S4E9: A World-Renowned Architect Dedicates His Career to Innovative Design | (Craig Hartman, Architect and Senior Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill )

Craig Hartman is an accomplished architect and senior consulting design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the world’s largest and most prestigious design firms. Craig attended high school in rural Indiana. But it was the education that he received at Ball State University that opened his eyes to the possibility of making a professional name for himself on a global scale. 

In this episode, Craig talks about experiencing the first years of our University’s College of Architecture and Planning and the role models on our campus who inspired him in his pursuit of his remarkable and fulfilling career. He also shares details about his award-winning professional work, including his designs for the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport and the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland—the first cathedral constructed in the 21st century. 

If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show. 

Transcript

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Hello, I'm Geoff Mearns, and I have the good fortune to serve as the president of Ball State University. On today's episode of my podcast, I'll have a conversation with a distinguished graduate of our university whose architectural designs have earned him worldwide acclaim. My guest is Craig Hartman. He's an accomplished architect and senior consulting design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the largest and most prestigious design firms in the world.

Craig attended high school in rural Indiana, but it was the education he received at Ball State that opened his eyes to the possibility of making a professional name for himself on a global scale. Craig's design work includes the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport, the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, and the American Embassy building in Beijing. He was also the lead designer of the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, a project for which he received papal knighthood from Pope Benedict in 2008.

Throughout his successful and fulfilling career, Craig has also been a champion of sustainability. He is an architect with an eye on the environment, and his work has won hundreds of awards, including multiple gold LEED certifications. I'm grateful that Craig is sitting down with me for this conversation ahead of our Spring commencement ceremonies, which is the reason he has returned to his alma mater this month. And I look forward to asking him more about his time at Ball State and his continued engagement with our university over many years.

So, Craig, it's a pleasure to welcome you to the podcast, welcome you back to campus. Thank you for joining me in the studio this morning.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, thank you, President Mearns. It's a delight to be here with you and especially to be here on Commencement Day weekend. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah. It's a great time on campus. So let's start a little closer to the beginning. You were born in Indianapolis. Looking back at your childhood, did your passion for designing buildings, did that start when you were a child?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Far from it. We—you mentioned Indianapolis. That's where I was born. But we moved, when I was maybe two years old, to a tiny hamlet in northeastern Indiana. And, architecture was not—it was a farming community. Architecture was not on the lips of folks at dinner time. But my interest, especially in high school, was, you know, really science and about innovation.

And I thought architecture would maybe, maybe a little backward and maybe, you know, arts and crafts, but, you know, not—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

What high school was that? Where was this hamlet at?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

The hamlet is called Merriem, Indiana. There’s only a vestige that remains, which is basically two crossroads. And, early on, in the 19th century, there were two grocery stores, a barber shop, a post office, a gas station, the grainary, my grandfather's implement dealership, which was a big source of—for my years there, just an extraordinary resource. And, so that was, that was the community. And, there were some Baby Boomers there that were part of my cohort of friends. And it was a magical childhood.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So, Wolf Lake High School, did I get that right?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Wolf Lake High School. I'll tell you one story, though, you asked about architecture. And my, you know, was I interested early on? I still have a very distinct memory of the first time that my parents took my brother and myself. Or it was just me I guess at that time, he wasn't yet born, to Indianapolis to visit some of their friends. And we entered in our station wagon Monument Circle. Incredible. And to my five year old eyes, I thought it must be an act of God. I mean, how could these little fountains, this campanile, you know, were campanile, of course, but. And these, these buildings that that, circumscribed that space, how could that have happened? And it was such a powerful memory. It stayed with me. It still does. And it was only later when I actually visited Rome a number of times—and I actually lived there for a while—that I realized that, well, you know, Monument Circle is pretty good, but Piazza Navona is maybe The Godfather—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

