60th Anniversary Q&As
Bob Koch, AIA, Licensed Architect & Founder
Q1: Now, 60 years later, how does it feel to have a team of over 45 people working on projects across the nation?
Bob: With time, you gain experience and insights into both the business and the profession. They hone your skills and elevate your design’s value. When the whole team shares the same tenure and collaborative insights, their combined capacity and effectiveness is multiplied. Personal pride comes from the quality of the team, not their size, and the value-added way they collaborate with and educate each other. FK has matured to a standard that has invites national, and selectively international attention. This legacy is the product of all who contributed, now and before. It is heart-warming to admire the current team and their capabilities and thankful for those who passed through FK over time and added their part to the firm’s position.
Q2: What has been the most surprising part of the journey so far?
Bob: It was always understood that change and growth are inevitable. The technological evolution from a paper and pen profession to a computer-based profession was not visible on the horizon 60 years ago. Today it is ubiquitous.
Evolving with change has made the profession a continuous learning and growing experience, making each day an opportunity to learn. There is no better journey to hope for.
Q3: Looking back over the past six decades, what are some of your proudest moments?
Bob: Winning national competitions resulting in major engagements for clients such as Disney, Universal, and Sun International were clearly milestone events. They changed the company trajectory. But the most satisfying moments have been the result of acceptance and performance history of the projects completed. That measure of worthiness isn’t momentary. It is instead a continuing source of pride for the team to savor.
Q4: The architectural landscape continues to change - what have been the most significant developments at FK Architecture over the last several decades?
Bob: Several milestones come to mind.
· When we built or corporate building and moved from a collection of neighboring residential units converted to offices to our current facility, it triggered our evolution from a small proprietary practice to a truly corporate entity.
· Forced by major recessions in Central Florida over the years, the decision to expand our business development borders to a national platform by exhibiting and presenting to a national audience the lessons and accomplishments within the development industries we serve.
· Having national and international attention from industry press on FK’s design contributions, resulting in invitations to serve a global audience with a league of preferred developers and business enterprises allowed for selectivity of our client candidates to occur.
· A corporate decision reached early on to build a firm that could hand down leadership and ownership to subsequent generations as a commitment to colleagues, and as a statement of vision for a long future ahead.
Q5: How does the culture at FK Architecture set the firm apart compared to other firms?
Bob: Notwithstanding the changes imposed by Covid, or the geographic separation between members of the team, it is the culture of “family”, that reflected values of the initial leadership and those that followed. As colleagues and co-workers, we spend the majority of our waking time with each other, often more than with our personal families. Fostering, encouraging, enabling a respectful and collaborative attitude within the team and sharing lighthearted, recreational, and learning goals within and outside the office, has preserved a family value internally and advance family values at home as a moral standard to live by.
Q6: If you could go back in time, what is one piece of advice you would give yourself?
Bob: Do not make your career an obsession. Allow for time for all parts of a well-rounded life. Family, spiritual, wellness, recreation, and civic engagement are essential parts to balance with work and to make an individual whole.
Q7: What are some of your core philosophies that inform your approach to leadership?
Bob:
· Remain flexible.
· Be open, listen more than you talk.
· Question more than you answer.
· Be trustworthy, honest and respectful.
· Remain humble and always applaud the contributions and accomplishments of others.
Q8: As the industry has evolved, FK Architecture has adapted and integrated new technologies and has taken on sustainable approaches to projects. Why is this important, and how has this impacted the company’s growth?
Bob: John Nesbit, “Megatrends”, once wrote, “the computer deals with complexity with such greater ease, it invites greater complexity”. The advent of technology allowed for more thoughtful execution, more refined product development and more effective image and document work product, and in less time. It may replace us all with AI, but for now it is a tool whose reward should be the time to be more thoughtful and more inventive.
Q9: What are some notable projects from the last 60 years?
Bob: Too many to mention. From the most conspicuous to the most humble, they all taught us much. Outsiders might select FK projects they are familiar with and with which they share industry knowledge of. So, the merit of any project would be in the eye of the beholder. Internally, notability comes from how well the team responded to challenging objectives, unreasonable timelines, insufficient budgets, and still produced excellence worthy of note.
Q10: Giving back to the community is part of the fabric of your firm. Can you expand on why this is so important to the company and the community?
Bob: First of all, such a commitment is important to the individual. We are all the product of gifts from others. We have a moral obligation to “pay it forward”. As a profession, it is the best way to see the world with a wider vison. Too often, we lack awareness and motivation to better the world we live in because we don’t take time to be engaged.
Civic involvement, church involvement, volunteer involvement are all character builders, skill development forums, networking affiliations and mind-expanding venues. As they help shape the better person, they build the better firm.
Q11: The 60th anniversary is a significant milestone. What do you expect the company will accomplish by the 70th anniversary?
Bob: There is great certainty, the leadership, the team, the corporate identity and the history are a platform that ensures success and growth in whatever means the company wishes to define it as.
The speed of change is so fast, I have a hard time seeing a horizon one year away.
Nonetheless, that milestone will present a company, continuously redefining itself, committed to professional and personal growth, and capable of handling any challenge put before it. Were I younger?, this is the kind of place I would wish to grow with.