KSS Architects becomes a big-time player as it grows
By: Mike Mathis
PRINCETON Michael Shatken and Allan Kehrt believe they’ve created more than an architecture firm.
They’ve established a legacy that hope endures as long as the buildings they’ve designed.
Mr. Shatken and Mr. Kehrt left a large architectural firm because they wanted to work on small projects. But over time, the practice they founded 22 years ago has built an extensive portfolio of work for clients in the academic, corporate and municipal sectors. Mr. Shatken and Mr. Kehrt are founders of KSS Architects, a architectural firm based in Princeton Township that has grown from three founding principals in 1983 to a staff of 50.
Between 60 and 70 percent of the firm’s work involves colleges and universities.
KSS’s projects include renovations and an addition to a building at Princeton University that houses creative writing, dance, visual arts and theater programs, renovations and additions to Memorial Hall at Rider University, and the expansion and renovation of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University in New York.
The firm also designed the Princeton Township municipal complex, the Pennington Borough Hall and library, a K-8 school in Cranbury, and the headquarters for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority in Trenton. KSS also conducts master, site and land planning and feasibility and project initiation studies.
"Architects can empower an institution," said Mr. Shatken, 54, of Mendham, Morris County.
Mr. Shatken, Mr. Kehrt and Rafael Sharon were working for another architecture firm in Princeton when they decided to start KSS. They wanted to have greater control over their work, Mr. Kehrt and Mr. Shatken said. Mr. Sharon left the partnership several years ago.
"We were under the direction of someone else, and a lot of architects want to do their own thing," recalled Mr. Kehrt, 61, of Cranbury.
Much of KSS’s early work involved designing additions to homes and retail stores, small projects that Mr. Kehrt said laid the financial foundation for the firm’s future.
"It gave the office an economic base for a number of years," Mr. Kehrt said.
Mr. Shatken said KSS focuses more on quality design rather than viewing architecture as a commodity.
The firm has expanded into office and industrial buildings. Its portfolio included ProLogis in the Cranbury Business Park, a new distribution center for L’Oreal USA and a parts distribution center for Mercedes Benz of North America.
Mr. Kehrt said the firm has maintained control over its projects and is in constant contact with clients to keep them apprised of the progress.
While a building must be functional, it also must reflect good architecture, Mr. Shatken said.
"It’s our vision as to what the projects become," Mr. Kehrt said. But the buildings "belong to our clients, not to us." Like the many projects with which KSS has been involved, Mr. Kehrt said he was gratified that the firm, which now has three partners who are younger than himself and Mr. Shatken, will continue long after they retire.
"We’ve come to a realization that this firm we started 22 years ago will outlive us." Mr. Kehrt said. "We are extraordinarily excited about the people we hire. Life is too short to go to work with people you don’t like."
KSS Architects
Headquarters: Princeton Township
Employees: 50
Partners: Allan Kehrt, Michael Shatken, Pamela Lucas Rew, Edmund Klimek and David Zaiser
Phone: (609) 921-1131
Web: www.kssarch.com