That circle was inspired by many other architects from many, many years ago. [Hartman: It was.] So you graduated from Wolf Lake High School in 1968, and you come to Ball State then. But I understand that both your mother and maybe your brother had attended Ball State. [Hartman: True.] Is that what prompted you to consider coming here to Muncie?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, you know how it is when your parents go to a certain place—you kind of want to go somewhere else, right? But ... and I suppose it might have been true with my younger brother. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So he came after you?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Yes, he came when I was in my fourth year. And so he studied music education, as did his wife, who was here as well. But, so my mother, who graduated from Ball State in 1948, was a nursing school student. And my father also, by the way, had experience here right at Ball State, right after the war. Well, I should say they were both—my mother grew up in the small hamlet I mentioned. And my father, whose father was a Baptist preacher, spent his high school years in that little hamlet called Merriem and also attended Wolf Lake High School. My mother was a cheerleader for the basketball team, and he was a, kind of a star on the team. And they had kind of a—it was kind of a folklore thing for years about having gone all the way to, I guess, Sweet 16 in the state tournament when there was no differentiation between smaller schools. It was a big deal. Anyway, so my father, immediately after high school in 1942, enlisted in the Navy, spent time in England. After the war, he came back and my mother was here at Ball State in her last couple of years. And so he attended—I'm not sure exactly what he did here. I, I suspect that the fact that she was here was a draw—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

He might have been less interested in his studies and more interested in her.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Very possibly. [laughs] And after school, they got married and moved to Indianapolis, where my mother was a nurse at the hospital there. And my father went on and took technical drawing training at an institute there. And that became his career. After a couple of years in Indianapolis, and when I came along, they decided that it would be better to come back to my mother's hometown where 95% of her relatives were within a five mile radius and several within walking distance. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

That very stereotypical small town America experience. 

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

She told me she didn't want to come back, but it was that family decision that brought them back. And my father got a job at General Electric in Fort Wayne, designing specialty transformers. They're kind of unique, small things. And he learned engineering as you go along there, too. And, so he spent his entire career there. My mother eventually became a school nurse in our township—the first one they had. So that for her was great because she was able to be working when we were in school and home when we were home over the summers. That was a perfect thing. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

That quintessential small town American experience.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

It was. And, I, you know, I had some really unique experiences because my grandfather, I mentioned, had this implement store, or dealership, and he was a kind of an early barnstormer pilot, and he had learned to fly out of pasture fields. He crashed several planes, and he used these World War 1 Surplus Jennys, two of which were laying in a field behind his barn where he demonstrated his implements. And so my cousin and I, that was a great playground for us and eventually became parts for things we built over time. So it was a very, a very interesting childhood. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah, really idyllic. Now when you come to Ball State, our College of Architecture and Planning was still pretty new. What do you remember about being one of the first students in CAP at Ball State?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, it was extraordinary. It was charged with energy. The faculty were young. I learned only later that several of them were not that much older than we were. But I was in the third graduating class, so we weren't even accredited yet when I arrived. And so they were very focused on making sure this school qualified, on the very first outing, to be accredited by the National Accreditation Board. Which happened, and it was just alive with energy. The dean, Charlie Sappenfield, was connected, it seemed like, with every architect in the world. And he would bring really interesting people in—Louis Kahn and others—to give lectures or critique our work. And so it was a really stimulating, amazing experience. And we began in... in World War Two—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Those old Quonset huts. 

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Right. So, and these were also amazing pedagogical experiences, because I should say that back in Merriam, my very first, my first grade experience was in a two room school, first through third grade in room number one, which was right where I was, and, four through six in the other room. So for a first grader, it was like advanced placement. You got to hear everything that third graders did. So this was very similar, the Quonset huts, because we could see all the work being done by upperclassmen. And that was very inspirational.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

