Word: becket
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Becket does not wait to be sought. He is a superb salesman and organizer who goes after his clients, convinces them with facts and figures that the building will make money. He prefers the "systems approach" in which his firm does the entire job for a client-from the selection of the site to the color of cocktail napkins...
...result is that Becket's plans, unlike those of many less business-oriented architects, consistently turn into buildings. His clients, which include six of the top ten U.S. industrial corporations, often come back for more. He has completed five Hilton hotels, six projects for Kaiser. When Hallmark Card President Joyce Hall admired some card-display racks in a Pasadena store completely designed by Becket, he went to see Becket. Becket not only got Hallmark's business but a contract to build a home for Hall. He has since done eight Hallmark buildings...
...Becket does not succumb to the temptation to build drab hatbox or birthday-cake buildings; he tries to give each client a distinctive building. Yet he does not kowtow to his client's every wish: when a New York company asked him to design a building similar to Capitol Records', he turned it down on the ground that the building would not fit its needs...
Steam-Heated Doghouse. Becket's first made-to-order design was a far cry from such independence. After graduating from the University of Washington's College of Architecture ('27) and attending Fontainebleau's Ecole des Beaux Arts, he got one of his first commissions in Seattle: building a steam-heated doghouse. Becket later formed a partnership with College Classmate Walt Wurdeman, in 1932 moved to Los Angeles, where the partners made their mark by building houses to order for movie stars. During World War II they switched to mass production, built housing for 50,000 California...
...Becket is an untiring but low-pitched contact man whose widespread friends in big business make up a readymade clientele. His average fee of 6% enables him to live with his wife and two children in an 11-room house in movie-star-studded Holmby Hills in West Los Angeles. Becket has a strict rule against taking any work home with him-or letting his employees take work home. But he had to break his rule in designing his own house. Says he: "My wife was my toughest client...