearning things from the prior 13 years of schooling. You're taught to think in a different way and they really turn your mind inside out for a couple of years. It has to do with the discovery that questions and problems have more than one solution. If you think about it, our primary and secondary schooling is a lot of it's based on testing and there's a right and wrong answer for every question. You have to unlearn that because in the design realm, there are infinite number of good solutions to any given problem. That's part of the transition that you make and also, I spoke about this earlier, just understanding and perceiving the environment, being aware and noticing what spaces make you feel, the different aspects that go into it and ultimately realizing that everything

we see in a space, internal and external, there was a decision made by someone to place that element in that location or to provide the power that comes to the light fixture that illuminates the room or to select the material that is environmentally friendly and so on. Thousands and thousands of decisions that go into making just a single building in a large or built environment. It really does take time and not just a certain amount of skill and talent but sort of this redirecting in the way that you think about the environment. But that should be true of everything we do that we should approach every problem, perhaps every profession, along the lines that you just suggested which is that there are infinite number of solutions and so we have to apply ourselves with keen respect to what it is

we really see in front of us. That's right. The people that we are dealing with too. But I think in other professions you might be led toward a certain historical right answer based on what has been done in the past. I think the creative or design professions are more open-ended than that where creativity and collaboration come into play in the synergy of a team working together can really create them dynamic and wonderful solutions that otherwise would not be discovered. You have earned a reputation as a one who believes in the collaborative effort in architecture and have worked collaboratively famously on the project in Baltimore, an African-American culture museum there where you work with a local firm in Baltimore and actually maybe you can describe how you went into that last meeting together to illustrate how you were going to work collaboratively on the project.

I think that architecture in general is a team sport and when we work out of state we always team up with a local firm. In the case of the Lewis Museum in Baltimore I had a close friend and colleague who was a senior vice president in the largest firm in Maryland located in Baltimore, a firm called RTKL, RTKL and Gary Bowden and I had known each other for years and talked about this project that was coming up. There was some ambivalence there because the prior architect had been dismissed and it was a very high profile project and we almost decided not to move ahead because of some of the potential pitfalls but we decided to move forward and we're selected and it was a great collaboration. Not all of them are successful as that but this was a particularly gratifying and satisfying experience for both of us.

You talked about architecture being a team sport but I think about it in terms of other professions, law and any other profession and really they're built on a notion right or wrong of competition that even within the firm competitiveness is what makes us strong. That's the sort of mantra of American businesses, isn't it? Well that can be healthy internally. We certainly compete externally with other firms to try and win projects and so there's that element but once the project is in the office there's a really common pulling together to first of all identify the idea and the concept that will be developed and then to build that it takes cooperation, mutual respect and working very closely together. Well that's another area that you have earned a reputation as someone who listens to basically the client. What is it that you want?

Other architects have gone in with the notion that they have a vision. I know how this thing should look and you've been praised for listening to the client and listening to all the people who are going to benefit by that. That seems like it should be the way things go but apparently not always. I think in most cases it is because we're not just creating art for its own sake. It has to have utility, it has to serve a purpose and part of that team we were talking about includes and is especially important to have the client as part of that team. When a firm interviews for a project part of what the potential client is looking for is the chemistry, can they work well together and there's some indication of that through personal interaction and then once you begin working typically a project is going to span multiple years, three, four, sometimes ten years and so that ability to communicate and collaborate is really, really crucial and to have the client as a hands-on member

of the team for our firm and I have to say for many others we're not unique in this regard, that's an important part of success, we really can't have a successful project without a really great client. Here's the trouble with that client, you may be an artist because you have a vision but it's also going to keep you in your comfort zone and that darn client might just push you to a place where you're not familiar and you may just have to go there. Well I think being challenged by your client can be a good thing and that happens quite often in fact because you know the best solutions come from a little bit of struggle if you think about it, there has to be a little bit of heat to make that soup blend and work together and so we welcome that and with this long process we talk about in our profession it's years from conception to actual realization of the final built form that there are many iterations that the project will go through and the twists and turns and there can be