It would give you a sense of why you were studying some of the foundational skills, because you could see how it would apply to what you wanted to actually do.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Precisely. And, so that was, that whole cross-fertilization, was always very important. And in the middle of the three Quonset huts was, the center Quonset hut was devoted to public uses. So it was a lecture hall, exhibition space, and everything was very open. So you could be walking through to studio and you’d see some extraordinary speaker talking to students and listen in if you wanted to. Or you could see, in the exhibition area, see some really amazing things that were brought together, including sometimes, some of the upper class were actually working on a very, very large model of their work. You could actually use that as sort of a staging ground. So it was a very, very exciting place to be.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah. So while you were studying at Ball State, you also were selected to study, in London, at the Architectural Association in London, where you were, I understand, mentored by Cedric Price, who was an extraordinary architect. Tell us about that experience. Tell us about Mr. Price and what that was like to be with somebody of his international acclaim.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Okay. Well, first of all, I will say that the, um.... I'll come to Mr. Price a moment. I would say that the first aspect of that time was being out of North America. The first time I had been, to be living in one of the world's great cities, and to experience that, to figure out how to move through that city, how to use transportation, how to use the NC and see and visit and experience the cultural institutions.That life in itself was incredibly confidence building. And when I came back from that experience, it really helped me understand how I could navigate cities like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, whatever, and or any place in the world.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Not to mention the extraordinary architecture, historic architecture, in London, every street you'd walk down.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Walking by and walking into the British Art Museum and Library, seeing the work of John Soane in person. All that was just, just amazing. So, wrapped up with all that, was this man you mentioned, Cedric Price. It turned out, I only learned recently when I was working on a university project at Rice University, and talking with one of the faculty there who'd been around for a long time, he said that, “Yeah, I know Marvin Roseman.” Marvin Roseman was one of the professors who was an extraordinary mentor for me over the years. And he was the person who led this trip to London. And he had met and got to work with Cedric Price when Price was doing a project at Rice University, earlier.

So that's how that connection happened. And so Price himself, as a person, was unusual. Very, very dapper. Always wore the same, curved white collar shirt with a gray body—the shirt and a suit, slicked back hair and chomping a cigar. Not necessarily lit, but chomping. And he was exploring some unusual things in architecture at that time, having to do with temporary structures. The idea that we don't need to build massive monuments for everything. Brutalism was just becoming a thing at that point in time, so he was against that. But he was for temporary, lightweight structures. His work really influenced the making of Centre Pompidou, the great museum in Paris. 

And he was ahead of his time in the sense of thinking about the way that pedagogies in universities might be, in architecture schools specifically, might be related around the world. This is before the internet. So now, of course that's possible. But he, you know, he did a lot of it thinking. And so some of his work, you kind of see today. And some still influences me, the idea of pop-up urbanism where you do a structure that might be temporary and see how it works.  Parklets take up in parking spots in San Francisco, for example. New York City is one example that. So all that, you know, it was very it was, you know, quite influential, for me. So Cedric Price was a very interesting and demanding person. And so we all created a project while we were there, and, it was an amazing experience.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah. So just a little plug before I get into the next question. One of our ongoing initiatives as part of our capital campaign is to provide scholarship funds for students in CAP to study abroad. Dean Ferguson's goal is for every CAP student to have an international study abroad experience because of the extraordinary, enduring impact that it can have on our students, particularly if they're the first generation to go to college or haven't been exposed to that field.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

So important. I'm really glad that's happening. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So you graduated in 1973 and you started working at the studio of Walter Netsch in Chicago. What prompted you to make that decision to accept that offer?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, I can't believe I'm saying this now, but at the time, I doubted that was the right idea. But Walter had taught—he was at Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, where I have spent my career—he had taught here at Ball State, a seminar, and he talked to the dean and invited me, resulted in the invitation for me to come work with him. At first, and this pains me even to say this, I was reluctant because I had this idea about, you know, I'd seen my professors and others, that I thought the right thing to do was to have my own small, serious design firm and teach at a university. That was, to me, the highest possible, you know, outcome of my career. And Dean Sappenfield said to me, “Young man, you should go to Chicago for two years and work with Netsch, work at SOM, and you'll be able to do anything after that. Then your ideas about—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

