The Interview
This real-life story was drafted for the very special exhibit on the life and work of Dan Kiley. My career started with Dan like this…
Around the spring of my graduating year of ‘97, I was frantically planning out my future. Earlier that year the legendary Dan Kiley came to our school to lecture. I thought, “why not? What do I have to lose?” The only question was how big of a bribe did I had to offer the school’s administration assistant to get a hold of Dan’s mailing address. As it turned out, I only had to ask. She was, and I’m not sure if she should have been and that’s why she shall remain nameless, eager to help and gladly handed me Dan’s contact information. For the coming weeks, I labored over my cover letter, reworked my resume over and over and took photos of my favorite projects — back in those days, there was no such thing as digital cameras. I solicited some professional help from our school photographer and got some decent shots of my drawings. For almost two months, I heard nothing back. I thought it was over, lost cause; he’s not going to bother with me, an undergraduate from Canada.
Weeks before the end of our last year, we were all working, sleeping, and living in the school studio trying to finish off our final project. Our studio became a cozy makeshift home with couch, rugs and pets. Someone was always in the studio. It also had a phone. One day, a friend of mine came to me as I stepped into the studio and said, “some Dan Kiley called for you.” I’m sure he knew who Dan Kiley was, but even as he said those words, I don’t think he realized whom he was actually talking about. He was probably just too tired to put one and one together since we’ve been all working hard to survive our last year. After a few hours of calming down and probably a beer or two, I worked up the courage to call Dan back. He was very cordial and happy to hear from me. He said he wanted me to come to his office for an interview. Without a blink, I said yes.
Of course, to get to Burlington, Vermont from Toronto is not exactly an easy thing to pull off. As a soon to be graduate, I did’t have much money to throw around. Flying was out of the question. Driving was the only possibility. It was a seven hours drive through southern Ontario, cross upper New York and then down to Burlington, a drive I will soon be able to do blindfolded. I brought everything! All of my favorite projects and binders full of photos of my models and other things I could pack into my little Pontiac, Firefly (equivalent to Geo Metro in US).
As some of us know, Dan’s house was on a farm, referred to as East Farm, Charlotte on the mailing address. As you drive up close, I found it was even less obvious to locate. I even remembered that I had past his driveway the first time. The road ended on another farm, which happen to have two friendly Border Collies to greet me. A nice lady came up to tell me that I had passed Dan’s driveway. On my second try, I pulled into this narrow roadway, which had no sign, no indication of even a home beyond the scruffy hedge. The narrow road turned quickly and then I noticed an evenly spaced single row of Maple trees on one side. As I drove closer to the house, the driveway ended in a gravel square which was bordered by a few sheds and a carport with a tractor, a green Jeep Cherokee (which I will drive Dan all around New York and Connecticut) and another car under cover (which was what I will soon find out was Dan’s beloved MG Morgan).
As I stepped into the large barn house, it was seemingly quiet and empty. I think it was a Saturday, I can’t totally remember. I stepped in and the floor creaked. I said, “hello?” More creaks from the floors above and a man bellowed, “Is that you Terence? Come on up!” I had all my things with me, rolls and rolls of drawings and binders and paper. I walked up the steeply proportioned three flights of stairs to the top floor.
There was a small room to the right and then a big open room to the left. He said excitedly, “come in, come in”. I talked about everything; from my background of where I was born to my schooling in Toronto and my last summer with EDAW as part of their Summer Student Program. It was not until I got to my projects and started to roll out my drawings did I realize the obvious. He loved to talk and hear about projects, whether it’s my student projects or his many decades worth of world famous projects and all the stories that came with it. The most satisfying part of the interview came when I realized how excited he was of some of my design work. For the past year, I had been doing my research on Dan, partly for school, partly for personal interest. Like all admirers, I was blown away by how he blended formal French gardens with modernism to create some of the most beautiful, innovative and modern gardens with architects like Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Kevin Roche, to name a few. My school project work began to emulate some of the formalism that I found in Dan’s work. For one of my projects, I had proposed an orchard parking lot design. I remember I was totally destroyed by the guest critics at the final review. When Dan saw this, he was delighted. That was the ultimate vindication.
I landed the job and for the next two and a half years, it was a dream come true. I met a lot of great and interesting people along the way like Dan’s old friend Leonard Unger, US Ambassador to China during Nixon years in DC to Santiago Calatrava, who loved American food so much, we laughed at each other’s ridiculous Flintstone-like proportioned dinners in Milwaukee and Peter Rose, who’s meticulously designed houses caused endless re-designs from Dan only to match the greatness of his ideas. I also owe a great thanks for the hospitality of the Kiley’s for inviting me to endless family dinners and events. It was and will probably remain to be my greatest experience of all time. The simple truth I learned; Dan truly loved his work and out of his love, came the genius of his impeccable sense of space, scale, light and materials.
My grandfather also passed away during the summer of ‘97. Instead of going to Hong Kong and be part of my family’s reunion, even my mother knew how important this job was and insisted I go to Vermont instead. In an odd way, I have always saw Dan as my distant grandfather. All the yelling (because he insisted not to wear a hearing aid), funny gestures to elicit spatial characteristics and endless references to skiing nuance as lessons in life was only a few perks of working at ODK (Office of Dan Kiley).
