Jon Pickard of Pickard Chilton | 2+U in Seattle | Collaboration Is Key
Courtesy of Pickard Chilton
2+U with Jon Pickard
Our third guest in the American Building series is Jon Pickard. Jon is a Co-founder and Principal at Pickard Chilton, an award-winning architectural design firm based in Connecticut. We are talking about 2+U (also known as the Qualtrics Tower), the studio’s recently completed 690,000-square foot next-generation office complex in the heart of downtown Seattle. 2+U consists of 2 separate towers of 38 stories and 18 stories joined atop a common podium. It has 19,000 square feet of retail and restaurants over 2 floors, as well as an underground parking garage. It tops out at 530 feet, offering stunning views of Elliot Bay. The developer of the project was Skanska USA and the total project budget was $392 million.
“I don’t think we would be able to be who we are today without learning from our mistakes. There is no quick way around development. You can’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I want to develop.’ What we’ve learned in the past is what is making us today.”
Courtesy of Pickard Chilton
Before Pickard Chilton, Jon Pickard worked at a firm just down the street from his own in Connecticut. Cesar Pelli & Associates was an architect's dream workplace, Jon says. He was mentored by Cesar and learned how to build effective teams, work with world renowned clients, and design with integrity. It was here Jon met his cofounder, William Chilton. Jon credits his time at Cesar Pelli & Associates as the reason he and William were able to build such a successful firm of their own. The reputation of the company allowed them to get in the door with high profile corporate clients before they had truly made a name for themselves. Years later, Pickard Chilton has grown a client roster that is a Who’s Who of corporate America, from ExxonMobil to Uber.
Courtesy of Pickard Chilton
Courtesy of Pickard Chilton
Winning the Project
It was both the portfolio of Pickard Chilton and their innovative designs that encouraged Skanska to extend an invitation to a Hackathon for a new office project in downtown Seattle. Through iteration and collaboration, Skanka and Pickard Chilton developed a concept that was as much about the community of Seattle as it was about the design of the tower. This sealed the deal, and Pickard Chilton was confirmed for the project, which would include demolition of Rainier Square Mall, the restoration of Town Hall, and the construction of F5 Tower.
Designing a Building for the Future
Jon says they approached the project with the future workplace in mind and didn’t just follow the office trends of the day. While open office is currently popular with tech companies, (the target tenant demographic in Seattle today,) it was important that they build for other tenants and work styles that might occupy the building in the future. Jon believes building sustainably is more than the materials you use. It is also about building a space that will withstand the test of time. This innovative thinking extended beyond the design to the tools they used to communicate with both Skanska and future tenants. Virtual reality played a major role in showcasing the vision for U + 2 in design presentation and the sales center.
Courtesy of Pickard Chilton
Successful Design Through Collaboration
Although Pickard Chilton has many “favorite children,” referring to completed projects he is proud of, he says U + 2 was exceptional. The shared vision between his team and the developer, Skanska, gave Jon’s team the freedom to design a building that was innovative, human-centric, and community-minded. Jon is proud of the fact that he had very little to do with the success of the project. The credit, he says, goes entirely to the project team, which remained the same from day one. Collaboration, Jon believes, was the key to success.
Episode Timestamps
3:18 – Your client roster over the years has grown to include a who's who of corporate America from ExxonMobil to Uber. How did you grow into this specialty of corporate office design? And how did you gain such a large and diverse group of office clients?
7:44 – Over the past five years, there has been a lot of construction in downtown Seattle. Could you talk more about that?
12:12 – Let's talk about the gray, the sunlight and the shadows and other things that influence what eventually came to be The Qualtrics Tower?
18:46 – What led you to the design decision of the W-shaped steel columns? And what was the interplay with those items with the office layouts above?
22:47 – How did you integrate green building practices into the design of this building?
26:37 – What kind of office tenants did you have in mind when you were designing this building?
33:20 – Offices today seem to include a laundry list of features like a cafe with an open kitchen area, phone booths, meditation rooms, napping areas, foosball, all of this stuff. How do you make sense of all of that when you see the way that office spaces either in your buildings or others are actually eventually laid out and lived in?
37:12 – Skanska decided to develop this with no pre-leasing in place. From your experience and working with a wide variety of clients, is that a reflection of intelligent planning, insanity, or both?
41:43 – What does “hotel-style” office mean?
44:29 – What are some of the challenges in staffing a large project that sprawls over five years as team members perhaps come and go?
48:13 – Right now you're working on another large office building in Seattle with Skanska on Northeast Eighth Street. What are the similarities between the two projects?
52:12 – How does two plus you The Qualtrics Tower fit into the overall portfolio for your firm?
54:35 – How do you go about sorting through the pursuits and asks that you might have with clients to make sure that you can produce the kind of wonderful work that you're known for?
57:28 – Did your experience at the Pelli firm and the way you've tried to fashion your own firm have some relationship in terms of the nurturing culture and being able to have such longevity among your staff?
About your host:
Atif Qadir is the Founder & CEO of Commonplace, a technology company making it easy for commercial real estate professionals to find and use the $100B of real estate incentives given out every year in the US.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Commonplace
Commonplace is a founding sponsor of American Building. It is a 100% minority-owned, real estate technology company founded in 2020 to make financing social impact development projects across the US easier. It is funded by venture capital investors Hometeam Ventures, Park West Asset Management, New York Ventures and Shadow Ventures.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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