To be an architect in Greenville is to see the city with a different set of eyes.
John Edwards, the new Greenville office lead at the architecture firm LS3P, likes to see the city from a bird’s-eye view.
“You hear a lot of people talking about how Greenville is becoming, for lack of a better word, ‘dense,’” Edwards said. “But it’s funny, because months back, I was actually looking at some old postcards of Greenville and there was an aerial shot that showed the city far more dense than it is today.”
It’s no secret that in the decades that followed those idyllic postcard days the city saw a period of decline, of buildings razed, of populations seeping out to Greenville’s tertiary areas.
Now, the city is in a new postcard era, Edwards said.
“It’s almost as if during that period in the middle of the 20th century, we started erasing Greenville,” he said. “And now we’re putting it back together with an eye for the future.”
Edwards, a Charleston native and Clemson grad, came onboard at LS3P in 2005, when the firm still operated under the name Neal Prince. In the 15-plus years that followed, he’s played a role in a glowing roster of major buildings in the area. He’s also witnessed a major shift in the way architecture functions. Those halcyon days when architects followed their whimsy, tackling a wide variety of building types, are now gone for good, replaced by a field that has become increasingly specialized.
“From a nostalgic standpoint, I do miss those days,” Edwards said. “I got into this field because I was interested in a lot of different aspects of how buildings are put together and designed. But buildings today, particularly the technology that’s driven them over the past couple of decades, have really forced specialization out of necessity.”
LS3P is no different, but the scale of the firm has allowed it to partition its efforts into not just one building type, but six: higher education, K-12, health care, civic, industrial and commercial (the latter of which bridges into workplace).
While it may sound counterintuitive, Edwards said that specialization also breeds more creativity. Jumping from building type to building type might foster a more holistic pallet for the architect, but the old phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” certainly applies.
“It leads to more creativity within those building types because people become so much more immersed in these different market sectors,” he said.
Once an architect masters the macro-design elements of a building type, the granular details of the design become the focus. In the design of a health care facility, for example, the challenges become highly specific. What’s the best medical exam room? What’s the best surgical suite and why? How can the design of a hospital entryway respond to both a global and futurist mindset, preparing for the technological developments that are sure to come?
“And diving that deep into the knowledge base of these areas has led us to some very interesting places,” Edwards said.
But just as the painter focuses on each individual brush stroke, he or she will ultimately step back to see the whole picture. Edwards is no different. Detailed planning at the micro level allows the macro level to thrive, he said. And in that regard at least, he’s not worried about the future of Greenville.
“People are seeing Greenville grow, and that’s a huge concern,” Edwards said, “but you have to grow in order to live. I think as a community, we’ve done a lot better job than most at taking on the planning activities for what we want to be.”
He said the biggest test will be the one shared by the neighboring towns, cities and communities that stretch in the 25- to 50-mile band around Greenville.
“We’re seeing a lot of growth in communities that haven’t experienced it before,” Edwards said. “The goal is to help them prepare to deal with that in the best way possible, which isn’t always easy, but that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges and opportunities going forward.”
