Update from Christoffer Graae

Now that I am retired I happily have much more self-directed time on my hands! So that is probably the most recent, big news – selling my shares in the firm I co-founded some 38 years ago to the next gen and retiring at the end of 2018. It has been a wonderful 43-year career that I look back on with pride and absolutely no regrets – something I believe unfortunately only a minority of folks can say about their jobs, so I feel very lucky.

My firm of 30 professionals specialized in institutional buildings, K-12 and higher ed, museums, civic buildings and churches, each pretty much a “one-off”, making them unique and exciting to work on. Although there were a few outliers in other states across the country, most of our commissions have been in Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland. Our firm (cox graae + spack architects) has won many local, regional and national design awards for its projects over the years, most recently for the modernization of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, for which I – as Principal-in-Charge - dedicated the majority of the last five years of my career. And a wonderful swan song it was. Won in an international competition, the $162m, 265,000sf renovation/restoration and massive addition to a National Landmark building, Ellington is a quasi-public school and pre-professional training ground for 600 students in the Fine and Performing Arts. I attach a pdf of a brochure we put together for the 2017 opening.

A career highlight for me was being chosen as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and getting my investiture in Chicago at the 2014 AIA Convention. Having settled in DC when I graduated, after our children grew up and moved into their own homes, we sold our home of 25 years and moved out to an old farmhouse property on the South River a mile up from the Bay near Annapolis. We lived in it for a year or so to get the “feel” of it, then my architect wife (retired from Smithsonian) and I worked on the renovation and addition drawings for over a year and completed construction in 2012 – a gut and redo as they say. We could not be happier where we are and plan to make this our last house!

My son Soren who is 34 works for Save the Children in Connecticut and my 32 year old daughter Hannah works in the environmental division of a powerhouse DC law firm. Both are married to fabulous spouses, and have blessed us with two grandsons, with a granddaughter expected this Spring. How could one ask for more?

I am not one to lounge around having seemingly endless projects around our property including building an Art Studio where Mary paints and I will throw pots. I have also become very active in my Anne Arundel County community on stemming rampant development and preserving the special greenways, rivers and bay that are so precious to us all. My 4th year at RISD was an especially formative one in the European Honors Program and overall I must credit my five years at RISD for tapping my creative skills and equipping me to make the best of my career. Thank you!