Michael Suomi

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Mike Suomi. Mike, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Mike Suomi: I’m great. How are you, Stacy?

SSR: Good, thanks. All right. So, we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

MS: I grew up in Marquette, Michigan, which is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on Lake Superior.

SSR: Awesome. Were you a creative kid, an outdoorsy kid? What was your childhood like?

MS: Marquette has a population of 20,000 and it’s pretty much surrounded by wilderness. So, it’s required to be an outdoorsy kid when you grow up there. I was very creative as a kid and used to build homes out of cardboard just because I thought it was fun and build all the rooms and all the furniture out of corrugated cardboard. As I got into my teens, I started taking classes in middle school and high school that were mechanical drawing and architecture and art. That’s where the whole creative thing started. I knew I wanted to be an architect when I was in 10th grade, so it was early for me.

SSR: Yeah. Were your parents creative or how did you get into it?

MS: It’s interesting. That’s an interesting question. I’ve never really thought about that. My dad’s early career was in the US Navy and he wanted me to be a naval officer, not an architect initially. My mother was a nurse. She was a recovery room nurse, but she had done a bunch of paintings when she was younger and put all that away. We knew about it as kids that my mom had done these paintings and she always encouraged arts in our education and in our home. So, we grew up with a lot of creative supplies. Like I said, we are always making things and being real resourceful about what we made things out of. I remember we did a lot of decoupage and a lot of paper mache projects and those things. So, we always had some art activity in our home when I was a kid.

SSR: Awesome. Did you travel much?

MS: No, where we lived was pretty remote. Every year, we took a driving trip in the big family station wagon and our trips were usually to Chicago or Milwaukee or Green Bay or Detroit. So, they were, I would say, regional trips. Our really big trip where we took 12 days was driving down to what was then brand new Disney World in Orlando. We drove all the way from Northern Michigan down US 41 because I-75 didn’t exist at the time. So, we drove all the way down US 41 and went to a bunch of tourist attractions along the way. We went to Chattanooga. We went to Weeki Wachee in Florida. We went through Alligator Alley. We went to Miami and then the big part of the trip was Disney World. That was our really big adventure one summer and it was I think two years after it opened.

SSR: Oh, wow. As an architect, that must have been awesome to see.

MS:Yeah, it was awesome. It’s funny, recently, my mom and dad cleaned out their attic in Marquette like three months ago. They sent me all these things, including a journal that I kept on that trip. I wrote back then. I was like 10, I think, 10 or 11 years old. I really wanted to see the new hotels that had the monorail that went through them, the contemporary in particular, because it was like a feat of architecture and engineering where the rooms were all prefabricated by US Steel.

I knew about it back then and I really wanted to see it. While we were there riding on the monorail late at night, a gentleman started talking to us. Apparently, he started talking to me and I had very vague memories of this. I remember he had a really beautiful Mickey Mouse watch that had diamonds in it. It turns out it was Roy Disney and he was quizzing us about our trip there, Walt’s brother.

SSR: Oh, wow.

MS:Yeah, it was a really exciting thing. Also, the Brady Bunch, I remember the dad, he had a job where he was designing something for Disney. So, I was super excited to go down there.

SSR: Awesome. Okay. So, knew that you wanted to be an architect at 10. So, did you then go to school or college for that?

MS: Yeah, when I was 17 in high school, I designed my first home that was built. It was Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome house. It was a class that I had my junior year in high school. My scoutmaster wanted to build his own home and saw what I was doing and took my designs and plans and actually built it in the woods. It was a two story dome house. At 17, to have my first home built, I was completely hooked. So, I got into University of Michigan School of Architecture. I went there for six years and got undergrad and a grad degree.

SSR: Right. So, you go to Michigan. Obviously, if you stayed in it for six years, it was everything you imagined. Talk to me a little bit about that.

MS: There was a class I really wanted to be in, which was conceptual design. It was a conceptual design studio run by this great educator named Bill Scott. I couldn’t get into it semester after semester. I became disillusioned and I was paying for my own school. I wasn’t there on scholarship or financial aid. With the help of my parents, I wrote the dean a letter saying, “I seriously am considering not coming back for grad school and transferring to a different school because I couldn’t get in the studio.” It was a really well-crafted letter. My dad, like yourself, he was an editor and a publisher. He was head of the news bureau for a university. So, he really helped me with this letter.

