Chicago is a city that takes architecture seriously. Living and working there for seven years after graduating from Kansas State shaped how I think about detail, discipline, and the responsibility a building carries to its city.
I graduated into a national economic downturn. The position available to me was in a corporate interior architecture department — not the shell-and-core work my degree had prepared me for. I took it, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to my career. Interior work at that level — trading floors, law firm suites, executive environments — is unforgiving. Every square foot has a cost. Every detail is visible. Every decision about material, proportion, and light is experienced at close range by the people who occupy the space every day. You learn to be precise.
Chicago itself was an education I could not have received anywhere else. The city's architectural history is not in a museum — it is in use, occupied, walked past every morning. Sullivan's ornament on working office buildings. Mies's discipline on the lakefront. The Rookery's light court. These buildings taught me that architecture at its best is not a statement — it is a gift to the city, made without expectation of acknowledgement.
Over seven years I moved from interior work into shell-and-core projects, building the dual expertise that defines my practice today. The combination is unusual. Most architects work in one domain or the other. Having worked deeply in both means I understand a building from the inside out — from the way a specific room feels at eight in the morning to the way the building meets its street.
When I left Chicago for Houston, I carried that dual perspective with me. It has shaped every project since, whether a private residence in Wyoming or a mixed-use development in Texas.
Scott J. Griffith, AIA
Principal Architect · Nashville, TN
30+ years of practice across residential, commercial, and mixed-use architecture. Licensed in 10 states.
