Stuart Baur, AIA Joins PAYETTE as an Associate Principal

This month, PAYETTE welcomes Stuart Baur as our newest Associate Principal.

At PAYETTE, our people are our primary asset. Stuart comes to PAYETTE with 18 years of experience leading technically complex buildings for institutional clients, including most recently UCLA, University of Arizona and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute. He has also led the project team for several major hospitals, including the recently completed Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Legacy Campus for Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. In addition to his project work, Stuart has served on design juries, as a guest lecturer and a professional mentor at the University of Southern California. Stuart received both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Rice University.

Here, Stuart shares his approach – and a bit about himself.

Why do you do what you do?
Architecture synthesizes so many things that I love. I love the challenge of creating something beautiful out of something that must respond to so many functional demands. I love the challenge of understanding the extraordinary range of technical issues and concerns that demand resolution in a way that is functional, buildable and supportive of the design vision. I love the challenge of understanding people and creating environments that foster and advance how those people live, work and play. I love the challenge of coordinating the efforts of so many disparate organizations (owners, consultants, contractors, building officials…) in order to realize the vision we have for a project. Ultimately, what I love most about Architecture (and therefore why I do what I do), is not only that it combines all of these things into a singular endeavor but that it demands excellence in each of them. To paraphrase JFK, I do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

What are you most excited about in regards to your new role at PAYETTE?
After 18 years with one firm, more than anything else I’m excited about having the opportunity to start over again. The challenge of coming to understand the culture at PAYETTE, the design process and the way that people think about and execute such consistently outstanding work is exhilarating. I’m looking forward to learning from a new collection of colleagues and to having the opportunity to share my own experiences in a way that hopefully helps those same colleagues become better at what they do.

Where is your favorite place in the world?
It all depends on my mood. I adore the powerful emptiness of Death Valley and the vibrant energy of Paris. I’m inspired by the fragile quiet of sunrise and the thundering chaos of New York. I love the quaintness of small town New England and the endless variety of Los Angeles. Tell me how you feel and I’ll tell you the perfect place to be when you feel that way. All of that said, if I were compelled to pick just one place I would be enjoying a late afternoon picnic in Place de Vosges with the impossibly joyous sound of my kids playing in the grass around me.

Who do you admire?
As a rule I tend to admire teams more than individuals. Excluding the geo-political ramifications of their work, the Manhattan Project is one of the greatest teams of all time. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works team would be another, as would the people at Apple who created the original Macintosh. Find me a group of people with the courage to believe in themselves, the audacity to embrace a seemingly impossible vision and the willingness to do what it takes to succeed I’ll show you who I admire.

What’s on your iPod?
Music has always been one of those things that I wish I had (or made) more time for, but that never seems to happen so I usually wind up listening to the same sorts of things I was listening to 20 years ago. Sad, but true.

The sky is the limit: what would you redesign?
There are certainly things I’d like to redesign in order to make right some grievous historical wrongs (Graves’ Portland Building anyone?), but the more honest answer is ‘everything I’ve already done.’ There isn’t a project I’ve worked on that couldn’t be better in a thousand different ways and I’d love to be able to go back again and again to refine and perfect the expression and execution of those projects. Think “Groundhog Day” for architecture!

What do you do in your free time?
I’m an avid cyclist and runner and have at different times in my life been a fairly competitive duathlete (duathlon being like triathlon, only with two opportunities to run and no swimming required). Now that I’ve returned to New England I expect that skiing will once again become a favorite winter-time activity. I also enjoy tinkering on small projects around the house in my never ending quest to earn the title ‘handy.’

What do you follow?
I tend to be curious about a lot of different things more than I am devoted to a handful of them, so there isn’t much that I would say I ‘follow.’ I do like professional cycling a lot and pay a fair bit of attention to the European racing scene, but aside from that I’m not an avid fan of any particular athlete or team. I like to read, but I’m not a devotee of any author or genre. I’m definitely not a historian of popular culture. Most of the time I become curious about something, find out as much as I can about it and then move on to the next thing that fascinates me. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of those!

What inspires you?
Passion. Above all other things, I am inspired by passion.