Clay Wallace, WUKY
What made you want to get into historic preservation work?
Kevin Gough, Architect and Principal, Champlin | EOP
I came into it somewhat through a backdoor. I was practicing as an architect during the 2008 recession and some of my clients were well-positioned to start doing projects using historic tax credits that were significantly increased and boosted during the Obama administration during the downturn. The clients sort of brought me to the projects and I started developing skills from there.
Clay
So tell me about the Capital Project. What's something that you can tell us to help us understand the scale of this project?
Kevin
It is a building originally built around 1908, 1910. And it has not had a significant thorough renovation since the mid-50s.
In the 50s, they installed a lot of comfort things like heating and some early air conditioning came in the 60s and 70s, but the building has not been modernized since that time; it’s just been maintained. This project is the first full-scale comprehensive renovation of the building since its original construction.
Clay
In that time, how have the needs of the people working in the building changed?
Kevin
Think about the difference between the normal data lines that we have today to run all of our computers all the way to air conditioning - those things were not present in the building historically, and the way that the building is constructed is very different than it is today, where the walls are primarily solid with plaster coating on them. They're masonry with plaster coating. So, embedding wires and running them through all the little chases and nooks that we have in our modern construction techniques was not possible.
They had to drop acoustic tile ceilings that you've seen throughout the Capitol to run all of those wires and ducts and pipes above them. But what we found was the original historic plaster crown moldings and fixtures above those ceilings. So our intent is to restore it to its historic appeal while embedding all of those modern technologies into the walls and floors.
Clay
On your website, you name the original architect of the building, Frank Mills Andrews. Do you ever encounter something in your work and wonder why he made a particular decision in the original design of the building?
Kevin
Yes and no. When we do a project like this, the first thing we did was spend a year doing what the state calls a Phase A report, which is essentially a thorough documentation of everything we can find in the building, whether that's things worth saving or things that are problematic and need to be addressed. So, we uncovered all of those types of decisions during that time.
Honestly, they're just the nature of the way they were building things at that time. The role of the architect has changed a lot in the last 120 years, so it was really the tradespeople that were making the on-the-ground day-to-day decisions of how to construct things. Those techniques were common and typical across most construction sites, really, so it just takes having a deep background knowledge of how things were constructed in order to solve those mysteries, so to speak.
Clay
You're seeing a part of the Capitol that many people see, but few people get to be close to. You've already told us about the ceilings. Are there any other parts of the capital that you can really only appreciate up close?
Kevin
Everyone has had to deal with our scaffolding that's been around the dome for the last two years. We have one more year to go.
Getting on that scaffolding and being up close to the column capitals - the hand-carved limestone scrolls at the tops of the columns - getting to stand at the lantern and have the views out over the landscape around Frankfort, which is breathtaking… That is something that most people will never get to experience, because we don't always have the scaffolding in place and only so many people can go on the scaffolding. But the scale of that dome and the hand-carved limestone detailing of the whole pedestal and base of that dome are really incredible. And they make me feel like I'm in the 19th century, almost.
Clay
Listeners in Lexington will be familiar with another project of yours - the Marksbury Family Branch of the Lexington Public Library.
Kevin
That's right.
Clay
What's something that you incorporated into that building's design that you made with the future in mind?
Kevin
That building was one of the most gratifying projects I've ever worked on, actually, because the role of the public library has changed in our culture. You know, obviously the books are still there. They're really dedicated to being a library and giving access to reading material to the community. But now the libraries sit at the center of their communities, especially the branch libraries, and they are a place for people to take their kids after school to keep them occupied while the parents work, or to go get ESL classes, or we have makerspaces.
There are lots of things in that library that are so dedicated to what the community needed. We spent a long time listening and hearing what the community were asking for and giving that back to them rather than just saying, “Hey, here's a library. This is what you need.”
That, to me, is is what stands at the center of that of that project - making it truly a public place. Even the outdoor space that you see around the front, we tried to give what would feel essentially like a small neighborhood park. That is at the core of all great architecture - that it belongs to the city, it belongs to the community that helped to create it.
Clay
Wow. I mean, that sort of pride must carry forward through to this Capitol project in that it's, you know, a building that belongs to to the people of Kentucky.
