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v5: When you decided to open your own studio, how did you get your crew together and the computer base and all the rest of the things you have to have? How did you get the confidence to say yes "I will do this?" (laughs)
RS: Like most things, one step at a time. I did not not go out and acquire everything at once, but slowly acquired all the heavy tools for the wood shop and bought one Mac system which we use for most of our graphics applications and one PC station that we use for Auto CAD. We hired a couple of quality staff members that I had had previous experience with. We just sort of grew in small increments from there.
Now we are ready to make the next incremental move, which is to move to a warehouse-type office space in Marina del Rey.
v5: You went to school at Rice University........
RS: Yes, a master's degree at Rice and undergraduate work at the University of Tennessee, which is where I am from.
v5: There is a touch of an accent...
RS: More than a touch. (laughs) I have never made any effort to disguise that or leave it behind.
v5: How did you find Rice University?
RS: I thought it was a great school in terms of diversity of design influences. At the time I went there, there was not a single driving force that made the school gel in one direction. You have to realize it’s been a few years since I was there. At the time, the east coast schools were still very heavily influenced by post-modernism and I just felt I needed more diversity than that. It was also a great school in terms of the way it supported its graduate program.
v5: It gives people access that otherwise could not have it. Was it a big step from Tennessee to a graduate program?
RS: No, it did not seem tough. I finished Tennessee in 1981 and received my license in 1983 in Texas and did not go back to Rice until the fall of 1987. I
sort of figured out what the profession was about and had a definite agenda in going back to graduate school.
v5: Can we talk about the pool project?
RS: This project had a difficult birth in the sense that the client had been working for about eight years to get funding for this project.
v5: This is an aquatic center.
RS: Yes. They had three outdoor pools in existence in a very generous site. The three pools were in what I considered the prime part of the site, which is overlooking this wonderful canal that ties
Berlin to the Rhine River. When the client came to us they said they had a ten million-dmark budget and they wanted a new, free standing winter facility. They had gone to two or three other architects in the past and the answer always came back the same, you can't do it, the money is not there. So they went through two different bond votes to increase the budget, both of which were turned down. Then they finally said to us, "What can we do?" We said why don't we enclose your existing pools in a way that at least it could be closed in the winter and opened in the summer. so we have some large, operable window panels in the facade and the building acts as a hovering roof in the summer and thermal enclosure in the winter. Low and behold, we did a dry run on the budget after we had given it some initial form and it fit. It worked and also allowed the building to remain in what I consider the ideal position with these fabulous terrace views over the canal.
The site configuration generated the entry tower, which is near the parking lot and it generated the processional nature of moving through entry, controlled dressing, changing rooms, showers, then into the pool. Other amenities such as the sauna and café, which are the last objects, you get to are perched over the canal.
v5: It is beautiful project. Is the structural system a wood system?
RS: Yes, it is a laminated beam system, which in fact has a taper through its length. When it gets to the canal side the wood glu lam beams turn down to become a structural column. Then where
these beams land inside the building and over the lap pool, they are supported by a steel truss. So it is a very asymmetrical, structural solution, which gives directionality to the whole roof and it gives movement to the building.
v5: So each beam varies from the next one?
RS: No, in fact, they have the same profile except for a slice on the front edge, so it's only the length that varies. In varying the length it creates this wonderful slight arc across the facade.
v5: It is extraordinary how you can still get the economies of production and yet have an architectural form that has variation to it, which I find amazing in sculptural qualities.
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Randall Stout helped in the renovation of his grandfather’s tobacco barn in Tennessee. The small gaps in the boards act as vents to help cure the tobacco. The quality of filtered light in these buildings is extraordinary .
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North Minden Power Plant, Germany 1996
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Melittabad Community Aquatics Center, Germany, 1998.
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Enger Natatorium Community Aquatic Center, Germany.
Project model
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RS: It requires a lot of discipline to look at your work, not only as the forms are being generated, but also after the forms are done, and just focus on construction methodology.
v5: And to be smart enough to understand how to gain those economies without sacrificing any variance in shape. Is the skin on this a metal skin?
RS: Yes, the main roof form is about fifty-fifty between the skylight system and corrugated metal. We tend to like to use simple, industrial materials for the most part.
v5: Are there functions in the wing system?
RS: Yes, it provides some shading for the roof. They are all oriented to the south and support a grid of photovoltaic cell panels which provide a significant amount of energy for the building. Their sail-like form is intended to add some sense of fantasy in an abstract way. The neighborhood surrounding this building consists primarily of low-income social housing for the workers at the Melitta coffee products factory nearby. This building’s forms are probably more playful than anything else we have done, but it has to do with helping these kids to have some sense of escape, since many of them may not have the opportunities to travel and experience other cultures and architecture.
v5: But the pools are pretty serious German pools, not the kind we see with water slides and all the Disney sort of stuff.
RS: Yes, one of them is a diving pool with a five-meter diving platform and one is a competitive length lap pool. This small flanking wing contains a non-swimmers pool. In that pool they have gone back and added some children's things such as fountains and mushrooms for them to play under.
v5: The photovoltaic cells on here are used for building lighting?
RS: Yes they are.
v5: They are not heating the water?
RS: No, it's not. There are some water based preheat systems on another roof section, but the photovoltaic cells only contribute to lighting.
One of the things that makes the work outside of Los Angeles so interesting is that people in Southern California expect diversity and creative approaches. To go into a neighborhood in Germany and do work like this, where it is not expected, makes you really have to think about and explain clearly your intentions and to deal with the cultural differences and how those intentions are perceived. To me those social human issues make architecture really fun and exciting. I love to engage the external references of society and culture.
v5: Are people enjoying your building?
RS: They are, they are enjoying it so much and the building is so crowded that they have already asked us to look into an expansion program and it has only been open seven months now.
v5: You can't say anything better than that.
RS: The thing is that we designed it as a community based pool and as word got out, more people started coming from other communities.
v5: That's good. It's time to call their mayor and have them start the next project.
Thank you Randall.
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Return to page one.
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