struggle along the way but at the end of the day you know we're creating something that is in our firm anyway we strive to provide building solutions that benefit the broader good of the public. I want to pursue with you this idea that you had to unlearn the notion that every problem has a solution, open-ended lots of creativity, lots of possibilities but if you take a look at who goes to architecture school these are still schools and still a profession that is not very diverse and you've talked about that tell us a little bit about what that is and what impact that has on if you want a lot of different solutions you probably need a lot of different people involved in the process. I think for most firms and we're lucky in our firm to have great diversity and it's a strength there and so we see that having input from a variety of perspectives, backgrounds really does a few or a better solution and one of the problems is that our profession

is small to begin with and many people don't know much about architecture so as children are coming up in their schooling it's not something that comes to mind when you say what do you want to be young man or young lady when you want to grow up well fireman or doctor or things that people can relate to maybe that everyone's been to a doctor's office. We know what lawyers do but with a profession with only roughly 120,000 licensed architects in the country has compared to say 600,000 physicians or million attorneys in the country it's a relatively small person. Only a million attorneys? Go ahead, it seems like more sometimes. And so I think the visibility aspect comes in the play where if you don't see it it doesn't occur to the parent and so that's why we always say yes when there's a call in fact I've got 50 junior high school students coming to the office on Saturday this coming Saturday

and we're going to talk about the profession and hopefully there'll be some there that are inspired to move forward in this. And you know there are other barriers the architectural education as I mentioned before you have to really figure that out before you get there so you apply to an architecture school straight out of high school and for many young people you know they might be in their mid 20s before they really figure out what they want to do. Our profession is really set up to accommodate that unless you have the resources to go to graduate school after your first degree some people go that route. You went to Hampton as we said and that's a historically black university for two years and then to NC State. What compare those two experiences from one that is less diverse to one that is much more diverse? Well coming out of high school I was looking for more of a African American experience cultural experience.

The school I went to had maybe 5% African American representation there. Great education as I mentioned in Philadelphia at this magnet school. And so when I got to Hampton I felt you know like I was coming back home in a way and really enjoyed that experience and got excellent training and enjoyed that aspect of it. And looking for the next challenge at NC State I arrived with full credit from my two years and really did well there and so I was always looking for the next challenge. In fact I took graduate level courses at NC State and did well. I graduated with top design honors from there and I went on to MIT on discolorship. You we were talking today with Philip Freelon an architect and the president of the Freelon group here in Durham and tracing your life history and your career and I think one of the more important moments in your life after MIT you returned to North Carolina and you

met the woman who would become your wife. Oh, or nothing at all. Half alone. Never appeal to me. I'm guessing you could name that tune in one note. Oh yeah. Nina Freelon, how did you meet Nina Pierce? Well we met here in North Carolina strangely enough. I left graduated from MIT and worked a year in Cambridge and came back to North Carolina still with the same firm that was a Massachusetts office of John Lightmer and Associates where I worked as a grad student and after. But I returned to Durham and you know I was working on a project moonlining. I hate to admit that but I was and so the my colleague lived in Chapel Hill. He was also in MIT grad and we were working together on a small legal office building and

I was coordinating after work one day with him and I went over to his home and this beautiful woman was there who she was visiting looking at graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill. She was finishing up her senior year at Simmons College in Boston and we met and you know talked for a long time, exchanged information and she returned to Boston and we corresponded over the regular mail. It was no email then over that next year while she finished her undergraduate degree and we fell in love, we visited several times and a lot of it was just writing letters and talking on the phone. Wow writing letters, writing love letters, that does sound great and it just sounds so distant. But true a short courtship in a way the two of you soon married to begin your family. Nina was pregnant then with her third child and she really began to make a name for herself

in jazz as a jazz singer. Well of course I knew she could sing from hearing her around the house and in church and you know that sort of thing but I never really heard her perform although I knew that she had done some of that in high school but our youngest son who's now 24 I saw her perform first when she was pregnant with Pierce and it was a fun raising function here in Durham and it was great and I think we both realized that you know this was something she wanted to pursue again and not necessarily her career in public health administration which is what her degree is in. And so we agreed to work together to try and make that happen and you know she began to just mostly locally perform around the area in different small venues and you know it just sort of grew very slowly and incrementally over the years.

