Ben Hamilton-Baillie Nominates Ian Lockwood for a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University

(The events in this post occurred in late 2010)

A short e-mail arrived on Monday afternoon, December 6^th, 2010, from Sally Young, the Program Coordinator for the Loeb Fellowship.  The e-mail said that Ben Hamilton-Baillie had nominated me for a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University.  The news was accompanied with some friendly instructions to locate more information about the Loeb Fellowship program and the application process.  After reading the e-mail, I partially closed my laptop so that I could no longer see the screen, sat back in my chair, and, for the next five minutes or so, contemplated the events leading up to that moment and the wonderful trigger that may just have being pulled.

Golfer Crossing Stream

Ben and I would eventually work together, in 2008, as part of a brilliant team assembled by the Montreal architects Daniel Pearl and Sudhir Suri, from the firm, L’Oeuf.  The project was the redevelopment of an old golf course into a “One Planet Community”.   That meant that no stone would remain unturned to make the mixed-use development uber-environmentally-friendly.  Our client, Suzanne Deschamps, was likely one of the most charismatic and environmentally-minded developers on earth.  She wanted her development to be in the same league as BedZED, Sonoma Mountain Village, and Mazdar City.  Even the polluted water that had, for decades, flowed along a stream through the site might still enter polluted but it would leave clean.  Ben’s and my role was to help provide transportation and street design direction.

Months prior, I learned about the Montreal project via a cold call.  Out of the blue, Sudhir Suri called me and introduced himself and his firm.  He described the redevelopment project, emphasized the high setting for the environmental bar, and covered his team’s desire to build shared spaces and/or other cleverly designed streets and trails.  He said that his team had been searching for a top notch transportation person and asked if I’d be interested.  Naturally, I replied “Yes, very much so.”  He then added the detail that the team had narrowed their search down to two transportation people; me and Ben Hamilton-Baillie.  He then asked me to provide him with the reasons why they should choose me and not Ben and I presumed that they would be calling Ben with a similar request.  I replied, “Of course, you should hire Ben.”  I explained that Ben was a well-respected British architect, lecturer, and designer of streets and public spaces; he had worked closely with Hans Monderman, from the Netherlands; they had pioneered “Shared Spaces” in several European countries; in my view, Ben was a true kindred spirit in the quest to change the conventional transportation paradigm into something sustainable; and that he would be perfect for your team.  Sudhir agreed.  Then, I added, “You should also hire me” and explained that I’m a well-respected transportation engineer, speaker, and designer of streets and public spaces, who has worked throughout North America with people like Walter Kulash, Dan Burden, and Mayor Nancy Graham, who helped pioneer traffic calming and road diets, and who is on a similar quest to change the conventional transportation paradigm.  With the two of us, I explained, the team would get both the European and North American perspectives.  Sudhir agreed with that too and Ben and I had the pleasure of being part of a very high caliber team and contributing to the project.

Ben Hamilton-Baillie (front right) with Loeb Fellow Class 2001

During the on-site design charrette in Montreal, there was a bit of a mix-up with the hotel reservations.  Ben and I were inadvertently booked into a different hotel than the balance of the out-of-town consultants.  Consequently, we ended up having several breakfasts and suppers together.  As a result, we got to know each other.  It turned out that, during our careers, we had been striving for very similar goals.  So, there were tremendous commonalities.  However, due to our different backgrounds and contexts, there were plenty of differences, nuances, and experiences to share.  We traded war-stories, philosophies, Power Point slides, and learned a lot from each other.  It was during these exchanges that I learned that Ben had completed a Loeb Fellowship in 2001 and had found it extremely helpful.  He suggested that I should consider doing the same and that he would be willing to nominate me. 

Phillip Morris with Loeb Fellow Class 1984

 Ben’s positive account of the Fellowship mirrored an account that I heard years earlier from Phillip Morris, from Birmingham, Alabama.  Phillip was a gifted journalist and had completed his Loeb Fellowship in 1984.  Phillip was the point person for what I would call a “community-based client group.”  Phillip had me put together a consulting team to develop a grass-roots, environmentally responsible, and economically sensible Smart Growth plan to help stop the Alabama Department of Transportation from building an extraordinarily wrong-headed, sprawl-inducing, expensive, elevated freeway outside of Birmingham.  Philip said that his Loeb Fellowship was one of the most enjoyable and valuable experiences of his life.  He highly recommended I consider one as well.

Despite Phillip and Ben’s encouragement, the year 2008 was not the best year for me to consider a Loeb Fellowship.  My consulting partners at our firm, Glatting Jackson, and I had recently purchased and renovated a beautiful historic building, in downtown Orlando, and moved our office functions into it.  On the heels of our move, the economic downturn hit Florida hard and Central Florida even harder.  Consequently, local consulting firms were going under left and right and our primary focus was keeping our office in business and continuing to employ as many of our talented staff as possible.  Though plenty of pain was endured, the situation at the office eventually stabilized over the subsequent couple of years.  One of the changes involved our little firm joining a much larger firm, AECOM, in December, 2009.  By the autumn of 2010, it felt like the market and the situation at the office was about right for me to consider pursuing a Loeb Fellowship. 

I dusted off the idea from 2008 and discussed it with Joanne and she said, “You’ve always wanted to do something like this.  Take a shot.”  I mentioned the aligning of the stars to Ben and, a couple of weeks later, Sally’s e-mail arrived.  I’d been nominated!