Architect Clive Pohl reflects on his career as his firm, Pohl Rosa Pohl, celebrates 30 years of business
On the second floor of his Euclid Avenue office building, marked by an attractive sculptural sign that reads “Pohl Rosa Pohl,” architect Clive Pohl works with a small team of creatives, designing everything from commercial buildings and beautiful homes to notable public buildings and landmarks. The firm, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is known for designs that highlight simplicity, clean lines and light-filled spaces.
Following the retirement of his two original partners – his brother Graham, with whom he started the first iteration of the firm in 1992, and Krisia Rosa, who joined them in 2000 – Pohl is now flying solo as the principal architect of the firm. It’s a position that allows him to keep a lean business model, with a tightknit staff of two.
“It was a conscious choice to stay small – the old model of growing your business bigger and bigger never sat well with me,” Pohl said. “The three of us work [together] like a well-oiled machine.”
Designing living spaces and heavily utilized public spaces can be an intimate and painstaking process, and Pohl tends to grow close with his clients as he ushers them through the design process. When asked if any projects stand out as a favorite, Pohl responded like a parent asked to identify a favorite child.
“We’ve had so many great, engaged and receptive clients over the years, and each outcome reflects that team dynamic,” he said. “So, I tend to remember the relationships that gave rise to a beautiful outcome rather than just the end result.”
When pressed, however, he did point to several projects that stand out as highlights: The Helix Garage in downtown Lexington, the nature center at Raven Run and the Edible Garden at Bernheim Forest in Louisville.
While certainly unique and eye-catching, Pohl’s designs draw much of their appeal from their simplicity and high level of functionality, with a design sensibility that also values sustainability and efficiency. Pohl points to being raised in an artistic household as an early influence – his parents were both musicians, and his father built much of the furniture in their house.
“Though [my father] did not directly tutor us in the art of making, we were witness to it and saw it to be a productive side job,” Pohl said. “That was a primary influence: a desire to make both family and artistry work.”
Pohl has sought other creative outlets in his adult life, including building furniture, creating two-dimensional and three-dimensional art, and playing music. He stays active in the Lexington music scene with his band, Uncle Sam’s Bait Shop, which he formed with friends in 2018. The group currently plays the first Thursday night of each month at the local gathering spot Kenwick Table.
Smiley Pete reporter Celeste Lewis recently sat down with Pohl to ask a few questions about his life and career.
Tell me about growing up. Where are you from? My family came over from England on the Queen Mary in 1959, arriving just three months before I was born. With four small boys [ages 2, 4, 6 and 8] and expecting the fifth [me], they took up residence in West Hill, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York. It was a thriving community full of General Electric engineers, artists and lots of baby boom families and an environment teeming with the optimism of the 1960s. Both my parents were classically trained musicians. While Mom taught piano and prepared for one concert after another, Dad [a GE engineer by day] played violin in symphonic settings, and they both participated in theater productions during their ‘off’ hours. Compared to their economically strapped time in post WW2 England, we lived a relatively privileged middle-class life; we all learned to play an instrument, to ski and to sail – things they could only dream about before coming to the States.
Some years later, we moved to Anchorage, Kentucky, a suburb of Louisville, for my high school years. Though I didn’t recognize it then, it was, in hindsight, a positive time. We added to the family by adopting my three siblings from Vietnam; I made lifelong friends, played in bands and theater productions, and driven by a hunger for my independence, I learned to weld in vocational school, graduated early and left ASAP for the West Coast.
What brought you to Lexington? Life in the Pacific Northwest brought me a deeper dive into studying the art of jazz guitar; my amazing wife, Lissa; a graduate degree in architecture from the University of Washington; and two beautiful children; in that order. I tried to convince my brother Graham [my future business partner] to join me in the Pacific Northwest but that effort failed. Seattle’s ‘Californication’ was already leading to inflated real estate prices and overcrowding – a phenomenon that has only gotten worse. With young children, and aging parents in Kentucky, Lissa and I felt it was time to close the gap. Graham and I knew we would work well together, and so during a visit in early 1999 – with just a tiny taste of good bourbon – we made our big decision, and in a blink our Seattle house was sold and we were on our way.
How did you get interested in architecture and design? What were early influences? An early and persistent attraction to – and a knack for – ‘making’ started with carving wood and learning to weld, and those things morphed into furniture construction and carpentry and the integration of different media through design. Context [historic and physical] about social equity and things like environmental stewardship, to name just a few, gives rise to a three-dimensional outcome. When the concept is clear and everyone is on board, the job of the architect is to see it through – to safeguard those choices – through the rigors of detailing and construction. This is not always easy, but when it goes well it can be very rewarding.
