Brian Healy often surprises people when they first meet him. His work says prima donna architect, but in appearance and general attitude, he’s more Lou Reed than Lou Khan. He’s the guy with thick silver hair wearing a black turtleneck and a pair of well-washed jeans. He’s also the former BSA president who resurrected Conversations on Architecture, a series of informal discussions with an invited architect, which he has held monthly since he first took office two years ago. Healy believes passionately in design, the singular reason he decided to run for the presidency. Through his conversations, he has brought the famous (Machado-Silvetti) and the esoteric (Mark Goulthorpe) to a public audience in an informal setting.
Twenty years ago, Healy presented his work at an original Conversation, when the forum was exclusive and members wore tuxes. Now it’s his show and after two years of moderating, he temporarily handed off the job to Campbell in January so that he could sit in the hot seat once again. Campbell introduced Healy with an anecdote: it was 1985 and he went to interview him when he had an office on McGrath Highway in Somerville. The space was a loft the size of a football field, entirely empty, except at the end where Healy sat alone at a drafting table, surrounded by exquisite models and stacks of CDs.
The image of the lone architect lingered as Healy presented his winning entry for The Mill Center for the Arts Competition in Hendersonville, North Carolina. This was the product of a singular mind: a holistic, complete, yet complex understanding of a site and program. He transformed the entire city block of a neglected Appalachian town into a performing arts center, complete with major concert hall, experimental theater, children’s museum, art gallery with artists’ studios, and a café. He wrapped the site at street level with the most active pieces of the program and created a huge, landscaped amphitheater above. The concert hall and an exterior stage anchor the “bowl” at one end, while all parts of the complex provide entry points to this public park from the street. His proposal was a compelling mix of urban moves, the kind often considered, but rarely built—too expensive, too elaborate, too strange.
Healy’s projects seem to come out of his mind whole, and this is what’s so tough about him. People wanted to understand his process. But that’s the fascinating thing about him: he doesn’t get bogged down in logistics. His ideas come out complete and the office is streamlined to work this way. He can make a few sketches, hand them off to his associate, and then obsess night and day over the little obstacles that reality throws his way.