To my surprise, I thought I would just be ignored and I was going to transfer and go to Georgia Tech, which was being run by a very conceptual architect at the time. To my surprise, the dean asked me to come meet with him. He told me that not only was he moved by letter, they were changing their program by my letter and they were starting a new summer program. Bill Scott was going to be running it and they wanted to know if I would be the very first student in their summer studio.

On top of that, they offered me the position of a 25% professor appointment to teach architecture 101 and also asked that I redesigned the presentation studios for the school. So, I went from being an upset student to being a faculty member and I also became the liaison between the students and the faculty.

SSR: That must have been some letter.

MS: Yeah, it was. I mean I had done a number of things like help launch a magazine for the school and every year personally put together the yearbook for the architecture school at U of M. So, they already knew who I was, but it ended being a really wonderful U-turn for me at school. My last couple of years in grad school were fantastic.

SSR: Amazing. All right. So, you finished grad school. What’s your first job after school or where did you go?

MS: I had a job doing surveying in Ann Arbor and we used a transit. You know what a transit is? It’s a little telescope thing you look through at a stick with measurements on it. We used to do survey property and then we would do all the drawings for turning woods into residential development. We do that in the middle of winter. We’d have to bring a shovel with us and dig down to the earth. We had a torch as well, like a giant propane torch, so we could melt the snow down to the earth. So, that was my first taste of what actual work was and I threw myself into it. I loved it, but I also felt like there’s no creativity in surveying and doing the drawings from surveying. I loved the drawing part, but it was very hands on. That was my first job. So, it was very different than what I do now.

SSR: Yeah, a little bit. Good thing you had the survival wilderness courses in high school to help you out with the surveying in the winter. So, what made you stop surveying and where did you go from there?

MS: I moved to Columbus, Ohio. People don’t believe that I lived in Columbus, because for six years, I was a huge U of M football fan. I went to every single home game and circumstances had me move from there to Columbus, Ohio. I worked for a celebrated architect at the time. His name was John Reagan and he was also a professor at Ohio State School of Architecture. He got me into his class as a TA, which then I became the joke of Ohio State’s architecture program because I’m the U of M guy. Unfortunately, Bo Schembechler had stepped down from coaching U of M’s football team right when I got to Ohio State and Ohio State started to cream Michigan in football the minute I got there. So, I took a lot of abuse while I was there.

At John Reagan’s office, we designed these beautiful homes that were built in a very, very old world tradition with sand cast brick and hand-cut slate and hand-formed copper and hand-lettered windows. We were very inspired by an architect whose name was Lutyens. Lutyens was a popular architect in the early 1800s. He had designed Bath England, all the homes in Bath, England. So, we were creating homes that were very inspired by Lutyens’ work, especially Bath.

SSR: Okay, so you’re in Columbus, you build this community. How long were you there?

MS: I was in Columbus for about three years, worked for two different architects because of the way the recession was. We lost all of our high end residential clients when the economy tanked and then I ended up doing commercial work as an architect with a capital A. I got licensed in Ohio. That’s where I got my first architectural license. From there, I moved to Chicago.

SSR: Cool. And then is that when you started working with Jordan Mozer?

MS: Yeah, it was an interesting time. It was the only time I didn’t work. There was about a five-month period, where there was just no one to even interview with. This was in 1991. Firms were just downsizing. I stumbled on Jordan’s work at dinner, a restaurant called Vivere in the Italian village in the Loop. I asked the maître d’ like, “Who designed this restaurant? It’s amazing.” Everything in the restaurant clearly came from the same hands. It wasn’t just the design, but it was the tile in the bathroom and the copper bar top and these spiral columns and the carved wood chair legs, which also had the same spirals in them. It was a spiral motif that I noticed right away. They said, “Oh, it’s a genius who designed our restaurant. He’s very celebrated. He’s the most famous architect in Chicago, and his name is Jordan Mozer.” This was back in the days of the Yellow Pages. So, I went into the phone book.

