A Public Profile

An interview with Jim Brown, Partner Public Architecture and Planning

I interviewed Jim by phone in his San Diego office. A number of times he couldn’t make out my questions. Frustrating to me, he treated my part of the conversation in the same manner he treats design – searching for found objects and hidden treasures rather than needing to hear all of what was said.

I mistakenly assumed the name of his firm – Public – was a comment on his interest in the urban realm. He corrected me, telling me the story of his first office that had been the former location of a Notary Republic. The name, as it turns out, came from the creative recycling of the former tenants signage. And thus Public was born.

The name foreshadowed the firm’s later foray into the public realm. In the immediate term the name reflected Jim’s immediate curiosity about found objects – a fascination that is threaded throughout all of Public’s projects.

Their work began in furniture and gates, and sometimes objects for people’s backyards. Hardly public at all. Later they received commissions for buildings – all individual projects but always with an emphasis on how the buildings responded to its contexts or addressed the street. With every building, there was intent to enhance the neighbourhood. Overtime most of their projects introduced art into the architecture, a sort of offering to its surroundings.

Their current work exudes public and includes a permanent exhibition of street art and a Friendship Park straddling the border of Mexico and the US.

The graffiti exhibit happened by accident. Jim submitted a building he design and owns as a possible site for a new exhibit that was opening of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art featuring graffiti artists. Two days before the exhibit was to open he got a call from Shepard Fairey an internationally recognized artist – he had no site for his temporary exhibit. The local college could not agree to sign the liability waiver. Jim’s response – ‘Sure you can use my site, you can do a permanent exhibit and I can sign the waiver right now’. The response was typical of Jim’s trusting and open ways. In the process he came to know Shep Fairey, learn that they started out in the same office building just a few years earlier. Jim watched as this impromptu phone call and decision changed the nature of his neighbourhood. When Shep arrived the next day people recognized him almost immediately and passersby tweeted the news to friends. In short order a street party-like atmosphere surrounded the installation of the exhibit. A very public affair.

Jim’s latest project is a park – that straddles the border between the US and Mexico, just south of San Diego. A one point the border was defined with a single chain linked fence. Families living on either side of the border could reunite at the fence, making contact with one another through the openings in the fence. In the days post 9/11 the border tighted and now two parallel fences 150 feet apart define the separation between the two countries. These families, once able to meet at the fence, are disconnected. Jim’s proposal – Friendship Park is a space, a container carved between the two fences where families and friends can meet. Strangely he says his design now takes a back seat to his ongoing meetings with border patrol and the negotiation of policy.

I can’t help but wonder why is this important to Jim? Why undertake this project? Jim reflects on the times we live in – his sense of increased security and real or perceived violence and concludes that Americans and Mexicans need to remind themselves that they are still friends and neighbours. ‘It’s in our best interest to remember that, and not be swayed by the temperament of the times.’

What motivated him to take this on? It all started ten years ago. He came across information on the Loeb Fellowship, a program for leaders in the built environment at Harvard University. He was intrigued. Every year he would print out the forms and contemplate his application. And he asked himself – ‘What would I do, if given this opportunity to dream, to grow, to take a quantum leap? He asked himself - what was the challenge he would undertake, how would he apply his leadership? He turned to his hometown – to unearth the issues it faced. In his field the prominent practitioners in the public sphere were pointing to an issue that defined the city – its relationship with its neighbour to the south. He too concluded this was the most important issued. He gulped and took it on.

He is far from done, his now regular meetings with the border authorities look like they will continue for some time. And from this he is learning that to truly be ‘public’, one has to be willing to stick their neck out, stretch one’s comfort zone and fully engage.