'International work isn't for everyone, or every firm'

Bradford Perkins, FAIA, MRAIC, AICP, is the founder of Perkins Eastman, a 750-person, 10-office architectural, interior design, and planning firm based in New York. He has been the principal architect or planner for several hundred projects in 30 states and 20 foreign countries. He is the son of Lawrence Perkins, FAIA, founder of Perkins+Will, and grandson of Dwight Perkins, FAIA, founder of Perkins Fellows & Hamilton. The author or co-author of four design-related textbooks, he holds a BA from Cornell, an MBA from Stanford, and a BArch from Cornell and City College of New York.

BD+C: You've been working internationally since 1973. What was your experience like?

Bradford Perkins: Early in my career, in 1973, I was a partner at London-based Llewelyn Davies, International. At age 30 I became managing partner of the New York office and a year later three other offices. I was traveling internationally 22 nights a month—New York, London, Beirut, Cairo, Tehran, Trinidad, Caracas, Vancouver, back to New York. Then I ran the Eastern offices of Perkins+Will, and that took me to the Middle East and Brazil.

For a kid, it was exciting, but international work isn't for everyone, or every firm. We're in an increasingly global world, though, and if you're in a large firm or focus on certain project types, you cannot avoid the travel.

BD+C: That's a great segue to your new book, An Introduction to International Practice [John Wiley & Sons].

BP: The book has four sections: first, whether international practice is relevant to you, and how to develop a strategy and tactical plan for entering a chosen market; second, major issues facing such a practice: whether you treat work overseas as occasional targets of opportunity, or whether you make a commitment to a specific country; if so, what presence do you have there?

The main part of the book is an introduction to 180 countries and the prospects for work in each. I go into depth for about 20 places, including China, Korea, Japan, India, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Dubai—why you might want to be there, contract issues, capabilities of the local design and construction industry, code issues, etc. The final chapter offers some predictions for the future.

BD+C: You've been to China more than 60 times. What's your take on it?

BP: China is about to pass Germany as third-largest economy in the world, with annual growth of 12%, modernizing at a rate that's never before been seen. But it's still a very poor country, with 300 million people moving from the country to the cities over the next 15-20 years.

If you're in Shanghai at a five-star hotel and your cell phone works in the subway, you'd think you were in the most modern place in the world, but you go out into the country and it's completely different. It's very hard to find anything communist in the country, except for government land ownership. The silent deal is that in return for stability and growth, everybody goes along with a one-party state.

BD+C: How is all this change affecting design in China?

BP: For years, the country had not built what it now needs—labs, hotels, airports, etc. There was this missing generation who didn't go to university because of the Cultural Revolution. One of my friends, the daughter of a doctor—her mother was made a street sweeper for 10 years, and my friend was sent to a farm. There's this whole missing generation of educated people. So you have this huge demand for large, sophisticated projects, with no core capacity to deliver them.

BD+C: What is your firm doing in China?

BP: For our firm, China presents an opportunity to do projects and building types that are larger and more complex than we might get in this country. My grandfather designed Shandong and Nanjing Universities in 1917, and today I'm doing projects in both places. We're doing a new city in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, called Jinan South City. It's a two-square-mile new-edge city for 85,000 people. We did the master plan, all the details and parcelization and park design, and the schematic design for the first four million sf of buildings.

BD+C: Will the bubble burst after the 2008 Summer Olympics?

BP: Most projects in Beijing must finish before the Olympics, and it will be much harder to start a project if it can't be buttoned up before next summer. But there are at least 100 cities with a million population. Development is spreading inland, into cities like Nanjing, with eight million, and Chongqing, with 32 million.

The design professions in China are moving up very fast. If you're not established there by 2015 with a substantial Chinese staff capability, most of the work will be going to the large Chinese firms. They can charge 20% of what we charge and are becoming very skilled.

You do see the next superpower emerging. China has problems, but it's one of the few places in the world that really likes America. The people I work with there are proud of being Chinese. They view this as their century, and they want to be respected by America.