You’ll create your own firm.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Exactly, what can all happen. So I did that, and I have to say—I was expecting a kind of a corporate environment, which is one of the things that I was, you know, kind of worried about. But it was amazing. And it was life changing, of course, because I’ve spent my entire career there.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

I was just going to say, you've never left.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

And Netsch was an unusual guy. He was not a corporate person at all. And I knew this, but he had developed himself, this sort of—he called it field theory, which is, sort of like Einstein, you know, had this universal theory of everything, and his idea was to geometry, to create these matrices that could become buildings, could become a chair, could become a comb, could become a teacup, and it was thrilling and interesting, but really hard. And one of the great experiences there was to me, you know, amazing, I hadn't expected it. At three years out of Ball State, he came into the studio one day and asked me to come down and talk with him, and he said he had this small project, a small art museum at Miami University, next door in Ohio. And he wanted my help in putting together the concept for it. We interviewed or he interviewed, we got the project and he gave it to me to do. I was 26 or 27 years old, and I would take that project home with me, take drawings home with me every night to work out because I thought I was taking too much time, you know, didn’t want to bill all that time, but it turned out beautifully. And kind of launched my career with them. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And so, as we've said, you spent your entire career, you're still at SOM. During the introduction, I mentioned a couple of your more significant, well known projects, and I want to talk about a couple of them. Ask you about a couple of them. One is the international terminal at San Francisco. I've been through that terminal. It's remarkable. I've also read that people who go through the terminal say that there's a sense of dignity, calm, and pleasure. That's what it says. Those are not typically the words that you associate with an airport terminal, right? That's not the experience that most of us have in most terminals, especially large international terminals in major cities around the world. Was that your goal? Was that, I mean, when you hear that, do you say “Yes, that’s what I was trying to do”.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Maybe not quite in those words, but yes, that was certainly a goal. My goals were to make a place that was memorable, that had all those qualities you mentioned. But a place in which, architecture, the structural elements that that contained and supported the architecture, the space itself, and light, all came together to make the place that you've just described. And it was a competition, and it came at a time it was really difficult, because there was a major recession in San Francisco, in fact, across the United States, especially in the kind of architecture that we did. A lot of it was office towers, and that all had collapsed. So there was  a lot, an enormous amount of pressure. And I won't go into all the details of how this came together, but it was a yearlong process of sort of narrowing the competitors down from 600 to the final, I think 5 or 6. And the final presentation was drawings boards each competitor did, which were then locked away in a case. And then the jury was brought in and they looked at individual—without having, as the airport director said, “The sweet tongue of the architect, trying to convince the jury...”

[GEOFF MEARNS]

You weren't allowed to do oral persuasion.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

No. And so that resulted in our having been selected for this. And it was definitely a labor of love, and I remember doing the early sketches—I was coming back to Indiana, visiting my parents, and I was doing them on their kitchen table. And at that time, you know, the internet didn't exist. This was 1995. And so, I took it into Columbia City, where there was a fax machine where it could be faxed back to the office for the early sketches. But it was an incredible outcome, and it’s become a real icon, as you mentioned, for the city of San Francisco.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah. So another icon in the Bay area is the cathedral in Oakland that I mentioned, the Cathedral of Christ the Light. It's my understanding it was the first cathedral completed in the 21st century. It was designed to replace a cathedral that had been destroyed in the earthquake in 1989. There was also a design contest for that. Tell us about how you were selected there, and maybe really more importantly, why you designed this extraordinary building the way you did.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, maybe God's hand was in the last statement. I think... first of all, just to describe for a moment the origins of this, as you said, the earthquake destroyed the first cathedral there in Oakland, and they had a design competition. And the architectural critic for The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, it was a man named Alan Timko. He organized a competition. He was advising the bishop. And the competition was mostly between European architects, primarily, a couple of East Coast architects, and a Mexican architect, and myself. And I thought, well, I don't know what our chances are here, but we're going to do our best. So I spent a lot of time, consulting with, I'm not a Catholic. I grew up in Protestant faith, and so I spent a long time learning about the principles and developed an idea that was based upon the ideas that are inherent in Catholicism. The placement of the baptismal font, the altar, all those things, and began to develop an idea around those critical pieces. And more importantly, trying to understand how we could bring this together in the 21st century. That would do, maybe a different way, what was done in the 15th and 16th centuries. Specifically to inspire one as you enter, not because of a particular icon or a particular object, but more about the space itself.