Literally, a day or two later, I called Jordan Mozer’s office, just a cold call and a woman answered. I told her how excited I was by the restaurant that I had eaten in. I had heard that Jordan had designed it, and I’m a young architect. I just moved there from Ohio. She said, “Well, that is my son we were talking about and he is a genius.” She said, “Are you available to come in tomorrow to talk with us?” I went in and it was like the timing was right. Traxler had just been hired a week earlier.

There was a guy named Frank who had quit and they were being asked to compete for a big project at Disney. Jordan needed extra hands and I was the right person. I guess I impressed his mother, who was the woman who answered the phone, Beverly. He had me start working that same day with Traxler and there was two other people in the office at that time. So, that was my foray into hospitality.

SSR: Amazing. I love that you just cold called him. I don’t think anyone does that anymore.

MS: Well, I mean it was tough times. I mean when the economy is bad, no one’s hiring, you have to become real resourceful. I had already exhausted like the 12 architects who ran firms in Chicago who were best friends with the Dean of Architecture at University of Michigan. I contacted all of them. Only one allowed me to come in to have an informative interview. The rest were in dire straits, letting people go. It would be a bad sign if they had anyone in to talk with them. So, yeah, Jordan was a complete cold call.

SSR: That’s amazing. So, what type of projects did you work on with him and how long were you there and what’d you take away from those years?

MS: Well, I mean, you’re familiar with Jordan’s work. Back then, there were no hotels. It was just restaurants and bars. Jordan was already well into a project in Matsuyama, Japan, which Traxler started working on. He had several other clients and we dove into all these restaurants and bars. I was there from ’91 to ’99 and probably worked on 50 restaurants and bars while I was there. It was significant. We had a few other projects. I did a private residential project with Jordan called the Diablo Residence. I worked on a factory with the assembly lines in it called Outer Circle. We got to do set design for The Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon tour, which was really a lot of fun and very out of the box, but it was predominantly food and beverage projects.

It was an amazing place, because as you’re aware, Jordan also wants to control the manufacturing of everything under his company. So, we learned how glass was blown and metal was spun and cast and finished and drilled. We weren’t just directly overseeing the making of everything. We also then had to hack it and ship it and go to the site and install it. So, that was a lot of fun as well. I spent many, many weeks in Germany on scaffolding with hammer drills, drilling into concrete ceilings and hanging our chandeliers and connecting them to power. So, it was a real learning experience. I mean, Jordan was a real significant mentor to me and my career. I think most people who work for Jordan would say that about working in his studio.

SSR: What do you think was the key thing you learned from him or something that sticks with you?

MS: In terms of design, anything is possible. You just have to imagine it. That’s probably the most important thing. I mean Jordan is a big proponent of magical realism. He was always having us read books, novels, the magical realistic novels and go to movies that captured that ethos. To this day, Jordan is still that same person, even more magnified. So, part of that is whatever you can dream, you can make a reality. You just have to apply yourself.

SSR: Love that. Okay. So, what made you leave him and where did you go?

MS: I went to New York City. I went to work for David Rockwell and that was an opportunity that surprised me. It came out of the blue and I couldn’t say no. David offered me the position of building a studio under me from scratch. David and Jordan knew each other. We sometimes competed with David. We had been competing with him for projects with Universal and had been sitting at the same table with him and his team. So, David was very aware of the work we were doing at Jordan’s office, and I think he really wanted some of that approach within Rockwell group.

So, I joined David in 1999 and I was there for three years. I can call David a friend to this day. I mean, it was a real close working relationship with David. I learned a lot. Just like I learned a lot from Jordan, I learned a lot from David. Very different things. I also got exposed to completely different kinds of projects at a different scale, which was really exciting.

SSR: What did you take away from David and your time there?

MS: Well, I think one of the things that I learned early from David was it’s one thing to be an amazing designer and come up with incredible ideas and craft beautiful spaces, but it’s entirely another thing if nobody sees those spaces. So, I’d say there’s probably four really important things I learned from David. One of them is the value of PR and the value of having relationships with people like yourself, Stacy, and that you can do amazing work. Oftentimes, this happens in private residential where there are incredible designs that no one ever gets to see, because the owners of those homes have no interest in having that work published.

So, that was one of the key things that I learned from David. I’d say the another one that’s probably at the top of the list would be making sure you have in the design experiences for the guests or whoever you’re designing for that they will walk away from and tell everybody about, these really powerful moving experiences that if they have one memory of that one thing. That could be anything, but having that be part of the design is critical, that moment where this is amazing, I’ve never seen this before.

