An Interview With Tessa Bradley and Roussa Cassel: Form & Function, Good Community Design, and Women In Architecture

[TOPIC: Passive House Design | Women-Owned Architecture Firms | Sustainable Architecture | Mixed-Use Development | Community-Centered Design | High-Performance Buildings | Net-Zero Design | Urban Infill | Affordable Housing | Third Spaces | Pacific Northwest Architecture | Architecture And Community | Women In Architecture | Design Philosophy | Healthy Buildings | Modern Architecture | Passive Building Certification | Architectural Leadership | Sustainable Development]

To celebrate our new headquarters—a certified passive building that’s a model for mixed-use housing—we sat down with our principals to talk about passive design, the role of architecture in communities, their design philosophy, and what it’s like to be among the one percent of women-owned architecture firms in the United States.

Here are excerpts from our conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed.

Will you talk with us about why each of you got into this work? Why architecture?

Roussa Cassel: It’s interesting because we kind of came about it in similar ways. Because we both started with art.

When I graduated from high school and started junior college I took a lot of art classes—I took screen printing and ceramics and photography. I was keenly interested in art…but I knew that I didn't want to have a career in art. It took many, many years before I really discovered what architecture was all about. But when I did, I realized that it was this combination between art and some of the other things that I was already good at, like math and logical thinking. That's kind of why I fell in love with it.

Tessa Bradley: I got into architecture because my dad taught drafting at the local community college. No one in my family are artists, but everyone in my family is in construction trades. I grew up watching my dad draw on a drafting table in our laundry room…I felt really comfortable with what he did, and just kind of developed a fascination with it. And a lot like Roussa, I loved art, and took a lot of art. I make art. But I think I was really intrigued by the combination of science and art that is architecture. And then, also, I've always been entrepreneurial. So I liked the potential business happenings that have to do with architecture, too.

How did you train?

TB: I did a two-year technical program at SPSCC [South Puget Sound Community College] and then, eventually, I went to Evergreen and got a four-year degree in sustainable design and art. Roussa and I kind of passed each other like ships. She went to Evergreen and then did the two-year degree.

RC: With your dad.

TB: With my dad, yeah! So we did the same programs, but we…were doing them at opposite times, I think, around the same time.

RC: I graduated from Evergreen in 2005 and then I worked in architecture for several years, and realized that if I wanted to get licensed, that the easiest way was probably to go back and get a master's degree, which is what I did at U of O [University of Oregon], between 2008 and 2011.

Where does passive design fit into all of this? When did you become aware of it and why are you drawn to it?

TB: I was doing really complicated houses early in my career with geothermal systems—where we're digging up the entire site and laying pipes to try and take advantage of the Earth's relative temperature—and solar systems and SIP [Structural Insulated Panel] construction and, you know, layering technology on technology in our attempt to do more and more sustainable houses.

Not that long after I graduated with my sustainable design degree…I heard about Passive House [design]. I drove up to Seattle and listened to a lecture about it in a library in Green Lake. I went up to Katrin Klingenberg, who's the co-founder and co-executive director of Phius, who had done the presentation. I introduced myself afterwards, and said I’m really interested in what you're doing. And she said, we're about to do our first training nationally…so I applied to do their training, and did that…when it was the Great Recession. I just got really passionate about it and sort of leveraged that into some of our early work.

RC: University of Oregon has a really strong sustainability focus, as does, the whole Pacific Northwest’s regional building culture. I think I was exposed to it there. When I moved back to Olympia and started actually designing some houses, the builders were all interested in it as well. Once I started working at Artisans it was a very natural fit.

How long have you been practicing passive design?

RC: I think it's 20 years.

How many structures are up and out there that you've designed? Do you know?

TB: A lot. Probably around 50. Not all of them are certified but all [are designed] with the science and the approach and the strategies that we use for that kind of work.

You both talk a lot about design and community. What is the role of design in building and strengthening communities?

TB: I think that probably overlays nicely with two other [types] of work that we do as a company.

One is affordable housing, which is a really challenging problem…just how expensive every house is to buy and live in here. [The other is] the public spaces that we do, places for people to gather or connect or have a great cup of coffee.

And you know, I think both of those are critical to community strength. You can't have a community if people can't live and work there and afford to live and work there. And you don't want to live in a community that doesn't have a way to connect. Both of those kinds of work excite us in different ways, beyond sustainable [building].

RC: We do a lot of urban infill projects as well. A lot of our homes are coming into existing neighborhoods. [It’s important to] recognize that every project is part of an urban fabric. Urban design is…focused on creating good public spaces, right? And so we think about how our work is going to be a part of that whole and how it's going to integrate into what's already there and build upon the community, rather than trying to create community.

Do you have favorite examples of third spaces that you've designed?

TB: We're pretty fond of the Olympia Coffee [Roasting Company] spaces. They have an amazing business, and we love their coffee and their spaces are very beautiful. And they have exquisite taste.

RC: And every one of them is in an existing building in an existing neighborhood, and they're all different [because of] that. That's unique for a business that has multiple locations, [that each of] them has their own character and personality.

TB: On a slightly larger scale, we do projects like the 222 Market, which features a bunch of small businesses we love. Particularly in a time [when]it feels like social media and the evolution of culture has made people a lot more lonely [and] people a lot more disconnected. I feel like architecture has a huge role in enabling and encouraging people to connect. Even more so than when we started our careers.

Tell us about this space. What do you want to tell us about your new headquarters?

RC: I think it was shaped by several things. Initially, we were renting a space that didn't really reflect the type of building that we were doing. It wasn't passive. And, stylistically, was a craftsman. Not that we don't do that, but…

TB: We do more modern architecture.

