Austin Architects Camille Jobe and R. Burton Baldridge Earn Prestigious AIA Fellowship
AIA’s newest “rock stars” see architecture as more than prestige—it’s a powerful tool for social impact, community and thoughtful design
Some liken it to the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame for architects. The American Institute of Architects released its annual list of fellows in February, and two Austin-based architects made the grade. But instead of prestige, Camille Jobe and R. Burton Baldridge talked about architecture as power, social engineering and good versus bad.
“Like any tool, architecture can serve any end,” said Baldridge, founder of Baldridge Architects. He and Camille Jobe, half the namesake of Jobe Corral Architects, work for good as they see it.
Architecture’s rippling impact
“For better and worse, architecture is an exercise of power,” said Baldridge, a Fort Worth native. “Anyone who builds a wall is an architect, and any developer can produce and monetize a parcel of space … we should want this type of durable social engineering to look to something loftier than the bottom line of a spreadsheet.”
Indeed, Baldridge and Jobe’s work earned recognition for their thoughtfully, carefully constructed buildings and homes, each emphasizing the fit people feel in a place.
“We want everything (we build) to look like someone has seriously slathered care all over it,” said Jobe. In her firm, the group handles the design of anything from the site to the forks and the furniture, allowing a developed vision to take root.
Through Jobe Corral, Corpus Christi native Jobe designed Milk & Honey on Second Street and the Siete Foods headquarters. The firm is also collaborating with TBG Partners on the new All Abilities Playground planned for Onion Creek Park, a project commissioned by the Austin Parks Foundation and the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department. “No one’s gonna take care of the community if we don’t, right?” she said.
Through his eponymous Austin-based firm Baldridge Architects, Baldridge echoed the community spirit, having designed the vine trellised Casis Elementary Outdoor Learning Center and Holy Cross Hall at St. Edward’s University. He also shaped the Michelin Keyed Arrive Hotel on East Sixth Street and The Boheme, one of Austin’s first mass timber buildings, soon to become a boutique hotel.
Physical spaces
For many great architects, experiencing beautiful design is a right as much as a defining experience. “Architecture impacts your life so dramatically every day,” said Jobe, “You can change the way people live their lives through those physical buildings, and through the way that your cities and transportation are laid out. These things either provide the opportunity and ability to live your life in a better, kinder way or they don’t.”
Craftsmen and makers are as key as builders to the well-detailed, well-built projects Jobe represents. Residential design makes some of the most stunning pieces of Jobe Corral’s portfolio, including projects such as the River Ranch home in the Texas Hill Country, a spectacular example of unique, human-centered, elegant spaces. In River Ranch, rammed earth replaces concrete and steel walls, with layers of color in earth tones that stand out but fit perfectly well with the natural surroundings. The home gradually becomes lighter in feel as it moves from outer walls to the pool in a center courtyard.
Baldridge Architects are similarly nimble in work on varied projects and uses. Some of their current efforts include residential work in Providence, Rhode Island, Steamboat, Colorado and a handful of historic West Texas properties. Canje and the Michelin starred restaurant Hestia each show a fluency with restaurant spaces, which Baldridge credited to his firm’s principal Brian Bedrosian. The firm also creates residential dwellings, such as the Tarrytown Pinwheel House, a home on a 30-foot grade with three main nodes surrounding a central conversation pit.
Interconnection
A small cadre of supporters must back any licensed architect’s application for recognition by the AIA. Both Baldridge and Jobe were encouraged to apply by colleagues whose voices became part of their application as each prepared extensive documentary proof of their work and impact in design. In earning the fellowship, Camille became one of the first ten women to be elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in Austin.
Jobe further stands out in a male-dominated field because of her woman-owned and operated firm. While most architecture schools started to enroll equal numbers of men and women only ten to 15 years ago, explained Jobe, it will take time to see effects on a wider level.
But both Jobe and Baldridge put the meaning of their work in passionate terms that highlight how interdependence at every level defines architecture and architects.
Jobe thanked those in her office and her firm partner, Ada Corral, for helping to elevate her to an AIA fellow, adding that, “Outside of the office, I have many, many mentors and colleagues that have helped me to get where I am, including contractors and craftspeople.”
Baldridge expressed similar thoughts. “I recoil at the thought that it’s about me,” he said. “My old boss used to say, ‘My favorite project is the firm itself,’ and I also feel that way.”