Change of heart: Torti Gallas and Partners helped invent sprawl. Now they're leading the charge against it

Residential Architect, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Meghan Drueding

The outside world was catching on. In 1997 the firm won a national AIA Honor Award for regional and urban design, for the Baltimore HOPE VI project, Lafayette Courts. By that point CHK had work going on all over the country: military privatization, seniors housing, downtown mixed-use complexes, and Neo-Traditional neighborhoods. It was even designing a couple of new towns in Turkey. It had gotten so far away from the CHK model of suburban tract housing, in fact, that the time had arrived for a name change. CHK became Torti Gallas and Partners that year. Torti's name represents the firm's strength in design and Gallas' its business acumen. "We're one-hundred percent design, one-hundred percent business," Torti says. "That's the pact Tom and I made."

Wisely, they didn't throw away the entire CHK legacy. The old incarnation may not have won AIA Honor Awards, but it knew how to produce housing that people wanted to buy and live in. "It's not like they had a bad heritage," says Jonathan Barnett, FAIA, head of the urban design department at the University of Pennsylvania. "They had a good heritage that they had to transform. Their technical knowledge about the implementation of housing has been one of the reasons for their success." Architect Maurice Cox, who is also the mayor of Charlottesville, Va., concurs. A commercial-corridor study Torti Gallas did for his city won an AIA Honor Award in 2003, the firm's fifth to date. "Not only are they urban designers, but because of their long experience in building houses they were able to speak to the housing types needed in Charlottesville," Cox says.

here and now

Now, in 2004, the question of whether Torti Gallas could successfully transform itself has long been answered. The 51-year-old, 150-person firm has projects going on in 47 cities across the country, and its principals are regulars on the urban design and development lecture circuit. In 2003 it had its best financial year ever.

Developers sing its praises. "They combine style and vision with practicality, and they truly respect the community," says Maureen McAvey, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute who has also worked with Torti Gallas on the developer side. The firm's high percentage of winning RFPs has allowed it to take unusual risks with its fee structure. In certain cases, it's started to charge developers a reduced design rate in exchange for an extra "success" fee if its plan is selected.

The appeal of its phoenixlike history notwithstanding, the most interesting piece of the Torti Gallas puzzle is its continuing effort at self-improvement. Torti and Gallas seem to have drawn courage from the initial CHK makeover, for they and the other 15 principals are constantly tweaking the way they operate. The quality of the firm's architecture is uneven at times, especially compared with its urban design. Rather than accept this situation, they're challenging themselves head-on. They've started up a second Design Discourse that is devoted specifically to architecture, much as the previous one centered on planning. "We're trying to develop an ideology around our work that is identifiable and explainable," Torti says. "As a large firm, we need a way of coming to some common ground." In addition to how-to workshops and philosophical discussions, the series also includes studies of work by architects the firm admires, such as Robert A.M. Stern, Pyatok Architects, Michael Dennis, and Hartman-Cox.