Architects Speculate
On the New GSA Chief

Architects typically gossip about the latest hot builder or newest outrageous design. These days, the buzz of the architecture world is the retirement of a bureaucrat who has labored for the federal government for 30 years.

Edward A. Feiner isn't just any bureaucrat -- nor is he just any architect. Until this week he was chief architect of the General Services Administration, the agency that builds and manages most of the federal government's real estate. As such, he is credited with returning good design to federal buildings and helping make the careers of some of the country's most distinguished and up-and-coming architects.

Mr. Feiner, who is 58 years old, "transformed that position from flunky to phenomenon," says Henry Smith-Miller, of Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, a small New York firm that has won two government commissions. Indeed, dozens of cities and towns across the country have iconic buildings whose design was shepherded by Mr. Feiner, including the Moakley Courthouse in Boston, designed by Henry N. Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed; Richard Meier's federal courthouse in Islip, N.Y.; and Carol Ross Barney's rebuilt Oklahoma City Federal Building.

The chatter among architects is who will replace Mr. Feiner and whether that person will be able to stand up to immense political and budgetary pressures to build cheap, mediocre buildings. The worst-case scenario is a return to the cookie-cutter buildings of the 1960s. Even the most pessimistic architects don't envision a return to the hulking rectangular boxes wrapped with repetitive punch-card windows epitomized by prominent federal office buildings in New York and Los Angeles.

Mr. Feiner fears that the need to protect federal buildings against terrorist attack could undermine his longstanding battle to make government buildings more inviting and accessible to the public.

In the short term the success of several major federal buildings hangs in the balance. These include a new courthouse for Los Angeles, a federal building in San Francisco and the Census Bureau's new headquarters in Suitland, Md., all of which are under construction.

The GSA says it will look outside the federal bureaucracy for a new chief architect, something it rarely does for civil-service positions. "We're looking for a nationally prominent practicing architect," says F. Joseph Moravec, the commissioner of the GSA's Public Buildings Service. "Ed would jump right in with his X-Acto knife and start cutting. I want someone who if pressed could go into the backroom and design the building."

The GSA is one of the nation's biggest builders, spending more than $1.25 billion a year on new construction and restoring older government buildings. That includes at least three major new courthouses, a dozen border stations and headquarters for two federal agencies in various stages of design and construction. Overall, the GSA owns 1,600 buildings. Its biggest clients are the courts and the Department of Homeland Security.

San Francisco Federal Building, under construction; architect: Thom Mayne.

Until the GSA hires a replacement, the office is being run by Leslie Shepherd, a Feiner protégé. Architects familiar with the GSA expect the agency to consider people such as Robert A.M. Stern, a practicing architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and Richard N. Swett, an architect who once served in Congress. Through a spokesman, Mr. Stern said he hadn't been approached about the job. Mr. Swett said he, too, hadn't been approached but added that the job is a "position I could easily see myself involved in."

With no succession plan in place, some worry the Office of the Chief Architect, which Mr. Feiner created, could wither the way great architecture practices such as those led by Cass Gilbert, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe did when singular founders left or died.

"It's the only program left in the federal government concerned about design besides postage stamps," says Hugh Hardy, principal of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture in New York, who is designing a $90 million federal courthouse in Jackson, Miss. "We are all concerned that the emphasis on design excellence could disappear" without Mr. Feiner, says Mr. Hardy. "He's been able to dance around Congress, which isn't an easy matter, and dance around distinguished architecture professionals, and dance around the federal bureaucracy."

A fast-talking New Yorker, known for his signature flat-top hair style and cowboy boots, Mr. Feiner launched the Design Excellence program in the early 1990s to draw top names in architecture to massive federal building projects. Over a decade, he oversaw at least $10 billion of cutting-edge courthouses, border stations and agency headquarters.

Architects who in the past never did government work were brought in. New York's Richard Meier, most famous for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, signed on for two courthouses. Michael Graves & Associates, Pei Cobb Freed, and Skidmore Owings & Merrill also got commissions. Mr. Feiner also changed the architect selection process so that small, innovative firms won career-making commissions.

The John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston; architects: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Budget hawks accused the program of spending too much on aesthetics. GSA insists good design isn't a question of money. "Getting a better designer in effect saves you money because you don't have to do it over and over again," Mr. Feiner says. He adds that designs are made to fit what Congress appropriates, rather than the other way around.

"Everyone is hoping he can be replaced with a person of similar intellect, energy and commitment," says Thom Mayne, founder of Morphosis, a Santa Monica, Calif. firm. Morphosis has three major federal projects despite a history of radical design ideas. Would he have gotten the work without Mr. Feiner? "No possible way," Mr. Mayne says. "It's completely up to his doing."

Mr. Feiner is now a director at the Washington office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill. He wouldn't disclose his new salary. Architects in his position typically make roughly $230,000, according to a 2002 survey by the American Institute of Architects. The GSA chief architect position is in a pay scale that tops out around $150,000.

Adding to the architectural agita occasioned by Mr. Feiner's departure is the fact that the ex-chief's lieutenant, Marilyn Farley, is following him out the door. Frederic Bell, executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, says the "so called suicide pact" makes the situation "that much worse."

The GSA, Mr. Feiner and the projects themselves have received numerous awards. But the ex-chief architect has his own measure of success: whether buildings appear on the covers of local phone books and are made into postcards. "It's nice when the community is proud of their government buildings rather than that they look the other way and are grossed out," he says.

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