Architects

Showplaces showcase Atlanta firm's defining niche

For Thomas Ventulett, winning the 2002 AIA Architecture Firm Award is the fruit of more than 35 years of labor. Most of that time, he has dedicated to building Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates (TVS), Atlanta, from its humble beginnings as a three-person design studio to a 265-person, $59 million multidiscipline operation today.

"[The award] comes as a testimony of a long life of architecture," says Ventulett, who co-founded TVS in 1968 with Ray Stainback and Bill Thompson, both now retired. All three accepted the award at a gala March 1 in Washington, D.C. It recognizes TVS for "consistently producing distinguished architecture."

Best known for design of convention centers, TVS has designed such facilities for 34 cities across the U.S., including Chicago's McCormick Place expansion. More recently, TVS' reputation has taken it global, including a 550,000-sq.-ft. center in San Juan, Puerto Rico, set for completion in 2004.

Although convention centers represent just one-third of the firm's total annual revenue, Ventulett admits that these publicly funded projects have played a vital role over the years, especially in tough economic climates. He recalls how the firm's first convention center, the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, kept TVS afloat during a recession. "In 1975, Atlanta was in an absolute depression, and the city lost many architecture firms," he says. "We were just one of a few survivors; that project really got us over the hump."

Now thriving, international growth is on the collective mind of the 100% employee-owned firm, says President and CEO Roger Neuenschwander. In I998, it opened a Chicago office in hope that it will create better avenues to foreign work. And last June, TVS formed an alliance with hotel/resort specialist Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, Honolulu, and retail designer Callison, Seattle. Both firms have vast international experience and collectively hold offices in London, Amsterdam and Singapore.