And so I felt that in this point in history, most of us are literate. So we didn't need stained glass windows to tell the Christian story. And we maybe become overly encrusted with additive things that happened, especially in this faith over many centuries. So I thought, if we could strip that away, and come back to the essence of space and light, and to use materials that are natural of this world—wood—to make the structure as opposed to steel, and to bring it together in a way that the geometry itself was an outcome of some of the metaphors of the Catholic faith. Around the “vesica piscis,” which is a kind of elliptical shaped, like you think about a fish drawn with two strokes. And so that was the origins of the idea: using wood, as I mentioned, as the primary structure, no stained glass windows, so we're not telling the biblical story through that iconography, but rather simply by being in a space and hearing the words and reading on the floor, at certain moments, key inscriptions from the biblical text. And so that, and probably the part of this that was most significant in the end, was something that came about very late in the process, which was the bishop came to me and said, now Archbishop Vigneron came to me and said, you know, we completely agree with the theory—the idea that you're doing here. That this place is about light and about the way light is introduced in the space. And, light being, you know, the sort of the foundational idea, for all of this. And he said, I understand all that, but we have to have representational image of Christ ... and I said, oh, no, here we go. And there were ideas about things hanging from the ceiling and um—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

How did you solve that problem or respond to the archbishop's request?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Finally, I thought, well, if we can actually, you know how the newspapers used to be—Wall Street Journal used to have, images that were actually, pointillist images. By in the ink marks. So I thought, if we could do that, if you could translate that to a large scale. And I want to have light coming through the end wall, but I couldn't understand, figure out, exactly how to do that without some person with a drill bit working for, you know, years. When someone came in the studio, we'd just gotten a new piece of technical equipment called a laser cutter. And people were walking around with these incredible laser cuts. And I thought, well, there's the answer. We can simply draw or take the image we want and put it in a computer and have it produce pixels that could be cut with a laser and let light come through it.

And so we did that, did several studies and tests, and it worked and it's really quite beautiful and poetic. I asked the bishop, so we had the technique... so what will make this look like Christ? So I asked the bishop, “Well, here's the technology. Tell me what you think Christ would look like and—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Select the image.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

And he said, Go to Short Cathedral on the West Portal and you'll see this image, made in the sixth century. And he was a scholar. He spent a lot of time in the Vatican. You'll see this image of Christ. A bas relief. That shows Christ the teacher held within a vesica piscis shape. The vesica piscis shape was the shape I'd use to create the basic geometry of the cathedral. And so we took that, made shadow studies of that, translated that into bits and bytes, and then used that in the computer to make pixels. 96,000—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Say that again, 96,000 pixels. 

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Pixels of different sizes, ranging from a quarter of an inch to an inch and a half. And used that to create this image. On the West Portal Short Cathedral it’s about six feet high. Here it’s about 80ft high, and we use that then basically to make a veil of light. So when light comes through those pixels or those openings in the metal, the image appears very strong. When light goes away, the image disappears. And so, people are kind of mystified by that. And they think it's a projection. It’s simply, you know, through light.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

