Don Brinkmann

Don Brinkmann

BIOGRAPHY

Facts and figures first. Don Brinkmann, vice president and design director at Gensler and Associates Architects in New York, earned his B.A. in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969. He went directly to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's San Francisco office, where he had worked as a draftsman before graduation, and continued there as a full-time employee. In 1982, he followed then-SOM colleague Margo Grant (a 1987 Hall of Fame inductee) to Gensler. And as of last count, had completed four million square feet of major installations. A fractional sampling includes General Reinsurance Corp., Becton Dickinson, CenTrust Savings Bank, Capital Bank, Newsweek, Sherman & Stearling, Weyerhauser Technology Center (while at SOM) and other banks, law firms, corporate headquarters, showrooms and among projects abroad are Goldman Sachs International in London and the Team Disney Europe Building in Paris.
That leaves the question about his transition from architectural degree and site plans to preeminence in the realm of interior design. As Mr. Brinkman tells it, credit again goes to Gensler v.p./managing principal Margo Grant who plucked him from his drawing board and put him to work on the Marine Midland Bank job in Buffalo. Thereafter he never looked back. Not only has he remained in the east, but also, without pause for introspective deliberation, has made the design of interiors his full-time career. He finds it more interesting, he says, largely because he enjoys the emphasis on details, and most of all because he likes involvement with clients. He thrives on give-and take incurred in design evolvement, and appears to relish ready acceptance of his own ideas as much as he does compromise. To start with preconceived ideas is alien to his nature; nor has he run into situations where he has had to knuckle under so as to implement a scheme that went against his grain. His personal taste runs to "simple, good classic-contemporary." Much of this is reflected in his product design, both as custom work in client jobs and, independently, for Helikon and Stow & Davis.