Interiors Star Irving Joins HOK in San Francisco
Submitted January 22, 2012, 6:41 PM
Richard Irving, an interior designer whose history includes work for The Getty Center in Los Angeles and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck, has joined the San Francisco office of global design firm HOK as its first design principal representing the interiors discipline.
Going forward, Irving, Design Director Paul Woolford and Design Principal Alan Bright will lead design for the San Francisco office of the 57-year-old privately held company, which recorded 2010 revenue of $470 million worldwide. HOK has had a San Francisco presence for 45 years.
Irving returns to Northern California after more than two decades at Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP in Los Angeles, where he was design principal for interiors.
He immediately joins HOK’s work on Terminal 3 at the San Francisco International Airport and for developer Wilson Meany Sullivan on WMS’ proposed 1.5 million square-foot office complex at its Bay Meadows mixed-use development in San Mateo. He also undertakes the redesign of HOK’s own San Francisco studios. The offices consist of 35,000 square feet on two floors of One Bush Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Financial District. The studios were last redesigned a decade ago.
Rob Steinberg, president of Silicon Valley’s Steinberg Architects, which also has San Francisco offices, said HOK has scored “a competitive coup” with Irving’s addition to its practice.
Steinberg worked with Irving on the City of San Jose’s downtown Civic Center, an 18-story office building complemented by a glass rotunda entrance and public plaza, all completed in 2005. Irving led design of the common-area interiors including the rotunda, the council chambers, lobby and other public spaces.
“He is a very thoughtful, refined and elegant designer who has worked in environments with gold-medal, top-of-the-line architects. His background is first-rate,” Steinberg said. “They are lucky to have him.”
Irving’s arrival matched nearly to the day the retirement of HOK’s former San Francisco managing partner Edward McCrary, who played a pivotal initial role in bringing Irving to the new post. Irving, Woolford and McCrary all worked together in the San Francisco office of design firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP in the early 1980s.
His arrival at HOK follows that of Denise de Ville, the former director of business development for the Western United States for global design behemoth AECOM Technology Corp. De Ville joined HOK in October as its vice president and director of business development.
Woolford said the firm expects to make additional strategic hires in San Francisco as HOK positions itself to compete in what he says is a rapidly changing business environment. “We are seeing the work of design moving to a larger-scale production model,” he said. “The people we are designing for are younger, a new generation. Clients have a focused problem, schedules are shorter, the financial commitments are tighter, but the expectations are what they were or higher.”
The practice is currently evaluating the expansion of its design team with a design principal focused on building physics, Woolford said.