It's the natural light.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

It’s the natural light. So it's a fairly poetic experience.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So anybody who's listening, if you haven't been sufficiently intrigued or inspired, I encourage you to go on the web and look up the cathedral because, if you can see it in person like I have, it's remarkable. It's even pretty impressive, looking at it on your computer. So let me ask you about China. You worked on a big project in China. What was that like, working not only in a different country, but a country that's organized around a different kind of cultural or government principles.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Yes. Well, that was extraordinary. This began in 1993. And, I guess I mentioned that, in 19--, the early 1990s was a very, very difficult time for American architects. There’d been a recession. And it was a very challenging time. So China had really been opened by Nixon and Kissinger, and we felt it was becoming a viable place for us to work. We had a Chinese woman, partner at that time, who was actually in the San Francisco office with myself. She was a managing partner. And so she spent, went to China and spent a fair amount of time—she had actually grown up in Shanghai—so she spent a lot of time, looking around, trying to understand what the prospects might be. And we got invited to participate in a major international competition for a bank called the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. ICBC. This was for a headquarters site that was about three blocks west of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. So it's a very sensitive place. And we found out later this the first time any foreign architect had built within the historic, walls of early Beijing.

So, the competition, we won the competition. It was based on the idea of a circle in a square, which is a very potent symbol. It means a square is the earth, and circle is heaven and earth brought together. So that was the basic form of this of this headquarters for ICBC.

And having won the competition, you know, I spent a fair amount of time over there. And walking through the existing buildings, which were really poor at that time, it was just after the Cultural Revolution. And so architects, lawyers, accountants—there was a whole generation of that professional class missing. And so for that reason, they needed the expertise of Western architects to really help them bring themselves quickly into the 20th and 21st century.

And, so I remember touring their existing building, which was basically like a hotel—a series of rooms, one of which had a series of egg crates. And I said, well, what are these for? They opened one up, and it was seriously, it was an egg crate with their bank logo stamped on it.

And it turned out, and this was a communist theory of economy, it turned out that instead of giving people raises, they simply gave them eggs. And that way they kind of kept inflation down, which was a major, major concern. Because inflation would cause an upheaval in society. So, we had to provide a ten ton cooler in the basement of the building for egg crates.

Now, they don't use that anymore, I'm sure. But, that was, you know, part of it. 

So starting out there was, you know, working in a very, very primitive condition and trying to bring this work as a very modern structure, you know, to this place and do so in a way that was sensitive to that context.

And we found that, for the structural engineering, we found that, they weren't, we weren't, the chairwoman of the bank, by the way, wanted to use steel construction because she thought that steel was a more modern way of constructing than using concrete. And concrete was what had always been used in China. And, so our structural engineers toured the facilities. It turned out they didn't make steel for buildings. They made steel for railroad trains and for tanks and that kind of thing, but not for building. So, we had to invent, you know, certain steel sections, which was great because it was able to create a very, very elegant kind of structure out of this.

And then, like the cathedral that we just talked about, it was all about bringing light into these public spaces. And the circle I mentioned is, at the center of the building, is a circular courtyard with light coming through where the circle and square depart into its atriums. So it turned out to be a very, very successful building in Beijing, the first modern structure, as I mentioned, the first time a foreign architect had built within this context.

And that, along with another building that one of my partners in our Chicago office did in Shanghai, in Pudong, a tower, those two became real calling cards. And subsequent to that, we've done literally hundreds of projects there, from urban design to buildings. So later on, I did, of course, the U.S. embassy there and designed a major district near the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which was called Beijing Finance Street, which consisted of 20 city blocks, and 20 or 25 buildings, office buildings, residential, commercial, retail, and a park, all based on sustainable principles.