She gives you a lot of credit for supporting her in that decision and in her burgeoning career. Was it difficult for you to did it affect your career? No it wasn't difficult. I mean and she supported my career as well and so I remember the year that I started the Freeline Group in 1990 was the year that she took her first paying regular job as a performer as a visiting artist from North Carolina program for visiting artists and so that really helped me and so it's been over the years a team effort. And so what made it easy for for me later on is that the 10 years that she spent you know without with her primary focus on raising the family was a really strong foundation so that when she began to travel more and I have my own business at the time it was easier for me to get home when I needed to or visit the schools or you know cook dinner on occasion.

What was your role changing? You were doing a little bit more of that kind of work or having to be home a little bit more than you would have been if she had been home. That's right and I look back on it now and I think that I know that I'm closer to my children than I might have been otherwise because we were able to spend on occasion those moments of working on homework or making dinner together or visiting with the schools and so forth and as Nina was traveling just sporadically early on it did give me the opportunity to take on a primary parenting role off and on throughout the years. All this while though you're building a practice you're trying to build the Freeline group and it grew quite well. Were there obstacles you as I've said now a couple of times it's one of the few black owned firms and architecture firms are there obstacles? Was it difficult at first? Because of that? I think it's difficult for any young practitioner to start.

I think I know that architecture is really an older gentleman's game primarily, although there are women and minorities involved in it. It takes time to establish a reputation and to go out there and convince clients that you're going to handle their very important project and mains of dollars worth of investment in a professional and successful way and so it helped me that I worked in other firms for about 13 or 14 years before starting and so I had established a bit of a foundation and reputation locally and that helped a lot. But I think that starting off as one person then two then five and so on was a good fit for where our family was at the time. And so all of my projects for the first decade or so I could drive to the locations and didn't have to travel very far at all.

And as our children moved up and out of the home now I'm traveling more but I don't have to be at home to take kids to school and that sort of thing. So if not exactly by plan the way things unfolded seemed to fit well with the stages of the firm as it grew and developed. A lot of graces along the way. I guess the sour Philip Freeline president of the Freeline group in architecture firm in Durham, North Carolina just had Philip shares the creative process behind some of the expert designs, stay tuned. This is the state of things I'm Frank Stasjo talking today with architect Philip Freeline.

Architecture company the Freeline group has become known as the go to design firm for African American culture centers across the country that and much much more. And in 2005 we talked about this a bit you played a big role in designing the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American history and culture. It is a beautiful building, describe it for us and its function. Well the building is located in the inner harbor area of Baltimore of a very prominent site in a section of the inner harbor that over time is going to be more central as the growth continues to the east. So I remember going through the site selection process with the owners and users and there were different locations under consideration and I was encouraged them to pick this site

and I think it's been great for the museum. It's about 90,000 square feet on six floors and the theme of the museum is centered toward African American Marylanders, their stories, their successes, their struggles and triumphs in the permanent exhibit and there's also a performance space, a cafe, it really is a full complement of what you might find in Washington DC and the museum there. And you've said that in the museum itself tells not only the story of the early African American experience here but also of African American contributions later and so it has the full scope of the story. In all of our museum work we try and work with the client to find their unique story and we don't want to try and tell a broader story and we want to focus in so that you're not trying to be all things to all people make it unique so that folks will come there for

that reason. There are always questions about museums particularly culture museums, a Holocaust museum or an African American museum, Indian museum, do we want to do this? Do we really want to preserve this or do we want to get past these identities and get to the point where we're no longer recognizing these differences among us? Do they reinforce differences or are they somehow helpful in getting beyond them? In the case of the African American story, I really think it's an American story at the end of the day of perseverance, struggle, yes of course, but also the accomplishments and triumphs and from an historical perspective it's also important as we know to understand your history and to celebrate it and to make sure that the broader story is told and in the case of the Lewis Museum and the others we've worked on the goal has always been to be inclusive in the audience that you're seeking so it's not specifically for any