SSR: Is there one project that you did with David that is probably your favorite or one that you’re most proud of

MS: The one that I did with David that I was the most proud of is still the project that I’m the most proud of. It was a competition. It was the first thing David had me do. When I started with David, he had me really work on winning competitions. The first one that I won was the children’s hospital at Montefiore up in the Bronx. It was the first children’s hospital built in the Bronx from the ground up. It was $100 million plus project, new build, 10 floors. The competition was just for a library in the lobby of the hospital. I didn’t think that was the right way to approach that competition by the board of directors for Einstein and Montefiore Hospital. I thought they were wrong in their view of what they were building.

They wanted to have a library devoted to the teachings and philosophies of Carl Sagan. As a kid, I adored Carl Sagan. I watched Cosmos religiously. I was exposed to the universe by Carl Sagan. When David asked me to work on this competition, I thought, “This is ridiculous. Why would you just do a little library? The entire hospital should be based on Carl Sagan’s philosophies and view of the universe and how we as humans fit into that universe.” So, David supported me, he gave me a team, he gave me all the resources. We prepared a competition presentation that was essentially redesigning the entire hospital, all 10 floors. Instead of this 2,000 square foot space, it was 108,000 square feet of the entire hospital all based on the philosophies of Carl Sagan.

We didn’t just win the competition for the library. We won it for the redesigning the entire hospital, which wasn’t on the table. The end results were spectacular. The clients are chronically ill children or acutely ill children and their families. I got to meet a lot of them during the design process. And then after it was open, I got to meet a lot of them as well. I’ve never had clients come up to me in tears because of how amazing the hospital was designed.

SSR: That’s amazing.

MS: So yeah, very different. It’s all about hospitality. That’s where the word hospitality comes from, but it’s not a hotel at all. In fact, I still use that project in my portfolio for certain clients, because it was a real unique approach to design. I had a real unique group of consultants and team members that were custom assembled for that project. To this day, I still use that approach of bringing specific team members for specific projects together that have specialties that aren’t the normal interior design background.

SSR: That’s awesome. What was it like building a studio for the first time too?

MS: Well, it really wasn’t the first time. At Jordan’s office when I started, I think I mentioned there were three other people there, Frank, who was on his way out the door, Larry, and another architect. They were both gone after about a year. It was just Larry and I. And then with Larry and I there, we ended up working with Jordan to build the company from 3, 4 people up to 25 people. We had it broken into studios. Larry had a group of projects. I had a group of projects. Both of us Jordan trusted and would allow us to progress the projects in the language of Jordan Mozer and Associates and Jordan’s hand essentially. So, both Larry and I had experience while we were there building studios.

SSR: So, how long were you with David and then what made you want to move on?

MS: I was with David for three years and it was an incredible time. I think I designed 36 projects in three years with David. My studio went from one person, this wonderful young artist. She was a painter, trained painter. Her name is Nora. She’s at Jeffrey Beer’s office now. But it went from just Nora to about 30 people, which at that time was about a third of the company. We were sliding into a recession. After 9/11, there was not a lot of work. A lot of things were canceled and we were downsizing the entire time I was there, which was a difficult thing to go through. But the amount of creative growth was incredible. I think it was a time when Rockwell Group and David were bringing in projects that they had never done before like the Children’s Hospital.

They were working on a shopping mall in New Jersey and on a sports complex. They had done maybe couple of hotels before I got there. The second project that I competed for and won was at W Union Square, which was one of the early Ws. It was David’s second W. He had designed the very first W prototype on Lexington Avenue. I won the W Union Square competition. So, that was another competition. We did the world headquarters for the biggest advertising agency on earth. That I won also by competition.

That was McCann Erickson, which if you watch Mad Men, McCann Erickson is one of those big mid-century advertising agencies. So, it was an incredible time. In 2002, I stepped away and launched Michael P Suomi Architect in New York City. I had an office in the Apple Bank building, just north of Columbus Circle. I had a couple of clients, high end residential clients, and then later that year with Dwayne… You know Dwayne, I think, right?

