Date Posted: 11.09.2015
Press Release
Seattle and San Francisco (Nov 9, 2015) – Following multiple years of strong growth, Seattle- and San Francisco-based Mithun, a sixty-six-year-old integrated design practice including Architecture, Interiors, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Planning, announced today a new chapter in its leadership. Effective in November, Mithun’s Board of Directors changed the Executive Committee with partner Brendan Connolly, AIA joining firm President Dave Goldberg, AIA and partner Anne Torney, AIA in guiding the firm’s daily operations. Bert Gregory, FAIA and Bruce Williams, AIA, CEO and COO for the last 15 years, will remain shareholders, and will continue to serve on the firm’s Board of Directors. These strategic, planned changes are in keeping with Mithun’s long history of being run by its design leaders – which now enters a fourth-generation executive team.
Based in Seattle, and with twenty years of service at the firm, Dave Goldberg has served on Mithun’s Board since 2003, and will continue to lead a wide range of projects including sustainably-focused corporate office, education and non-profit work. “I couldn’t be more excited by the opportunity to continue Mithun’s growth in design excellence, with a focus on integration, sustainability and creating positive change in people’s lives through our work,” he said.
Anne Torney will continue to lead the firm’s Mithun/Solomon office in San Francisco, with her focus on project leadership for urban design, affordable and market-rate housing. Brendan Connolly, based in Seattle, will focus on firm-wide design quality, and continue his role in leading the design of education, student housing, and corporate workplace environments.
Bert Gregory will continue to serve as board chairman guiding the Board’s responsibility for strategic direction, and remain an active design partner, leading projects in the urban realm including transit oriented development, mixed use, workplace, and urban design. Bruce Williams, AIA, has served as firm COO since 2000 and will continue on as a partner, leading key operational initiatives for the firm and select project work.
“We have accomplished much toward our stated mission of ‘inspiring a sustainable world through leadership, innovation and integrated design’ over the past fifteen years,” said Gregory. “With the strategic initiatives of the last five years, Mithun is uniquely poised to implement sustainable design at an even deeper level. I am energized about the future of our practice, and the continued ability of Mithun’s work to have a profound positive impact at a global scale.”
“Bert and Bruce led the firm through significant growth in design quality and geographic reach during the past fifteen years. We’re fortunate to have had their leadership, and to continue having their active engagement as we move forward,” added Goldberg. Revenue at the firm has more than doubled over the past five years, and the expansion of the practice in San Francisco, bolstered by the 2012 merger with Daniel Solomon Design Partners, has significantly increased market share up and down the entire West Coast.
Founded in 1949, Mithun has risen to national prominence for its sustainable, integrated design work for corporate, civic, market-rate and non-profit clients seeking to make a positive impact on individuals, communities and global systems. The firm has been recognized with five prestigious Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and was recently ranked as the #13 design firm in the U.S. by Architect Magazine. The firm’s current clients and projects include the University of California (design-build student housing projects in Irvine and San Diego), Weyerhaeuser (corporate in headquarters at Pioneer Square, Seattle), Chatham University (net positive energy campus near Pittsburgh), Louisiana Children’s Museum (campus in New Orleans’ City Park), Security Properties (urban housing in Portland and Seattle), Hillwood (Perot Family office campus in Dallas), Mercy Housing (several affordable housing properties in San Francisco), along with leading Fortune 100 high tech corporations in Silicon Valley.
