Fred Clarke (right) discusses a design project. Photo courtesy of Pelli Clarke & Partners

Fred Clarke
Partner, Pelli Clarke & Partners
Age: 76
Industry experience: 55 years

Fred Clarke traveled to Tokyo last weekend to see first-hand progress on construction of Japan’s tallest skyscraper, the latest in a series of landmark towers that his New Haven architecture firm has designed across the globe. The 1,082-foot-tall Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower is the latest in a series of notable projects by Pelli Clarke & Partners located near major transit hubs, from San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower which opened in 2018 to Boston’s South Station office-condominium tower scheduled for completion in 2025. A meeting with Argentine-American architect César Pelli during Clarke’s student days at University of Texas-Austin led to a job offer and a long-time career alliance that spanned cities from Los Angeles to New York and New Haven prior to Pelli’s death in 2019. Clarke and his wife, Laura Weir Clarke, live in Guilford and also own a pair of carriage houses in New Haven, which double as a library for Fred Clarke’s collection of 40,000 vinyl records.

Q: What are the major differences in designing buildings for U.S. clients versus international clients?
A: Working globally, you have to really educate yourself about the cultural differences between architecture in the U.S. and as it’s done practically anyplace else. There are some very big differences. In the U.S., a typical commercial office building floor plate is probably in the range of 25,000 to 28,000 square feet. In Japan, they can be as large as 50,000 to 60,000 square feet. We’re just finishing up a project in Tokyo that has a 65,000-square-foot footprint and it’s the tallest building in Japan. It’s really evidence of a vastly different real estate market and even building codes. Those are the kind of differences you find in every country. It stems from tenant needs, attitudes about engineering and seismic issues, cultural differences, and even attitudes about daylight. When we work in Europe, floor plates are much smaller than the U.S. because in most countries, there are regulations about how far a person who is working in the building can be from sunlight. What I’ve learned in Japan is I’m not going to change how they do their work, so I have to change myself.

Q: How many employees are based in the New Haven headquarters, and has your firm’s use of real estate changed since the pandemic?
A: We have two offices in China, a Toyko office for 30 years, plus New Haven and New Haven, which we call the “Mother Ship.” All of the design originates in New Haven or New York. In New Haven, we are on a three-days-in-the-office schedule, and New York is probably even more flexible than that. We have had to adapt and it made sense in many ways. It helped us find new ways to communicate with each other and fortunately the technology was already there, so we made the transition almost overnight.

Q: What led to your first job in the industry and the partnership with César Pelli?
A: I met César Pelli only once for a lecture when I was still a junior at the university, and we had a chance to talk. He looked at some of my projects. I didn’t know I was being interviewed, but then he went back to Los Angeles and wrote me a letter offering me a job. It’s the only career decision I ever made, and that was over 50 years ago. I feel very fortunate in that regard. He then left Los Angeles when he was named dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and I decided it was a good time for me to leave as well. I went to Rice University in Houston to teach. He and I had a loose handshake arrangement that if any interesting projects came up, we could get together and create a firm. It happened very quickly. We landed the commission for the expansion and renovation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and I moved from Houston to Manhattan in one weekend. Over time, we created a firm in New Haven right near the Yale University campus, two blocks from the school of architecture, and we are in that same location 47 years later. The story is in many ways a simple organic tale of just being lucky enough to find the right opportunities, but on the other hand, it’s been a lot of work and stress. I tell the younger people in my office if one considers the present moment and the economic slowdown, this is my sixth one. So just get through it, and the world will come back together at some point.

Q: How well is New Haven adjusting to the post-pandemic urban model?
A: Pre-pandemic, New Haven was in the midst of an absolute renaissance. Thousands of rental units were being built and occupied, the restaurant scene was blooming and culturally it’s a beautiful place. The pandemic affected us the way it did everybody else in impacting the street scene and restaurants. The multifamily projects are still being built and occupied, and we’re now behaving like a city of our size really should. The quality of life is improving. Activity on the street is measurably better. This used to be a town, because of Yale, where it would be almost dead in the summer, but it’s got a lot of year-round activity and that is really quite wonderful.

Fred Clarke’s Five Favorite Films for a Long Holiday Weekend

1. “High Fidelity”
2. “Young Frankenstein”
3. “Buckaroo Banzai”
4. “Fifth Element”
5. “Ghostbusters”