On the Dollar as ‘Final Arbiter’

David Montgomery’s profile of Tod Williams ’65 *67 (“Legacy Building,” July/August issue) takes the firm’s refusal of commercial work as principle and leaves it there. Williams says that in commercial work “the dollar is the final arbiter.” He is right, and that is the argument against him.

I manage capital projects for a university, which puts me on the client side of the work he prefers. A developer arrives with a lender, a pro forma, and a rent roll, and all three say no on a schedule. An institution arrives with an endowment and a legacy, and neither has ever told a president he was thinking too small. The Obama Presidential Center opened in June at roughly $850 million against an early projection near $300 million, and by Montgomery’s own account the demand for more scale came from the client, not the architects. No developer signs that change order.

I stood on the lawn in Little Rock in 2004 when Polshek’s glass bridge opened, and I have spent long afternoons in the light at the Barnes. Williams and Tsien detail stone better than nearly anyone working.

But I lived in the Loop for 14 months while that tower went up, worked in the West Loop, and never once went down to Jackson Park. Neither did most of the people I heard admiring it. Somebody’s dollar is always the final arbiter. Refusing the commercial client does not take it out of the room. It only removes the one client trained to say no.