Dwayne and I worked with Larry at Jordan’s office. Dwayne and I launched MacEwen and Suomi, which had offices in New York and Chicago late in 2002. We were designing food and beverage prototypes, residential, some commercial work. And then in 2004, I was approached by a headhunter to start an interior design division at a prominent New York architecture firm.

At first, it was skeptical. I had a couple of meetings with Paul Taylor that involved cigars and martinis. I thought, “This is a lot of fun.” Dwayne can handle the work we’re doing as a separate company. I cut a deal with Paul and I continued to run MacEwen and Suomi for about a year. I worked with Paul full time in 2004. And then a couple years later, I became an owner of Stonehill Taylor. I was there up until I started Suomi Design Works.

SSR: Yeah, 15 years, right?

MS: Sixteen years I think. Something like 15 or 16 years. Yeah. It was a long time. Definitely by far the biggest span of my professional career.

SSR: What was it like bringing interiors to a predominantly architecture firm? Talk a little bit about some of the projects that put you guys on the map maybe.

MS: Well, starting an interiors firm, again, this was now the fourth time I think I had started a studio or a company. So, I knew what I wanted to do and Paul gave me the resources and the wherewithal to really create what I felt should be created. It took a little while to get my bearings at Stonehill Taylor because the work was predominantly architecture with a capital A when I got there. There was one and a half interiors employees and Paul was directing them. It was not a great situation because Paul was trying to run his architecture side of his company and he really needed somebody like me to take over this little fledgling group of people. The interiors work they were getting was in conjunction with the architectural work.

The architects that were there were very focused on building design and windows and exterior cladding and master planning and working with the city to get buildings built. So, it wasn’t something they were focused on. So, it was a great opportunity. I crafted a studio that I really had wanted, always wanted to be built from the ground up. I think in terms of projects that put us on the map in the early days, because of a preexisting relationship Paul had, we were doing a lot of minor renovation work to existing hotels in New York with Highgate and with the Benham Group. None of that would be portfolio worthy. That went on for years. I think the first project that put us on the map was the Hyatt Regency at Rutgers that was owned by Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceuticals.

It was also our first HD award from you guys. At that time, Traxler had already been at Hyatt for a couple of years. That was a big deal project, because it was a very prominent Hyatt Regency, big building. This was to reinvent all the public areas. It was really important for Larry, because Johnson and Johnson, maybe they don’t own any other hotels, but they’re a very well-known owner. So, we had to present to a board of directors at Johnson and Johnson. That project was a real challenge, because it was a matter of they wanted to take baby steps and ultimately we wanted to blow up the entire public area, reinvent it structurally in how you enter the building and what you see and add new stairs to the building, connect new levels together that were never connected.

It was a big deal project and the results were spectacular, spectacular enough for you guys to publish it and give us an award. So, that was a big turning point. I think it wasn’t just a big turning point for Stonehill Taylor. It was also a shift in how Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott saw Stonehill Taylor not as an architecture firm that’s going to solve fire, life, safety problems and do historic restoration or design the next building for a Hilton and the exterior and the planning for it, but as a firm that could also handle the interiors and the furniture and the concept and carry that concept through.

SSR: Right. Amazing. So, what made you decide you’re an owner of this company to then launch your Suomi? Again, another iteration of Michael Suomi.

MS: That’s a good question. Projects like TWA were a big part of that decision making process for me to launch Suomi Design works. Working with Tyler Morris and MCR on TWA, this is an independent hotel that chose to ignore what everyone else is doing in the hotel sphere from an operations standpoint and a design standpoint and really pave its own way to create something new that didn’t exist in the hotel environment. I think it’s fair to say that Tyler did that from a design standpoint as well as from an operations standpoint in terms of airport hotels. We had a number of other projects like that that were, for me, very groundbreaking like the Eliza Jane or the Press Hotel and the Sophie Hotel in Chicago and the St. Kate Hotel in Milwaukee.

They all were either soft branded or independent. They along with myself and our design team at Stonehill, we all decided that this was going to be something new. It’s not going to follow the path that’s set by a hard brand in terms of what’s expected. St. Kate, that has three art galleries. It has a black box theater. It has live performance stages. It has a podcast recording studio. It’s all about the fine arts and performing arts in Milwaukee and it happens to be a hotel. Those are the ones that I’m the most excited about, where you’re not just creating something that doesn’t exist previously and reinventing what a hotel can be and do, but you’re also creating a design narrative from the ground up.

