Ellerbe Becket

Philosophy: To work for our clients' success in an environment that DEMANDS worldwide collaboration, creativity and innovation: Continual investment in process and knowledge allows us to offer our customers superior solutions; the delivery of architecture, engineering and construction services is an integrated process; our integrity and dependability make us a firm of breadth, depth and history. Values by which the firm operates: We focus on our clients and endeavor to be their trusted advisors; we are innovative and creative problem solvers. Key Dates: 1983-84:Mounting losses lead to management changes and layoffs of one-third of staff. The company merges with Welton Becket of Los Angeles; a sports facility design group is formed. The company wins competition to design an 85,000-seat stadium for the 1996 Olympics. The firm is chosen to design retractable-roofed baseball stadium in Phoenix, the first in the United States. The commission for 983 feet tall Kingdom Centre in Saudi Arabia is won. Ellerbe Becket is one of the leading architecture and design firms in the United States. The company provides integrated services that begin with an initial design concept, continue on through the engineering process, and end with management of a building's construction. The firm's many successes include the unique, round Capitol Records tower in Los Angeles, the retractable-roofed Bank One Ballpark in Arizona, and the Kingdom Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a multipurpose facility that is the tallest structure in the Middle East or Europe. Ellerbe Becket has long specialized in designing a variety of institutional and healthcare facilities, including many built over an 80-year relationship with the Mayo Clinic. A stadium design group, started in 1988, also has become a major source of revenue. Ellerbe Becket has 12 offices around the United States and in England, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Egypt. The company has been employee-owned since the late 1960s, when Thomas Ellerbe, the founder's son, retired. Ellerbe Becket began life as Ellerbe Architects in 1909, when the design firm was founded by Franklin Ellerbe. One of the St. Paul, Minnesota-based company's first projects was the Old Fireside Inn, a combined dance hall, retail store, and apartment complex. The Mayo Clinic, based in Rochester, Minnesota, soon contracted with Ellerbe for the design of its first group practice building, and the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (later known as 3M) called on the architect for its first structure as well. In 1911 Ellerbe took a partner, Olin Round, and the growing firm counted 18 employees by the end of the following year. Round left in 1914, but Ellerbe's son Thomas signed on following service in World War I. When Franklin Ellerbe died in 1921, Thomas Ellerbe took control of the company. A creative architect in his own right, Thomas Ellerbe presided over the firm's growth for the next several decades. During these years Ellerbe Architects came to specialize in designing healthcare facilities. In 1922 Thomas Ellerbe proposed the then-new idea of adding a private bathroom to each hospital room, and the firm later developed a number of new floor plans for hospitals in the 1940s including the cross, radial, cloverleaf, Y-plan, penta, and others. World War II saw the company working with Northwest Airlines at St. Paul Municipal Airport to build new hangars, which featured the largest laminated pine-arch trusses used to that time. The 170-foot-wide structures these helped support were built without metal components because of wartime steel rationing. Thomas Ellerbe was a strong believer in cooperative values, both in regard to his staff and in the design process. His firm was the first of its size to pay salaries and offer benefits to its employees, and the first to experiment with a four-day workweek. The company's approach to design was also a cooperative one, featuring an integrated set of services that