Phoenix metropolitan area is struggling with a graceful way of merging old with new, and suburban spaces with urban spaces. Over the past several years, the outlying rural areas of Phoenix have experienced an explosion of building growth, and if the trend continues at its current rate, "The next five to 10 years will be critical to the state of Arizona," says self-trained architect Will Bruder. Phoenix is indicative of the building boom encompassing the western region of the United States. In an interview at his studio in Phoenix, Bruder talks about his passion for architecture and the West.

By the age of 12, Bruder had started hanging around Frank Lloyd Wright construction sites in Milwaukee, and in 1965, he attended ITT in Chicago to study automotive design. That following summer, Bruder interned with a progressive, cutting edge design studio in Wisconsin, and it was during this time he realized corporate America and the automotive industry wasn't for him. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin and sought out a comprehensive, yet diverse area of study . . . “Structural engineering, weaving, pottery, urban planning, philosophy, welding, bronze casting, basic design (Bauhaus Style), carving and calligraphy. All those things would form what I would become," reminisces Bruder. He went on to receive a bachelor’s of fine arts, majoring in sculpture.

In 1967, Bruder came to Arizona to study with visionary architect, Paolo Soleri, for an eight-month apprenticeship at Soleri's studio, Cosanti, located in Paradise Valley, Arizona. "I learned about city thinking," Bruder reflects. “And I learned about this genius artist/architect, Paolo Soleri, and how he was crafting these unbelievable structures and forms with virtually no money, and nothing became everything. The ordinary became the extraordinary, and that was really important to me."

Upon completing his apprenticeship with Soleri, Bruder went on to mentor with yet another innovative architect. Gunnar Birkets, a former student of Eero Saarinen, and renown as one of the country's foremost modernist architects, welcomed Bruder to his studio in Michigan. However, one year later, the lure of the Southwest beckoned Bruder back to the desert.

"I like the horizon. I like the light in the sky, and it was a place where optimism was pervasive because anyone who would come to the Arizona desert, and the surreal differences that represent it with its horizon," says Bruder, commenting on his return to the Southwest. "History had taught me from Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, to Bene Gonzales, to the various disciples of design like Paul Schweiker, that there were people willing to listen to change and difference. So I built my career and my practice, and my passion, over other people's ability to build the world from a different point of view, and that's what I'm interested in doing in my architecture."

It is now nearly 40 years later and Will Bruder Partners is a major architectural force, striving to captivate the imagination and build structures in the desert with environmental integrity. Over the years, Bruder has received national and international acclaim for his designs, and has truly emerged as one of Arizona's great architects, following in the footsteps of Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri.

"For me, architecture is very important - how it grows from the land and kisses the sky," says Bruder. "That's the mark of truly great architecture, and again, as in New Mexico and Arizona with our great sun, the building dances in the sunlight, and turns the sun into a friend rather than a foe . . . where the magic is at. As you look at those wonderful pictures of Taos Pueblo Church, and all of the great O'Keeffe paintings, and those wonderful photographs of the great masters of the Southwest and the West . . . it's all about light and surface, and that has become my passion. With any material I ever use, I'm very interested in this whole idea about the ordinary becoming the extraordinary."

Most of Bruder's structures have two common traits: uniqueness and simplicity. Design, site orientation and construction materials are the key architectural elements. Upon completion, his buildings are, in essence, functional art. Bruder is much noted for his designs for Burton Barr Phoenix Library and his innovative multi family housing projects such as Loloma Five. Possibly his most beautiful structures are his commissioned private residences.

"Architecture is about memory. Architecture is the celebration of ideas. It's about the poetic, as well as the pragmatic, and it's about possibility. It's knowing that perfection is impossible to attain, but always trying to achieve it," says an impassioned Bruder.

"Architecture is the power of the narrative, to inform a journey, to compliment what then becomes the reality. It's about the senses. It's about the hair on the back of your neck rising. It's about those moments in life that we have that emotion, whether it is about falling in love with a person, or falling in love with a life experience. That's what I want people to have when they walk into a building without any reference to why they should understand or like this thing, and they are touched by it, and they feel it, and it should be able to stand up to an intellectual journey, but it's about the senses first. First and foremost, great architecture always has to be about the senses.”

On the subjects of urban sprawl and the environment, Bruder is cautious and concerned. "In the next five to 10 years, we'll see our destiny," referring to the future of the Phoenix metropolitan area. "It will be up or down. We walk a fragile line." Like his former mentor Paolo Soleri, Bruder feels that some of the biggest offenders to urban sprawl and air pollution are the automobile and leaf blowers. Yet, Bruder remains optimistic and looks to Phoenix's new lite rail system as a start in the right direction. "We have to accept that fact that density is good," concludes Bruder.