You’re creating a concept that never existed before. That’s why I launched Suomi Design works to really focus on independent, unique hotels that have their own story to tell. It’s for developers and owners who want that. I’ve been lucky for the last three years that’s all I’ve gotten are those projects.

SSR: I love it. Is there a project you’re working on that you’re really excited about?

MS: I’m really excited about all of our projects, Stacy. The one that we just started that I cannot talk about because I’m under a restrictive NDA, you’ll probably find out about it within the next couple of months, is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever done. It’s one of those once in a lifetime projects like TWA. So, The Radical in Asheville is an incredibly exciting project. It came out of the blue. It was another design competition. I had no idea what I was getting into.

It turns out that I’m working for the most amazing clients on earth on this project. All they want is unbridled creativity in this hotel. Again, it’s like their iconic class. They really aren’t from the world of hotel operations or design. They’re inventing their own way of having a hotel. I guess the name embodies that. The Radical is going to be a unique one of a kind hotel.

It’s in Asheville. I thank you for having your fall forum folks come and tour it. They all got to meet my clients, Amy and Jason and William. It’s really exciting to get to work on a project of that caliber from a creative standpoint. It’s under construction now. They promise me it’ll be open early next summer.

SSR: What is it aiming to bring to Asheville?

MS: It’s aiming to bring a heightened level of hospitality in an incredibly unique environment in a part of Asheville that has been long underserved, which is called the River Arts District. There’s really not a lot in the River Arts District other than old industrial buildings along the French Broad River. This will be the first hotel there. And then the offerings that we’re going to have in that hotel are from an F and B standpoint are going to be probably at the top of the game in Asheville. The food and beverage director, Jacob has become very, very well known in Asheville.

He opened a restaurant called Table, which is impossible to get into. It closed during the pandemic. He reopened it and it’s the top restaurant in Asheville. He’s our food and beverage director for the project. We’re doing five F and B venues in the hotel. It’s only got 70 keys. So, certain hotels in New York City that we’re very familiar with, it’s a very F and B driven property. It’s amazing clubs and restaurants and bars. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of hotel rooms connected to it. Do you know Rob Blood? Have you met Rob Blood from Lark Hotels? Yeah, so Lark is going to be the operator. They got engaged last summer when we did our model rooms. They’re an incredible operator. Everything they have under their ownership group or their operation are incredibly unique properties and they custom tailor their operations to each property. So, I’m super excited about that project.

SSR: Okay. So, I want to go back to TWA, because I don’t know if people know the whole scope of what you did and what that meant. Can you just dive in for a quick minute about why TWA was such a bucket list project and what you took away from that?

Let me break this into two pieces. Personally, my heritage is Finnish. I grew up with Finnish grandparents and the Finnish language being spoken around me. Finland has a rich history of design. As a young designer in my teens and 20s, I really admired Alvar Aalto and Eero Saarinen and Eliel Saarinen, his father and their work that they did. Eliel in particular, Eero Saarinen’s father designed the Cranbrook Academy, which is in lower Michigan. When I was in college, I ended up doing a joint class with Cranbrook and got to experience his work firsthand. So, personally, it’s a bucket list project for me to have the ability to be involved with a legacy building like the TWA, terminal design by Saarinen.

Now, if you look at the top 100 buildings in the United States, the TWA Terminal by Eero Saarinen is in that top 100 list. It’s a significant work of architecture. It’s groundbreaking in its use of pour in place concrete and its expression of a free flowing design. There were no right angles. There were no hard edges or right angles in that project at all. Both Saarinen’s work really influenced me when I was a student at University of Michigan, along with Frank Lloyd Wright, who also did a lot of work in Michigan. Their approach to organic design, it’s called organic design, where your design is much more expressive and not confined to straight walls and right angles, but rather is designed to be more open and flowing and expressive. The TWA terminal is the height of that style of design.

Personally, if you had asked me if I’d ever get to work on a project where I got to reinvent one of Eero Saarinen’s famous buildings, I would’ve never said that’ll happen, not in my lifetime. So, for me, that’s why it’s a bucket list project. For Stonehill Taylor, getting to work on a world class hotel of that caliber was a game changer.