RC: Yeah. Initially, I think we were driven by wanting to have a space that felt like us and then also show people the type of work that we do. And then Covid happened, and that created a whole new element where—

TB: Then we were like, Yeah, how do we get people to come back to work, right? Well, first we were like, no one's ever coming back to work ever again! This is the new normal! But, you know, you do that for two years, and then you're like, okay, we don't like the new normal! Now what?

And at that point, that's when we started talking about…buying something. We found a house that could be converted to an office. That's where we started.

What else can you tell us about that transition, about where you were and where you are now?

TB: It's been a journey! It’s not for the faint of heart.

RC: When we purchased the house that we converted to the office, we always had the intention of building this building. So it is kind of shocking to look back and think, you know, that was six years ago. Sometimes that's how long it takes to implement a vision. But here we are, and it’s definitely worth it.

TB: Yes, it's worth it. It's very hard. And it’s worth it. I think the effect of being in a new passive house-certified space has been great on company culture. Our employees really like the space. It's very healthy. It’s very pleasant. You can't underestimate the effect on your firm, if you're in a quality space. Cannot be underestimated. Keeping good talent is really hard. People's expectations for how much they like their job are maybe the highest they've ever been. So we definitely wanted to meet that need. That was a big motivator, in addition to [the building] being a way to show people what they can do with our help.

It's a multi-faceted strategy…time will tell, but especially…with the cost of energy…I think that energy is a new crisis and building maintenance is a new crisis in the same way that home ownership is a crisis. And so I hope this building is a response to that.

RC: Another motivation [is that even though] we've done so many passive houses [we] seem to be kind of locked into this stasis of just residential [passive design]. We wanted to be an example to other developers of how you can do multi-family or mixed-use buildings that are passive house, that there's payoffs and…

TB: …and benefits to that. And now when someone asks us to do it we’ll be way better at it. Because we learned a lot.

Your building is located along a thoroughfare but it’s also in a neighborhood. Do you have anything to say about how you chose its location?

TB: Some of that is based around the master planning for the city that Tumwater’s already done. This is meant to be their main corridor of businesses and housing. This is essentially their main street. Their plan dictates that this whole street [will be developed] like this. We're the first one, which I think is exciting and also probably traumatic. Change is always hard, but cities that don't change die.

[When you’re designing, you] have to balance the long-term planning perspective with the impact-on-people-right-now perspective. A lot of things could have gone here. I'm glad that our development is sustainable and small-scale—we designed it to appear smaller than it is in many ways. It's challenging to have a new building get built down the street from you…but I think that it can be done sensitively and with sort of a longer perspective on what you're trying to achieve in that area.

RC: [But] we didn't receive any pushback from the neighborhood…I think people have been really happy with it. They like the landscape. They love the fact that we kept the existing building.

TB: We get a lot of positive feedback about the building. Which is nice, because it's not always the case with new development.

Let’s shift to what it's like to be women in architecture. Artisans Group Architecture + Planning is one of very few women-owned architecture firms.

What was it like to be a woman in architecture school? And what is it like as part of the industry?

RC: School was great. School is, you know, 50/50 [women and men]. I think there might even be more women in architecture school than men.

TB: [During] my technical degree, my two-year degree in drafting, I was one of three women in the program. My four-year degree at Evergreen, it was like 50/50. There was no gender bias that I was aware of.

RC: That's a good point. Actually, one of the reasons it took me so long to discover architecture as a career option was that in high school, the drafting classes were part of the technical shop programs. And so it was taught as a technical thing, not a not a design-focused thing,

TB: You could make a table and fix a car and draft a plan.

RC: Yeah. And so it wasn't until much later that I realized that architecture was even a creative field.

Both of us are involved in doing some outreach. [We’re involved in] a program called Expanding Your Horizons, which is a [STEAM] conference for middle school-age girls…[we’re] trying to peak interest in [architecture] and let them know what the career is really all about. Because I just sort of regret not learning about it as an option until I was in my late 20s, because I think it [would have been] a really good fit for me. But being in the profession, owning a business is completely different.

TB: Yeah, it's not like school. Not like school at all. My dad was very invested in immersing me in the industry and empowering me in the industry. And so I didn't really get that it was male-dominated until I was already in the industry. It's like I didn't notice or something.

I think [the experience for women has] definitely gotten a lot better, [but] even with it getting a lot better, still less than one percent of firm owners in the United States are women architects. So even though we see really similar numbers of licensed men and women…we still don't see a lot of leadership. We don't see a lot of [women on the] executive team. I’m really invested in seeing that change. We're very outspokenly devoted to making sure that unheard voices in architecture get heard more. That's pretty important to us philosophically.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about, that you think is important about how you do your work or about your philosophy?

RC: We could talk about what our vision is for the type of architecture that we do. I think what makes our firm unique is that we're driven by aesthetics as well as function. We really care about design, not just the performance of the building.

TB: We don't have any interest in making a high-performance building that no one wants. We’re an interesting mix because we're very driven by doing things that are beautiful, and then you want to keep [them] because they're beautiful. But we're also practical. Having developed our own projects, built our own projects—we were general contractors together, we [had] a design-build firm. We have a very practical kind of knowledge base and approach to the work we do. We're not like drawing pretty pictures and hoping someone will figure it out, right? It's not how we’ve ever practiced. So even though we do things people really love, I also think they're very achievable, for the client and their budget, for the builder who has to build them. We're going to partner with them and make them more empowered to do these beautiful things.

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