As part of our ongoing series of interviews with architectural legends, we are proud to present this interview with Mike Vela, AIA, CDT, LEED AP. We spoke about his lengthy career in architecture and the projects he’s most proud of. We hope you enjoy learning more about Mike as much as we did. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you decide to become an architect?

It was right at the beginning of my second year at the University of Texas. After grade school, I got a scholarship to a military high school in San Antonio, then won a scholarship to the University of Texas. I just fell in love with Austin; it was always where I wanted to go to school. It’s in the hill country and it’s quite beautiful. I learned later that it was a Paul Philippe Cret master-planned design. I had taken only basic classes that first year. I had placed out of 21 hours, so I had an extra slot on my calendar. I took an architectural history class, and it was quite fascinating. I’d always loved to draw. It just seemed to be a natural extension. When I graduated in 1975, I knew that I wanted to teach — maybe not full-time, but as part of the profession — so I then went to the University of Texas at Arlington. I earned a master’s degree in 1978. That master’s helped, and I taught at the University of Utah for 22 years.

Let’s talk about the evolution of your career.

While pursuing a master’s degree, I worked first at a local Fort Worth firm, and then at the DFW Airport as a Project Architect. I wanted to have construction administration experience, and I worked both on and off the airport campus on multiple major works. I worked on the American Airlines Corporate Headquarters and the restoration of their Southern Reservations Office Building and flight simulators.

Were you teaching?

During the last year and a half, I taught at the University of Texas at Arlington. I was teaching construction documents, just like I did later at the University of Utah. When I graduated, I went to Dallas to Foster Meyer Architects for about five years. Because I was quick on the boards when we drew with our hands and I wanted to do construction administration as well, I changed offices and went to HKS.

I knew it was a big architectural firm, and I knew I wanted to work in a large firm. I had some other friends who had intern jobs working at smaller architectural firms, and it just didn’t seem interesting to work on house repairs, roof repairs and restroom upgrades. I wanted to work on big buildings. I wanted to work on large structures. HKS was, at the time, the largest architectural firm in Texas. It was a little bit daunting; there were about 160 people. I didn’t want to get lost in the crowd, but I have been at HKS ever since. It’s been about 40 years.

Were there mentors there?

Oh, very much so. HKS is very collaborative. When I started, I could walk into any one of my project managers’ or principals’ offices, ask some questions, and always get the help I needed. There were a handful of mentors that have now retired. I still talk with them. I still look up to them as good friends and good men.

Different mentors taught me different things. Joe Buskuhl was a project manager before he became HKS president. I was his project architect. We worked on a 30-story corporate office building for Greyhound Dial in Phoenix. I learned from Joe that you don’t do the work unless you have a contract. We were in a contract negotiation, and I was surprised at how he spoke to the owner, “Yes, we’ll do this work, but this is our contract. This is what we need to have.” And the owner kept pushing him off. Joe was basically saying, “We’re good businessmen. We’re not going to do the work until we have a contract. That’s just good business. You’re a good businessman. So are we.”

My first president at HKS, Ron Brame, said, “We’re in the business of architecture. And if you don’t do the business properly, you don’t get to do the architecture.” Those were two very, very good mentors. “We love being architects, but let’s get the paperwork done first. And once we do that, then we’re on good ground.”

How did you become a specialist?

I was a generalist when I joined HKS. Now we’ve grown to 1,700 employees worldwide. When I joined, it was a single office in Dallas, and we’ve migrated around the world with 30 offices. When I started at HKS, we did a lot of office buildings and quite a bit of architectural record work, working with black cape architects. At the time, we were primarily a commercial office. I remember, as a project manager, we thought we might expand into health care. Fortunately, we did, and now we’re the largest health care provider in the United States. I remember saying “perhaps we do some sports” and now you see where that’s led.

I dabbled in all of that. I did a lot of corporate headquarters and a lot of high‑rise construction. The president of the firm knew that my wife was from Utah. He said, “I would like you to open the office in Utah.” When I talked to my wife, that was a very quick conversation, “Absolutely,” because she wanted to return to Utah. That was 25 years ago. What I was primarily asked to do was to be the senior construction administrator for the McKay-Dee Hospital and for Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, with the instruction to keep Intermountain Healthcare happy. I was here for six months, and I knew I did not want to return to Texas. I’m a Texan. I love Texas, but I love Utah even more.

I parlayed anything that might use my experience — office, corporate headquarters and other work. The office grew from just a handful to just under 50, and we did work up and down the Wasatch Front. I had good seed money with the two projects to begin the office, but it was really up to me to expand the office, and that’s what we did.

I taught construction documents at the University of Utah. I absolutely love teaching at the U. I would pick off one or two of the best students every semester for eight or ten years. Emir Tursic is now our office director. I passed the baton to him. He’s been with us 20 years. Almost every one of my six principals at HKS has been a student from that class.

Is doing architecture different in Utah than elsewhere?

I have worked in 28 states and a handful of foreign countries. I’ve lived in Texas, California and here. I would say that there is a can-do spirit here that is genuinely different. I think Utahns, for the most part, are fairly conservative. They don’t get out over their skis. They just have this entrepreneurial spirit: “We don’t know everything, but we’ll figure it out and we’ll get it done.” When the president of our firm was here, he commented, “Your employees are just so engaged.” I tell people back home in Dallas, “I have the best job at HKS. First, I get to work on big projects. Second, I like everybody that I work with, and I like everybody that I work with because I’ve hired them. And third, this is the most beautiful place to be. Where would be better? Where would be easier? Where would be nicer?”

Talk about some of your projects.