Kevin
Yeah. I grew up in Kentucky. I left for a long time, almost two decades, and I came back about eight years ago. It has been an honor, the honor of a lifetime, to get to work on something so significant, so symbolic of who we are as a Commonwealth, of all of our history, and what we've held as important throughout all of those years.
It's overwhelming at times to think about the responsibility that we have as a team. And again, this is definitely not just me doing this. My design team alone is over 100 people. So it's quite meaningful and quite significant. We do not take it lightly. We know the importance of it and we're doing everything as meticulously and carefully as we possibly can.
Clay
You say that you’ve got a team of 100 people on your end. If you would estimate how many people are involved in the renovation efforts at the Capitol, what would that number be?
Kevin
Our construction manager did a calculation of how many tradespeople and laborers would be involved, but that's only a small portion of it. That's probably close to 1,000 here, locally. But we have manufacturers and designers and engineers and fabricators and material scientists and everyone at the Commonwealth, the state government, who have been involved and helped make this project happen.
We're into the thousands of people. This is not a small effort. It's not one person running this show. It's been all of us over the course of five years at this point, getting to this stage that we're in now with full construction going on. It's involved every branch of our government, every agency, and then not to mention all of the contractors and tradespeople that will be involved on the site over the next three years.
Clay
For people who are maybe interested in getting into the type of work that you do, where would you direct them to follow that passion toward?
Kevin
I like to say in the historic preservation community that I'm just an architect. I say that only half tongue-in-cheek. I studied architecture at the University of Kentucky. That was where I did my undergraduate study before I went off to go to graduate school. I learned how to think about the role of architecture in society, how to construct it, how to make it durable, how to make it last, how to take care of it.
Then, over the last 25 years of my practice, I've focused primarily on how to renovate and restore buildings because the amount of investment that we as a society put into buildings is tremendous. So in my opinion, taking care of our buildings and making them durable is one of our primary responsibilities as architects. So that's what draws me to it. That's what makes me want to keep doing it because these buildings are meaningful and have been meaningful for a long time. And they're definitely worth taking care of for the next generation.
Clay
How has entering into that historic preservation space influenced the way that you make decisions as an architect?
Kevin
I've really loved the added overlay of material scientists into the work that we're doing.
As architects, when we're designing a new building from the ground up, we're often choosing products. That's kind of what it feels like at times. Yes, we have the building science knowledge to understand how to insulate a building, how to light a building, how to make it meet the building codes and those types of things, but bringing in material scientists and doing the diagnostic work on an existing building is just one of the most fun little puzzles I love solving, whether it's a really small building or something like the state Capitol.
I love bringing in extra pairs of eyes and looking at patterns of staining, patterns of deterioration, and trying to solve the mystery of what's causing that. And, then, solve the secondary mystery of how to repair it and prevent it from happening again. That's my favorite part of it.
Clay
Do you ever think about, or maybe try to avoid, the puzzles that you might be leaving for people in the future who look at your work?
Kevin
All too often? Yes. You know, sometimes with buildings today, we take a short view.
Some buildings are retail, or they're something that's meant to change every five to ten years. I like to think about what's going to happen over the course of 50 years, 80 years, and trying to anticipate what water is going to do to a building mostly. That's what we're really, really heavily focused on, what that will do to a material over time.
And, then, trying to set up building owners for how to maintain buildings like this - we try to think through how they will take care of the cleaning, how they will take care of masonry repairs if they can't get to certain areas.
Trying to reverse engineer future damage so that we can prevent it when we're doing our work is challenging, but it's fun. I really like putting on that hat and trying to think through it.
Clay
Is there anything that you'd like to add that you think listeners might like to know?
Kevin
I just really appreciate the patience that everyone in Frankfort and beyond are giving to this project. This is a project that has been attempted many times over the last 35 years or so, but building the consensus between all of the branches of government - between the Legislative and Executive branches - to fund a project like this, to have everyone bear the burden of moving out of the building for the first time since it was completed in the early 1900s, it's a humbling experience.
To see the consensus and to see everyone get behind a project like this has been really fascinating to watch. It's a burden. It's expensive. It's a big disruption to the way that they operate and manage the affairs of state government. But everyone's pulled together, and we hope to get this project finished on schedule so that everybody can get back in there and really enjoy the newly revitalized building. That's what I look forward to.