Montana State University architecture grads find virtual success by starting their own firm – Virtual home office: Bend, Oregon, Seattle, WA and Edinburgh, Scotland

When Montana State University architecture alumnus Eric Meglasson invites clients to his architecture office in Bend, Ore., they are sometimes surprised to hear a disembodied sneeze or cough come from Meglasson’s computer.

The sounds come from Meglasson’s business partners, Peter Jahnke and Keith Ballantyne, both fellow architecture grads, who connect with the Bend office via webcam.

The three men are co-owners of Pique Collaborative, an architecture firm with its headquarters in… Well, that’s complicated.

Meglasson works in Bend, near where most of the firm’s projects get built. Jahnke operates out of Seattle, where he focuses on production. Ballantyne chimes in from Scotland, where he teaches at a university in Edinburgh.

By Michael Becker, MSU News Service

The physical separation was something the three partners agreed to work with from the beginning of Pique in 2005.

"We realized that each of us living in our respective areas really broadened our perspective in the kind of work that we see, and that gives us a competitive advantage," Meglasson said.

The firm’s unique virtual office model has earned plenty of publicity, especially after Architectural Record wrote about Pique in 2007. Since then, the firm has received a number of calls from other architects around the country who want to know how to set up their own virtual offices.

Jahnke said living and working in different cities sometimes makes things more complicated for the three-person company, but more often the separation is a source of inspiration.

"I think it brings enormous benefit that we’re not all just sitting in the same office and talking the same talk and doing the same things," Jahnke said.

Apart from the webcams, Pique has managed to distinguish itself in other ways. The architects spend a portion of their collective energy each year on design competitions, which Jahnke said help keep their skills sharp and help expand the firm’s portfolio.

Most of Pique’s work can be seen dotting the central Oregon landscape, where the partners take special pride in marrying their designs to the clients’ build sites.

Part of that means taking Pique’s designs away from the traditional timber- and stone-heavy northwestern look, Jahnke said. Instead, they favor more contemporary designs and materials.

One example is the firm’s vertical patio project in Seattle. The client wanted a hot tub, changing room, bar and all the other backyard accoutrements, but zoning at his home allowed a structure to project only 8 feet from the house. Pique took the challenge as an opportunity to combine style and function, designing a structure with fold-down and pull-out fixtures that would fit within the zoned area.

Ballantyne, who will return from Scotland later this year, said Pique’s focus on meshing building materials and usage is more rewarding than just churning out traditional, staid designs.

"Architecture sustains a certain kind of vibrancy in its use. It’s not something that is particularly or specifically about form," Ballantyne said. "And there’s a rigor that goes beyond the economic imperative."

All three men left other firms to come to Pique, which, for the time being, will remain the small firm it has been from the beginning. For Jahnke, the move toward owning his own practice was one he is unlikely to reverse.

"I don’t know what I would do if, for some reason, this stopped," he said. "I could never go and sit back in someone else’s office and work on big, enormous buildings that are essentially someone else’s. We’ve transferred that enthusiasm from design school into a business where we feel that every day, and that’s really fantastic."

Meglasson said studying architecture at MSU helped him to see the industry through more energetic eyes.

"What I took from MSU was a desire to really work at the highest international level of quality of design," he said. MSU instills that into students, the desire to be not just the best in Bozeman or Montana or the country but to be the best in the world. And we all walk out of there thinking that we can."

Contact Michael Becker at 406-994-5140 or at [email protected].

http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=6229