Anyway, it’s a gamechanger for anyone who worked on that project, Stonehill as well as Beyer Blinder Belle. I mean all the consultants, Incorporated or Inc. It was also an interesting approach, because Tyler, one of his edicts was that all the design consultants have to always be together in all the design meetings.

My team, Sarah and her team, we weren’t just presenting to Tyler. Everyone else would be there. Same thing with Inc and with Lubrano and Beyer Blinder Belle. We all had to review each other’s work and we all had to give feedback on each other’s work. So, it was an interesting way to approach a project. It’s similar to the way Disney works on their hotels and their designs, where everybody has a say in everybody else’s work. So, it was very unique.

I think one of the things that I learned from David and I carry through to this day is assembling a unique team of designers for every project. Some of those are from core members of my company, Suomi Design Works, and some of them are brought from outside. I just brought in two very unique designers for this new project that I can’t talk about yet, because their specialties are very aligned with the type of project it is. That’s a hotel. I mean, that’s all we’re doing is hotels. A good example is Kris Moran. So, Kris is a set designer for Wes Anderson’s movies. This will be the third project I’ve had her involved with, because the theatrical nature of the project and the thinking behind it very much aligns with the work she does for the movies that she works on.

SSR: Do you bring them in for the pitch as well? What was the pitch for The Radical in Asheville?

MS: Yeah, the pitch for The Radical was the first time I worked with Kris. It was me and two former employees, Grace, who I started the company with Grace’s help. And then I reached out to a former Stonehill employee, Vanessa, when we had the opportunity to compete for The Radical and Kris. I said, “We’ve got this unique opportunity, real out of the box.” A brief that was written by somebody I now know it was this guy Jason, but it was a really in-depth brief that was real specific. It had to do with synthwave music from early 2000, East Berlin in the 1980s just before the wall fell, specific types of street art.

I’m like, “This is an unusual RFP brief.” This guy’s looking for something real specific but also real outside the box. So, I brought those three together. We made a pitch. We presented three completely separate storylines. To our surprise, we weren’t just hired, but our clients were like, “We love all three storylines. How can you bring all three lines into the hotel?”

SSR: That’s cool, yet challenging.

MS: Yeah, it was challenging. I mean the framework we created to design The Radical is extremely unique. It’s very open. It’s very narrative based. We knew only a little bit about the history of the actual old factory building itself, 100-year-old concrete and brick building. We knew it had been a bomb shelter and it had been at one time a headquarters for a breakfast cereal company. We knew the original owner of the building. His name was Frederick Kent. It was called the Kent Building. It’s still invaded paint on the side of the building. So, then we built a whole history, narrative history going from the teens all the way up until today with a little bit of fact and a lot of creative license.

SSR: Love it. I love it. Tell us something that people might not know about you.

MS: You already learned I was in scouts, but I designed a home when I was 17 years old, a geodesic dome house. One of my earliest influences was Buckminster Fuller. Do you know who that was, Buckminster Fuller?

SSR: I know the name.

MS: He was an inventor. He was an architect, but he was also a mad scientist inventor in the early 20th century. He created a Dymaxion system called the Dymaxion. Dymaxion was reinventing everything in the world to use resources the most efficiently, meaning like conserve resources. So, the geodesic dome was one of the Dymaxion projects. The geodesic dome encloses the most space with the least amount of materials. That was his goal. He invented the geodesic system to do that from a structural standpoint. He invented the Dymaxion car. It was a three-wheeled car because three wheels is less than four wheels, I guess.

It was doomed to failure. It had a terrible accident in its test drive and killed the driver. So, that was the end of the car, but he was inventing everything. He invented a way to feed everyone on earth, which was called The World Game. The United Nations used to play his world game around the world with big groups of people. He wrote a lot of books. Someday there’ll be a big movie about him, I’m sure, but he was an early influencer of mine.

SSR: Amazing. All right. Well, I hate to end the conversation, but we always end the conversation with the question that is the title of our podcast. So, what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

MS: If you can dream it, it’s possible.

SSR: From Jordan?

MS: From Jordan. Yeah.

SSR: Yeah. Love it. Full circle. Well, thank you, Mike. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. Even after knowing you for all these years, I think I learned a couple things that I didn’t know.