Into the Light
Other Public Work
Museums and educational facilities designed by Fentress include the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City; National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va.; Humanities Gateway for the University of California, Irvine; Mathematics Building and Gemmill Engineering Library at the University of Colorado campus at Boulder; and the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo.
Commercial projects in the Middle East include the Dubai Mixed-Use Towers and Arraya Tower, the tallest building in Kuwait and the fourth tallest in the world.
One thing the firm has done from the beginning is to capture daylight and celebrate it as a central design feature. “We’re known for creating great interior public spaces – daylit spaces,” Fentress says.
Another Fentress motif is diversity, with each project responding specifically to its program and context. “What we’re about is doing what’s good for our clients, while creating something that’s iconic and fabulous looking,” Fentress says.
He adds that his firm uses what he calls the “patient search,” gently probing every project to find “a seam somewhere,” which can be opened to reveal “the art inside.”
His firm has been ranked among Engineering News-Record’s Top 25 Green Design Firms in the U.S. Fentress says the firm is committed to sustainable, cost-effective and functional design and to new technologies such as building information modeling.
The Thomas Jefferson Award is the American Institute of Architects� highest award for public architecture.
The first AIA Western Mountain Region architect to win, Fentress Architects is one of only seven private-sector architects to be so honored since the award�s founding in 1992.
The Thomas Jefferson Award is named for the nation�s third president, who was also an accomplished architect. It recognizes architects or public officials who produce, manage or advocate for quality design within the built environment.
Fentress says that Jefferson embodies �what we aspire to in creating excellence in public spaces and in creating a better world through highly efficient design that pays homage to its surroundings and history.�
As for the future, Fentress says his firm will continue doing what it does best. “We’ve been striving to do great architecture from the beginning, to be one of the best in the world,” he adds. “We still compete on a daily basis. We’ve got some exciting new design competitions coming up this year, several of them international.”
Fentress Architects also has offices in Los Angeles and San Jose, Calif., and Washington, D.C.