People say, “What’s your favorite project?” My response is, “What do you got; what do you need?” I remember my first project with HKS. It was an 18-story, 1,000-room, 750-key hotel, on axis with Disney World in Florida. It was a full complement of a convention hotel, rooms and restaurants. We created a lake and cabanas around the lake. I remember sitting with the owner in the 18-story atrium. We saw people come into the atrium and watched them look up. The game was, “Okay, is the husband or the wife going to look up first?” It was so much fun and engaging to be with the owner in a completed space. I recall completing McKay-Dee Hospital. In the user group meetings, the doctors, nurses and maintenance people were telling us which space they liked the best and how they liked it. What about this? What about that? That’s the best part. Every one of the projects when you finish is the best one.

Finishing Eccles Theatre and being there with Cesar Pelli, who was our partner, was over the top. I learned so much from both Cesar Pelli and Mitch Hirsch. But being in the completed space and going from that very first discussion with Cesar explaining to him what Utah is to assisting with the design, competing for the project, winning the project and then completing the project. And then being there on opening night with the Tabernacle Choir and all of the leaders from Salt Lake, and being with Cesar and seeing the space that we had imagined … that was the best project until the next project.

In addition to the projects, what are you most proud of in your career?

I like to think that I’m a mentor. I feel like a proud papa. I brought these kids in from the university. They were young college kids. I saw them date, marry and have kids. Now their kids are grown. I’m proud that I was able to impact their lives; it feels like a family.

At HKS, in certain cities after the pandemic, it was hard to get staff back into the office to work. My furthest employee is 28 miles away. Here in Utah, that’s about 28 minutes. In New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta or San Francisco, that’s an hour to an hour and a half. So, we have the highest average daily occupancy in the United States of all our HKS offices. That tells me that people like to be where they are. It’s a team sport, architecture. And the team likes to be together. We’ve proven that we could do the work remotely, but at least here in Salt Lake, we prefer to be together.

Any disappointments along the way?

My only regret is that I didn’t find the arts until 14 years ago. If I had to do it all over again, I would have gotten into the arts from the very beginning. There’s something about the arts that is just completely different. It brings people into the spaces that we create in a completely different way. They are spaces that captivate people; they’re special places. There is a significant difference in doing user group meetings. There is a difference between doctors, nurses, technicians, conductors and ballerinas. In every practice I work in, there’s a passion: to have the best hotel, to have the best hospital. Give an artist a space and he or she will do it. Give them a better space, and they’ll be better at it. I’d say it’s more of a passion than a career. It’s not a job. It’s what they do.

You’ve been doing architecture since the 70s. How has it evolved?

For the first eight to ten years there were changes, but they were fairly minor changes. As an example, at HKS we went from paper to Mylar drawings. We had to learn how to use plastic pencils as opposed to lead. We used ink but it was different on Mylar. So that was a little change. I’m old enough to remember when we used a pin bar. I would do all of my details at 8-1/2 × 11 on Mylar sheets, and we would tape them to a sheet. We would send it to the printer, and a mylar was made at 50% or 100%, and that would be our sheet. That was a little bit of a change.

HKS had two principals that toured the country trying to select what the right electronics system would be. We wound up with a CAD system that was very dynamic. I raised my hand, saying, “I want to try this. I think this sounds interesting.” We would do floor plans and reflective ceiling plans with CAD, but all of the other drawings, we would still draw by hand.

And then we said, “Hang on, maybe we could actually do all of the others.” The Greyhound Dial project, that 30-story corporate headquarters in Phoenix, was the first project at HKS that we drew everything, top to bottom — mechanical, electrical, plumbing, all of the architectural landscaping in CAD. That was a big change. There were increases in technology and we could do things better and faster, but everything was basically replicating what we could do by hand: a line was a line. Then when we went to Revit modeling. That changed everything.

Now we are making that same kind of large changes, over and over. It used to be that when we brought in kids from the university, there was a long training period. Now, students are coming to us and are training us that this is the new thing, this is how it’s done, this is how it could be faster. That’s the exciting thing about architecture.

Have you seen other changes beyond technology in the profession?

The way architects and contractors deal with one another has changed quite a bit. In the past, architects would give drawings and the contractor would go build it. I think there was some contention about what things meant. I think architects and contractors have figured out that it’s better to hold hands than argue. There are good contractors in Utah who understand that it’s really a collaboration. There is respect for what we do architecturally and what they do, which to me, is the harder part: taking the architecture and building it. There’s a different working relationship between architects and contractors. It’s much, much better now. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.

What advice would you give to young architects?

I’ll go back to something my dad taught me. He said, “Take money out of the equation. What do you like to do?” I always liked to draw. I always liked to build things. I would ask them the same kind of thing. Architecture has evolved into specializations. Hospitals are a very special thing. Airports are a very, very special thing. High-rise construction is different from the other practices we have. I would ask them what they liked to do and suggest they specialize earlier rather than later.

The age of generalist architecture will always be there for the smaller firms. But at larger firms, we are a body of specialized individuals that work together. My advice, if you want to work on a specific building type — hotels, hospitals, airports or whatever it is — do it, and be the best at that practice.

Any last thoughts?

I’m proud to be an architect. I’m proud to be in a position of changing cities, areas and neighborhoods. I’m working on a project in South Dallas right now. It’s historically a black neighborhood that has not had the services that it should have. The project is really helping knit that neighborhood together again. I’m proud to be an architect that does that. I think it’s different than being a doctor, lawyer or teacher, which are all great professions. But being able to, over the course of time, physically see something that you did, that’s very gratifying to me.

To view the full interview, click the link below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=erfK6pE1lcs