Jack DiamondTom Sandler
"I started in one room on my own some years ago," says Jack Diamond, 76, the founding principal of Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc., established in 1975.
"Currently, we have an office of 170 people and work in six different countries. Our practise is to find the right partner in each city who has the same outlook, culture and approach."
Renowned for award-winning designs including the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, D.C., and the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, Mr. Diamond recently won an international competition to design the new Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in the Russian Federation. The Toronto-based firm maintains only one office but is able to work simultaneously with its far-away partners through technology Mr. Diamond describes as "magical," such as the ability to transfer digital files of drawings from country to country in seconds, and video-conferencing.
"The Mariinsky theatre project in St. Petersburg was the turning point for the video-conferencing," says Mr. Diamond. "A telephone conference can be very misleading. The tenor of a meeting is vastly different when you can see expression, face, attitude and body language. It's a huge advantage."
The firm has done video-conferencing with Russia, Germany, the United States and France as well as within Canada. Language is an issue - meetings are longer because everything has to be translated so everyone knows what's going on - but with 29 languages spoken in the office and several Russian speaking architects, they have in-house help with translation.
"The important thing is that you can do it frequently," says Mr. Diamond. "You don't have to parse it out like with travel budgets on a project. If you need to call, you can do it right away. It's almost as if they were here. Not quite, but almost. You can't stop and go have lunch together."
Mechanical or logistical problems with the technology are not big issues for the firm, but one challenge is financial. "It's hugely expensive, but it's a capital cost that repays itself," says Mr. Diamond. "It's not just equipping each member of the team with hardware, but licensing everyone on all the different programs that are available is enormously expensive."
While Mr. Diamond credits technology for revolutionizing his industry, he doesn't see the computer ever replacing pencil and paper when it comes to conceptual design. "You have to see what you're designing," he says. "It cannot be done abstractly and you can't do it on a screen."
Coming from a manual tradition, Mr. Diamond was slow to look at the computer as a valuable tool until it had demonstrated its capability. But then the firm hired an experienced team and investigated what system it should employ, now they are continually upgrading.
"I was always open to new ideas," says Mr. Diamond, who credits the company's senior principals for leading the way. "I think curiosity, investigation, willingness to entertain new thoughts and change one's view are the secrets of success."
Mr. Diamond also considers the informal discussion between people in the company as key to the firm's esprit and exchange of ideas. But that became increasingly difficult as they grew larger and spread out between three floors and two adjoining buildings. One thing he did to overcome that was to have everyone in the office make soup twice a year, so there's soup every day but Thursdays.
"My controller said, 'You're gonna have these high-priced guys and women making soup?' " says Mr. Diamond. "And I said, 'Yes, including me. So when soup's up, people will go into the kitchen, get soup and chat.' You need to get them together."