Lyles, Bissett, Carlisle, and Wolff
[1] LBC&W's streamlined operational structure, atypically high employment numbers, and varied portfolio contributed to the success of the firm.
From Clemson University's library that reflects the influence of Edward Durell Stone's Embassy at New Delhi to the Bankers Trust Tower in downtown Columbia that mimics the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe, LBC&W incorporated the methodologies and designs of the great architects of the twentieth century.
Robert Stork suffered a severe cerebral hemorrhage a few years earlier, however, and did not recover enough to carry a full workload alongside Lyles.
Bill Stork and Lyles, who were both graduates of Clemson University's architecture program, were interrupted by World War II.
[4] In 1948, LBC&W designed and began to build a new office complex at 1321 Bull Street to accommodate its continuously growing staff.
LBC&W's success in later years can be attributed in part to their early connections with the Federal Housing Administration through Bill Stork.
The firm's projects during the late '40s and early '50s were primarily residential buildings insured under the FHA's section 608 policy, which was aimed at ensuring housing for veterans.
[12] In addition to LBC&W's geographic reach, the firm's design versatility was critical to their significant place in the history of Modern architecture.
Their buildings included elementary, middle, and high schools, collegiate dorms, libraries, student unions, government complexes, office buildings, post offices, military facilities, private homes, apartment complexes, factories, corporate headquarters, and at least one fallout shelter.
Lyles’ retirement in 1974 followed by Bissett's in 1975 and the economic recession – compounded with LBC&W's illegal financial contribution to the Nixon campaign – most likely led to the breakup of the firm.
Its magnitude and versatility, coupled with its atypical organizational structure and breadth of work gave it the competitive edge needed to reshape the skyline of the South time and again.
These articles included "Lift Slab Construction Saves Clemson Time and Money" in the Consulting Engineer in 1954, and "Principles of Economic Feasibility for Architectural Projects" in 1962 in the AIA Journal.
Prior to LBC&W, Wolff worked as a draftsman in Flint, Michigan, from 1933 until 1934, the senior foreman for the State Park Division in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, from 1934 to 1936, and an associate with Buckler and Fenhagen in Baltimore, Maryland from 1936 until 1940.
He wrote an article for the South Carolina Magazine in 1953, "Modern Architecture: Its Purposes and Aims," in which he discussed his personal design philosophy.
Each of the firm's senior partners functioned as the heads of four separate operational departments, which created an assembly line mechanism during the design process.
One source alludes to the fact that the divisions applied at the firm sprang from the senior partners’ days in the military.
[22] With each step of the process handled by a designated sector, LBC&W had the ability to address every detail in planning more fully than a smaller, more conglomerate firm could do.
The firm's Architecture, Engineering, and Planning departments coordinated efforts to devise the best design plan to respond to “the increasing complexities of modern living” that “have made it necessary to take a new approach toward achieving this age old goal.” Regarding architecture, what LBC&W heralded as “the guiding force of total design,” the firm paid close attention to the overall site of a project; its landscaping, exteriors, interiors, and furnishings.
Engineering, meanwhile, was the science of total design that made the project feasible and produced “safe, serviceable, and practical structures and systems.” Planning, considered “the unifying force” of a project, “molds architectural and engineering ideas and creations into an orderly and efficient environmental pattern to meet the physical, social, and economic needs of man.” LBC&W also recognized the importance of forming an expert design team of electrical, mechanical, and structural engineers, as well as landscape architects, interior designers, and soil experts.
A mandate was that these specialists have “a genuine appreciation of and basic understanding of one another’s problems – with a collective objective to produce excellence in an over-all solution rather than in its various components.”[24] The post-war housing needs in the mid-twentieth century prompted standardization in residential design.
Modern architects designing residential properties reflective of the International Style developed innovative concrete systems that adapted to normative construction processes.
Several early Modernists looked for new ways to eliminate the congestion of cities, which many believed created unhealthy environments and social problems.
Le Corbusier’s Towers in the Park was one of the ideas intended to cure social problems through designing planned landscapes.
LBC&W integrated this theory into their work early in the firm's history when they designed Cornell Arms in 1949, a nineteen-story apartment building located in the heart of Columbia.
Funded by the FHA and intended to cater to Columbia's post-war population boom, LBC&W built a cruciform high-rise tower to house hundreds of people in a crowded downtown.
William Lyles was active in Columbia's urban renewal policies and practices, and the Coliseum was a beacon of this social and economic force, as designed by LBC&W.
[26] The firm's practice of modern planning corresponded with the goals of local governments that wanted to improve city environments.
The Capitol Complex is by far the most recognizable LBC&W government project in Columbia, but other commissions in the city include the Harden Street Fire Station and the U.S. Post Office.
The Capitol Complex specifically was meant to serve as an example for how the rest of the downtown could be formed, with pedestrian pathways and easy parking.
