At 10 years old, Larry Barton spent his spare time scraping excess mortar off masonry joints for 25 cents an hour in his dad's construction company.

"Instead of getting a baby sitter, he would take me to the job site," Barton recalled.

In high school, he did construction work, masonry and carpentry for the company.

In August, Barton was named president of Strang, a Madison architecture, engineering, interior design and construction administration firm now celebrating its 75th year. Barton has worked there for just over 24 years, in his first and only job so far after getting his architecture degree in 1985.

"I like to think design and construction runs in my family," he said. "I've been exposed to it from a very early age."

Strang designs a variety of building types, including commercial, research and development, higher education, health care, municipal, mixed use and religious facilities. Barton has done more than 20 church projects and well-known local spots including Alliant Energy Center's Exhibition Hall, City Center West and Monona State Bank, along with several jobs for the cities of Middleton and Madison.

Q: As president, do you still design projects and do creative work, or is leading the company more of an administrative role?

A: I still get involved in projects. All of the four principals (Barton and three vice presidents) still stay connected with our clients and with the work and the projects. But the role changes somewhat in that we don't necessarily work out all the details. We're much more in the role of a coach and a mentor to the other talented people here.

Q: Is Strang known for any characteristic style of architecture?

A: We prefer not to be known as a firm with a specific style. What we want to do design-wise is listen to our clients, understand what their needs are and understand what success means to them, and design accordingly.

Q: Is it ever difficult to balance your vision for a project vs. what the client might want or need?

A: No. It's not difficult to design to our clients' needs. That's the culture of the entire firm, to listen to our clients' needs. There is no one solution. We're certainly not the type of prima donnas who say, 'It's our way or no way.'

Having said that, we feel that they're paying us to provide counsel to them and looking to us for our expertise and understanding of design and aesthetics and proper materials, and for how to make their project as sustainable as possible and as economically successful as possible. In the end, they make the final decision for their project and we're comfortable with that.

Q: Has business been tougher to get the past few years due to the economic downturn?

A: We made some adjustments in the first quarter of this year. We haven't had to make adjustments since, and we're very optimistic moving forward now. And we have actually started the process of hiring back and brought back one of our first people a month ago.

Q: What makes you believe things are getting better?

A: We've receiving more requests for proposals recently. We're seeing a lot of projects being released through the state, and there's municipal projects we're being made aware of.

And in terms of the optimism, just because we've been around for 75 years, we've been through these recessions several different times and we're very confident about our ability to get through them. We just need to stick to our core values. We need to remain client-focused and continue to improve the quality of our design and services and be productive. Those are the core values that should lead us through the next 75 years.

Q: Do you see any upside to this recession?

A: The good thing is that there's a bit of a return to reality in terms of how we think about our own personal interdependence and not living beyond our means. Coming out of the recession there is the hope that relations will improve between employers and employees in all different industries and people won't feel the need to move around so much. Hopefully that relationship will strengthen just because of what we've been through together.

Q: What's important to do with a church project design compared to a municipal building? How do you engineer for the sacred?

A: It all starts with listening and learning as much as we can about their ministries. What we try to do is actually go to their service and just be part of their congregation and experience the service and spend a lot of time talking to the various ministry groups within the church, to understand where their groups are leading them in the future. Then we take what we've learned there and try to represent it in an appropriate design.

Each church is different. Some churches have a strong connection to the environment and a sustainable focus, so we try to (design for that). Some are very focused on creating a very intimate setting for their church, while other churches do want a little more of a formal structure, so we design accordingly.

Q: Do you prefer to work on one type of building over another?

A: We see design opportunities in everything. Each client, each project has unique opportunities and there's no preference of one over another.

We do a larger percentage of science and technology facilities. That's a real strength of ours, but at the same time we do a nice mix of culture centers and performing arts facilities and churches and municipal projects.

We're proud of the fact that we do a lot of facilities that have a strong connection to the community, and one of the things that we like to focus on here is the concept of sustainable communities. We think it's a lot more than being green. It's looking at how a development inter-relates with the community around it.

Q: Can you give an example of that?

A: We're doing a project right now involving the atrium at the Villager Mall on South Park Street. That's in a community that is very diverse, and (the mall redevelopment) is really a nice mix of a lot of different uses on one site, includes non-profits, health care, the library, education and retail, and the atrium is the central public space that helps tie it all together. So any time you can bring all of that together, you're starting to create a sustainable community.

LARRY BARTON

President of Strang

Age: 49

Family: Married with two grown children

Degree: In architecture from Madison Area Technical College in 1985

Career with company: Joined Strang as a CAD trainer and worked his way up to registered architect and project manager, became a shareholder and one of the company's four principals, with experience in operations, strategic planning and human resources.

Web site: www.strang-inc.com