In addition, the balancing act I had witnessed at home between the practical concerns of a growing family and participation in the arts had been a steady influence. Dad designed and built all the furniture for our house, and a few years later, a sailboat [one of the first trimarans in the United States]. I now see that their example – a balancing act we have all navigated – has resulted in several generations attempting a similar feat: walking between the worlds of art and commerce.
Titled “From Nothing,” this three-dimensional artwork was a collaboration between Clive Pohl, his mother Madeleine and his brother Graham. Photo furnished
What are some of the design elements that are most important to you? Collaborative spirit: I want my clients to feel heard and to see themselves and their ideas, alongside those that I bring to the table, in the end result. This is a lesson young architects often have to learn. The outcome only gets richer and more mature when the architect is able to facilitate a collaborative conversation and express it in three dimensions.
Simplicity: Complexity is a default, in both music and architecture. I work hard to get beyond it and to move toward simplicity, which is never easy and takes extra effort. This is often perceived as modernism, but for me, it transcends any reference to style and reflects a ‘small is beautiful’ or ‘less is more’ ethos – a world view that I have felt intuitively all my life. It can mean embracing a subtractive approach, resisting the temptation to add layers of ‘stuff’ in an effort to beautify. For those who are trained to see this approach to design can appear as clutter.
Fit: Responding to the context of any site – urban or rural – and reflecting an awareness of its place in nature, its place in history and its potential to fit is what ‘placemaking’ is all about. Particularly in an urban setting, the designer has to begin by answering a simple question: Which contextual elements are worth respecting and reflecting? And sometimes the designer simply needs to up the ante.
What’s something you wish everyone knew about architecture? Most people have simply not been trained to ‘see’ and to recognize the value of proportion and color and materiality, and since they don’t know what they’re missing they cannot see what is possible. While guiding those choices is the role of a good architect [and one I wouldn’t want to relinquish] it would help to improve our collective built environment [e.g., urban and suburban America] if more people had a developed visual and rhythmic acuity. The sensory experience of architecture, after all, is like listening to music: It is an experience of moving through space and time and responding emotionally to the sensory information we receive along the way.
What are some of the innovations you see coming in architecture in the future? While technology does play a significant role in affecting production processes and component price points, the ‘innovation’ that is most needed in the coming years is a shift in human thought, an increased commitment to supporting the essential bio-diversity and general health of our precious planet. And, while many of us in the building trades have long been advocating for a net-zero approach to energy consumption – and, whenever possible, a regenerative/net positive strategy – it is all for naught if we cannot access and utilize economic incentives to encourage responsible behavior and environmental stewardship. These economic incentives are the much needed innovations I hope will become increasingly available.
Tell me about your music. I started out as a songwriter in my teens, and that love of simple melodies still informs much of what I do. Over time that songwriting point of departure has transformed into more ambitious compositions that reflect a broader influence. My heroes tend to be from the world of jazz, and as my desire to embody some of those ideas and my commitment to improvisation have developed, my writing has continued to evolve. In our trio [Uncle Sam’s Bait Shop] we all contribute original music that attempts to blur stylistic lines and defy expectations while holding the listeners attention.
How do you integrate your music into your life? Music has always been a counterweight to my design life. My master’s thesis was titled ‘A Floating Stage for Seattle and the Arts,’ and it was both a design solution for the Seattle Symphony and a theoretical exploration of the parallels between music and architecture. So, this integration has been deepening for a long time, and I find the skills required for music making over time are similar to those that facilitate my design process. Both are really about finding healthy collaborations, and as I think about it, this is an important component of family life too. I’m fortunate to have found strong people in each of these areas who are willing to ‘play’ with me.
If you and your wife were planning a dream vacation to someplace you’ve never been, where are you going? Vietnam would be at the top of that list for so many reasons, the primary one being to satisfy a very long-standing curiosity about the place from which my beloved siblings came.
What’s something that would surprise people to know about you? I play a mean harmonica.
What is a piece of advice you have for anyone ready to design a home? I would suggest they interview experienced design professionals and choose one whose work they admire and with whom they feel compatible. Then, allow themselves to be challenged and be willing to go a bit outside their comfort zone and bear in mind that small is beautiful and arriving at a simple outcome takes time, effort and attention. Simplicity is central to the appeal of a modern aesthetic, and this is why so much residential work in suburban America is overly complex – it’s the easy route.
Collaborative spirit, simplicity and contextual elements are all design elements that Pohl values as an architect. Photo by Emily Giancarlo