This started in ICBC, the bank I talked about, was started in 1995, 93, 95. This started in 2001, the same time as the embassy that we did. And they wanted it finished in eight years for the Olympics. It seemed impossible, but it got done. They had 60,000 people working on the project, on site, at certain times.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

That's a pretty large construction crew.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Yes.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So you've traveled the world, you've received dozens and dozens of recognitions. I mentioned in my introduction a papal knighthood from Pope Benedict. But yet, you also travel now to colleges and universities, not just Ball State, but Stanford and Rice University. Is there a common theme to your remarks, your guidance, your lectures to young architects who wonder whether they could be the next Craig Hartman?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

I'm not sure they want to be the next Craig Hartman—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

I think probably many of them do.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

But, yeah, I think, you know, over the years, I have spoken to a number of universities and, you know, through observation and, you know, both the work I've done, observing work around the world, I've tried to boil the message down to a few succinct things, illustrated through the work. You know, the most basic one is Vitruvius was the first-century engineer, architect in Rome. Who, among architects, his three adages or his adage about architecture should be equally about, firmness, commodity and delight. In other words, it should be well-made. It should honor its function. And it should, most importantly, my opinion, be a space that's delightful to behold. And today, you know, that's, I think I still really important.

And, today, though, you would add to that, respect for the natural world, respect for the environment. And, so I talk a lot about the forum in space and light and how those things, and structure, how those things come together. So I boiled those things down to what I consider the essence, which is that, we should try to always touch the earth, lightly, that we should respect the history and culture of the place in which we're working. And that, when we build, we should aim for beauty in everything we do. And that last point, I think, is also Vitruvius, you know, obviously said that same thing. But today, if an object, if a building, or a place is beautiful—it’s a quality that will be worthy of regeneration or renewal that future generations will want to renew and preserve that place. And that is really important. The idea of renewing, as opposed to tearing down and replacing is really important, especially today in our, our increasingly, you know, deplenished resources in our world. So that's to me, the essence is that. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So why do you come back to Ball State? Again, you've traveled the world, you’re a world renowned architect. What prompts you to come back to Muncie? You're going to give a commencement address at the College of Architecture and Planning in a couple of days. Why do you come back?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, I come back for, you know, several reasons. It's not altruistic necessarily. Not entirely that, but partly, I mean, it's largely it is that. Because I received so much from this university and from this College of Architecture. And the effort that the faculty put into my education and my colleagues’ education was just extraordinary. And really, for me, made everything possible since. So, it starts with gratitude, for sure. But, as I said, it's not entirely altruistic. I enjoy working with students that inspire me. The energy inspires me. And I've had the privilege of, working with, hiring, recruiting, developing students from all around the world from, you know, universities you would consider to be the greatest universities. And the Ball State students that I've been fortunate to work with are equal to any of them. And there is a, both in talent and preparedness and the skills, but also in the work ethic and in the generosity of spirit and the kindness and the ability to collaborate. So, that's the reason I come back.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah. So that's a good segue into my final question. It's a question that I ask all of my guests, which is about beneficence. You and I walked down this morning past Beneficence, little rain drizzling down on us. Beneficence, as you know, is about our enduring values. It's about doing good in service to other people. 

You've led—you continue to have a remarkable and fulfilling career, and you lead a meaningful life in service to other people in your profession and in your other commitments. So what does beneficence, Craig, what does beneficence mean to you?

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Well, as I mentioned, certainly here at Ball State, I've been very fortunate to have received so much support and generosity in my education. But this is true before Ball State and after Ball State. I've been the fortunate recipient of just so much encouragement and support and some really wonderful mentors. And that certainly encourages one to give back.

And so I've tried to do that, through words, actions and support, for the causes that my wife and I care deeply about. That's mostly education and equal rights and social and environmental justice. And so I found that it's easy to equate beneficence with writing a check and seeing your name on a wall. But to me, true beneficence is rooted in something more profound than that. It’s a spirit of gratitude, empathy, and respect. And I think it's about making kindness as a core part of who you are as an individual. You don't need to have wealth at all to uplift someone. Sometimes a simple word of encouragement can make all the difference.

And so that I think is the true meaning, for me at least, of beneficence.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Well, those are wonderful sentiments again. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for coming back on our commencement weekend. It's a wonderful time to be here at Ball State. Thank you very much.

[CRAIG HARTMAN]

Absolute pleasure to be with you, President Mearns.