group it may be primarily about the stories of a certain culture but those are our stories and history that is relevant to all of us. Yeah I think that's the important thing that you just repeated at the idea that when you find the resonance with that story that is the broader story, certainly the American story that's when these institutions have value for all of us and it's been a goal of yours from the beginning I've read that this is where you wanted your firm to get and you didn't want to work on the small stuff you really wanted to start out with large scale projects ending in cultural buildings and to facilities. Well let me say that it's a continual journey and I don't believe we've arrived at the same time I will say too that there is a vision that has been built upon and shared with the staff that we are all moving in the same direction. I think it's really important as a firm and as a creative endeavor and organization to

engage the folks we work with in contributing to that vision and so we all resonate with that and there are other aspects of our firm as well museums are part of it but we also do a lot on college and university campuses we do laboratory buildings we do buildings on airport facilities and so we are continually moving toward our goals and wouldn't it be sad if we arrived there one day and there was nowhere else to go so there are visions and dreams ahead that we're excited about pursuing. Do you have any preferences for the kind of jobs you're working on I'm thinking of a cultural facility like an African American culture museum I can imagine this would really get the creative juices going and then you have an airport which is so much more functional is there a way that it's harder to engage in more practical projects?

No it's just different I don't think it's any harder or easier and you know sometimes I'm asked about my favorite building or that sort of thing and I like in the projects to children and so they're different but you love them all and we there's work that we say we won't do and so we make choices about the projects that come into the office and every project that we pursue or we're lucky enough to be asked to work on is one that first off is an alignment with our vision and mission and so if it's in the office is worth working on it's worth you know putting the effort and the care and the sweat and labor into how would you describe your mission? Our mission is tied to creating design solutions for the benefit of the broader community that is is respective of the environment and it's also innovative and so those are the

key elements of it and you know beyond that there's a mission and there's a vision there principles and values and those are important because if we come up against a choice that we have to make it's helpful to look at what we say we want to do and say well is that consistent? It's taking this project on and pursuing this project consistent with what we say we're about and what we want to do sometimes you get into a project and you don't know until you're down the road that maybe there's a misconnection, a disconnection with your mission in that case we still feel an obligation to our client to finish the project to their satisfaction remember we're still a service industry we're not artists for arts sake as a utility there and there have been cases where we found out that there might have been a change in administration at a university or a change in direction or misunderstanding

at the beginning but as professional we feel committed to completing the work to the satisfaction of our client. There are so many fashions that come and go in architecture is there some kind of universal timeless code of aesthetic beauty in architecture and in design? I don't think so if you look at music there are many different kinds of music and I like what Duke Ellington said about music there are only two kinds the good and the bad and so the genre is not really that important so we see that there are beautiful examples of architecture that are inspiring all the things I mentioned before that don't prescribe to any one style or any one approach and so I think the question is is it appropriate to the environment in its context and is it functional and does it inspire the visitor

to some emotional response and delight? The Freelong Group has been hired to design the Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro on the side of the Old Woolworths department store where the sit-ins took place 50 years ago and we've talked about what's happening or not happening with that project that you hear on this program. Stahl right now there's some political problems what would you do what's your plan for that if it ever gets going? Our plan is to finish and bring the design that we have to fruition and this is the case in some of the cultural institutions that rely on contributions and public funding that the financial aspects are a big obstacle and so there's not much weak as the architects can do to move that fundraising process along.

But how do you see the building though what would if you could get going on it how would you? The unusual project in that the building itself is part of the exhibit is the artifact that the Woolworths building and so that's been fun for us. In fact we have restored the exterior already so there are certain aspects of the project that are already in place it's the interiors and the exhibit components that are inside of that space that need to be finished out and it's an important story and there's another artifact inside that is very powerful the actual lunch counter where the sit-ins took place is still there and you go in even in the environment that is you know not controlled environmentally yet there's no air conditioning or heating and it's dark and you know construction lighting but when you see that ticket count that lunch counter it really does still move

