Throughout the year, Studio G will publish profiles of our staff members to showcase our collaborative team. The following blog post is the third in this series.
Studio G’s Managing Principal, Gail Sullivan, has been practicing architecture for over 30 years, while designer Anthony Rodriguez is only several years into his career. However, each adds immense value to Studio G.
Becoming Interested in Architecture
“I was always fascinated with buildings when I was young,” Anthony said, adding that he was an avid LEGO builder. Anthony grew up in northern New Jersey, close to New York City, so he also cites that as a reason he became interested in tall buildings.
“I didn’t have LEGOs,” Gail said, but her older brother did have a “set of little white building blocks” that she used to build things like a ski resort, though she had never been to one or seen one before. “I was very proud of it,” she said. “My first memory [of being interested in architecture] is that.”
Gail also has an early memory of sitting with her best friend’s mother drawing houses and sharing designs.
Role at Studio G
Anthony is a designer and mostly works in the housing studio, “but I have also been taking on more of an assistant project manager role and getting my feet dipped into really understanding project management tasks,” he said. Prior to coming to Studio G, Anthony worked for two other firms, and has done construction administration at all three.
Gail, like everyone at Studio G, wears many hats.
“Running the firm means there’s one job that’s more internally focused,” she said, “paying attention to the people here and what their needs are as individuals and what the project team’s need is as a group.” She ensures that people have enough work to do but are not “overwhelmed” simultaneously.
Gail is also responsible for the firm’s outlook and solving conflicts in project schedules.
Then there is an external portion of Gail’s job—representing Studio G in public “and making connections with potential clients,” she said.
She also focuses on design, touching every project Studio G works on. She’s very involved in “human-centered design, really focusing on what the experience of a person is…I never want to give up that kind of close touch.”
Anthony said that when he works on a project, he first thinks of how Gail would approach it. He asks himself, “What are we trying to accomplish with what we’re trying to show in the renderings?
Thoughts on the Mentor/Mentee Setup at Studio G
Everybody at Studio G is both a mentor and a mentee, as each individual brings their strengths to the table.
Anthony said he values “being able to talk to anybody here at Studio G. We all have different experiences.” He said he likes being able to ask people about their past experiences in similar situations and gathering advice to move forward in the best way possible.
“One of the things that I love the most,” Gail said, is “all the buzz in the office—someone asking someone else for advice; that kind of cross-pollination.” Studio G has a fairly open-concept office space, where no one is fully enclosed in an office. There are separate “pods,” which allow for collaboration amongst colleagues.
“It makes you feel connected to what you’re doing on a deeper level,” she added, saying that she has never worked for a large firm for this reason.
Thoughts on Studio G’s Work
Gail’s goal is to create “architecture that feels just and useful to society and doing work that we feel really good about doing and really passionate about doing.”
Anthony said he feels Studio G’s work is “impactful,” and he enjoys “connecting with the clients” and learning what they want to get out of each project, and “hopefully living up to the expectation of what we were able to provide to them.”
Gail said she agrees, and “the best projects are clients that become good friends,” which has been the case for her several times during her career.
“It’s about making that deeper connection,” she said, and it ties to Studio G’s tagline of “building sustainable communities.” Gail said that “we really are building community at Studio G and the community we make for our clients,” which is “almost always groups of people.”
Anthony said that what “satisfies” him is seeing a project through from early design process to completion and occupancy, and “seeing the vision that you had and your team had for the project come to life. I’m always in awe of what the end result is.”
Dream Projects
Anthony said he’s already worked on his dream project: The Residences at Lawrence Hill multi-building, multifamily housing development in Wellfleet.
He called it a “bigger scale project that I really haven’t worked on before.” He also said he’s never been involved in a project from the proposal phase to close to finishing.
Anthony said that with the desperate need for affordable housing, “being part of those projects…is very meaningful to me. Affordable housing projects are the dream projects.”
Gail said she does not have a single dream project, but the Y2Y youth homeless shelter in Harvard Square “in some ways was one,” as it was a “chance to make that impact.”
She said her dream projects are “something of enough scale” that include housing and other things “for a community that really drives to the next level of sustainability…places where people live, places where people work, garden or farm, recreate; and do this all in a model that says ‘this is what we really can do to live ecologically.’ That’s the next frontier.”
Final Thoughts
“I really never experienced a firm like this before where we aim to have our projects be as sustainable as possible,” Anthony said.
Gail added, “I want to do projects that keep reaching higher to be really a demonstration of what we can do if we do the best we can do. I think that’s projects that heal the things that are wounded on the earth—and there are a lot.”
She said that at Studio G, “younger people are really taking the lead here and pushing how far we can do in designing responsibly and ecologically. I love that. I love seeing that agency. It makes me really proud.”