you. And it does seem to me that that historic restoration that that whole industry has come a long way when you look at even what's happening here in downtown Durham I get your impressions about it but it does seem to me that there's been a way to capture the feeling of all of that and still make the place functional which hasn't always been true in historic preservation. Yes absolutely and I sit here and look at American tobacco and think that you know it is a really wonderful example of how this can be done and when you think about it recycling buildings is one of the best things we can do for the environment it takes far less resources and you utilizing a very valuable asset and bringing it back to life and so some of our work is in that vein and I really admire the other architects who are experts at doing that it's an important way of sustaining our physical environment. A lot of green techniques are going into this redevelopment how much of that is part

of your planning and do you make those suggestions to your clients? Yes absolutely you mentioned asked about our mission statement that includes aspects of being environmentally responsible and there is a organization called the US Green Building Council that credits professionals and certifies buildings and we have a 21 lead accredited professionals on our staff and I'm one of them and we're working on a number of lead certified buildings right now and so it's a commitment that our firm has we're seeing that most clients are expecting and really wanting that and even if they don't it's an aspect that we believe is important for us to apply to all of our design work. Here's one of the things I want to ask you about was that you're from Philadelphia and there's another famous Philadelphia and an architect who has had a dramatic impact on the landscape of Durham, a fellow by the name of Julian Abel.

Yes Julian Abel I remember studying Julian Abel and when I was an undergrad at NC State I had heard when that there was an African-American architect who played a major role in the design of the Duke's campus. I came over and spoke to the campus architect at the time a gentleman named Jim Ward who showed me the drawings and I wrote a term paper about it. This was in the early 70s and so I know about Julian Abel for a while before this really came out in the press and can you imagine what an inspiration that was to find an African-American architect from my hometown who had done these wonderful things and so you know I look at it as a very difficult thing to do in the 20s and the teens and 20s when the environment for minorities in this country was much different and much more difficult and so that was inspirational

to me. Inspirational on the one hand to realize that yes this was the man who had pretty much drafted the design in African-American architect in the firm of Philadelphia architecture firm. But the other side of that is that so few people knew about that and I think know about it today. I'm sure that this comes as a surprise to a lot of people listening to this program that the man who designed the modern Duke campus is an African-American named Julian Abel from a Philadelphia architecture firm. And this is one of the reasons that we are excited about the museum work that we do because this sort of knowledge information is really important to get out there and it's inspiring not just to me but I think to almost anyone who would look at this and say that that's great work and understand the history of how he came into the firm and Harris Trumbauer who was the architect in Philadelphia sent Julian Abel to Europe to study classical styles and he was able to come back and design these gothic structures including the Duke Chapel

and a lot of the buildings on that quad and the Trinity College site as well in East Campus. So yeah it's the story that I think anyone would enjoy learning about it. Well tell me more about that how did he come to the firm? Well he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated first in his class if you can imagine that. And so Harris Trumbauer was a prominent Philadelphia architect and Julian had worked in his office as a student and as I mentioned before he invested in Mr. Abel and sent him for four years overseas to study he came back and became the lead designer for the firm and actually continued to run that firm after Mr. Trumbauer's death later on. And so I think one of the lessons for me is that if you're good and you add value to the process then you can exceed and almost anything.

And most people are not going to let discrimination or prejudice stand in the way of commerce and earning a profit and doing great work. And so if that could be done in the 20s why couldn't someone like me or others like myself excel in an environment that is less represented than it should be. What sort of legacy do you think would you like to leave behind or do you imagine your buildings will leave? I would hope that the buildings that we work on and provide would continue to add to the positive experience of folks that end of them and that they would have a serve of purpose whether it's informing a broader community about the rich aspects of African American culture or whether it's providing a clear and direct path from your car to the airport

terminal and doing so in a well lit and beautiful environment. And so the goal in any case is that we have left the environment in a state better than we found it and that we've provided some level of delight to the people that experienced the spaces. Well it's been a delight talking with you Philip Freelon. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thanks so much. Architect Philip Freelon is president of the Freelon Group in Durham, North Carolina. For more information you can visit freelon.com that's F-R-E-E-L-O-N dot com. That's the state of things for today. Thanks for listening. If you have a comment or want to hear an archived edition of a past program go to the website stateofthings.org. This is North Carolina Public Radio broadcast service of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, I'm Frank Stayshow.