At the Designer's Table

Now in its third generation of leadership, the firm is renowned for its K-12 and Civic/Institutional design, along with its ability to mentor young architects.
By Emma Penrod

Terance White knew he wanted to be an architect even before he talked one of his teachers into allowing a freshman into an upper-grade drafting class. With college, however, he found himself momentarily lost. He knew he wanted to get into the Master of Architecture program at the University of Utah (U of U), but Brigham Young University discontinued the undergraduate degree he planned to pursue, and changing his major to civil engineering didn’t fit.

“I didn’t quite know what to do,” White said. “I was still thinking I had to get a bachelor’s degree in some other discipline before I could go to the [University of Utah], so I just stopped school and regrouped.”

While investigating other options, White heard from a neighbor that Naylor Wentworth Lund (NWL) Architects wanted to hire a student to train up in the industry. During the interview with Ross Wentworth, a Principal for more than 30 years with the firm, White learned that the U had recently started offering an undergraduate degree for prospective architects.

“It’s just like this whole new path opened up before my eyes,” White, now a Principal at the firm, said of the interview with Wentworth. White accepted the position with NWL Architects in March 1994 and enrolled at the U of U later in August.

If White sensed that NWL intended to foster his career from the very beginning, it wasn’t an accident. Perhaps best known for their contributions to K-12 facilities throughout the state, the architects at NWL don’t just build schools for the next generations: they’ve also actively worked to foster young design talent throughout the firm’s 70 years in the business.

“Architects can be notoriously selfish in their work and what they want their work to be,” said Wentworth, who retired at the beginning of 2022. “And often you will have senior principals in firms who will want to always put their stamp on every project the firm does, and we have always been much more open. […] We really share that responsibility and allow young project managers to step up and do the work, and I think we have been successful doing that.”

That principle has been on full display, with NWL having increased its number of employees to 65, up significantly the past five years. Its annual revenues the past four years have also been impressive—$11.2 million in 2018, $15.1 million in 2019, $18.9 million in 2020, and $14.9 million last year. K-12 and Civil/Institutional markets account for over 90% of its revenues, illustrating its vast expertise and client respect in those markets.

Focus on Youth

What is now known as Naylor Wentworth Lund Architects was originally founded by Roy Silver as Roy Richards Silver Architects in 1952. But the modern-day iteration of the firm came together in 1990, when then-principal Kenneth Naylor, who had joined the firm in the 70s, approached Ross Wentworth with a proposal to expand and pursue dreams beyond the small, predominantly commercial projects they had access to at the time.

Wentworth had longed to lead his own architecture firm since his undergraduate years. After college, he took a drafting position with an electrical engineering company and then worked his way into a now-closed architecture firm in Salt Lake City. That firm was so well-stocked with architectural talent, however, that Wentworth saw little opportunity to advance his career with the company. He left architecture to accept a job as Director of School Facilities at Granite School District.

Wentworth met Naylor about five years later, hiring him to oversee a couple of small projects for the district. Silver had recently retired, and Naylor was looking for a new partner. Naylor, however, didn’t want just any partner—he had his eyes on a proposed high school in Washington County, and he wanted to bring someone into the firm with the experience and connections in education to make that project happen.

“Leaving a school district job, one of those you can call somewhat secure with benefits and steady pay and an owner that isn’t going to have a hard time meeting payroll,” might be a risky move, Wentworth said. “But when you’re young and maybe a little foolish, you’re willing to give that up and give private practice a try. Ken [Naylor] had a staff of maybe eight at the time, and he convinced me we could build a firm and be successful, and convinced me my school connections would help.”

The gamble quickly paid off for both parties. With Wentworth’s experience and Naylor’s charisma, the firm was able to secure work for Davis and Washington School Districts—including the Snow Canyon High School project Naylor originally targeted—almost immediately. That brought their next challenge: with far too few architects to complete their new commissions, the firm needed to expand rapidly.

Informed by his own early experience in the industry, Wentworth wanted to try a different approach to recruiting staff. He convinced Naylor of the need to hire licensed architects but, to more readily attract talent, agreed to focus on students and recent graduates who were on a path to licensure. They would offer flexible hours, competitive pay, full benefits—and the opportunity to lead the design of projects almost immediately.

“There was never a strong design ego with the firm, where there’s often a singular personality who is in charge of the design and you don’t get a say in that until 30 years later,” said Chris Lund, current President of NWL. “That ability to let younger people roll up their sleeves […] is something we’re trying to do still.”

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Snow Canyon High School put Naylor Wentworth’s innovative muscle to the test straight out the gate. Naylor, Wentworth recalled, had already completed a small elementary school for the Washington School District using tilt-up concrete to keep costs in check, and the school board wanted him to do it again—this time on a major high school.

“The thought of doing a big tilt-up concrete high school scared me to death,” Wentworth said, “but Ken was convinced we could do it.”

The firm didn’t want to settle for standard gray panels, so it began experimenting with colored adders to get the concrete to match the red rocks that surrounded the St. George school, according to NWL Vice President Philip Wentworth (Ross’s nephew), who joined the firm in 1998. Their hard work paid off, and the technique became a staple of additional school projects in the area.

NWL also helped to pioneer the use of geothermal heating and cooling in southern Utah, Philip Wentworth said.

“We were ahead of our time and provided cost-effective buildings with low maintenance and utility costs,” said Philip. That type of innovation grew the company’s profile and made it popular with an increasingly large number of clients in the education sector.

But even as business boomed, management at NWL continued to take a careful, deliberate approach to recruitment—trying to ensure everyone they brought into the company could have a seat at the design table, and stay with the firm for as long as possible. The company wanted to avoid becoming trapped in a cycle of hiring for a project and then laying off staff when the work was complete, according to Vice President Eric Madsen.

NWL, Madsen said, continued to pursue educational and institutional clients for the same reason—they were stable industries, and clients tended to stick around long-term. “We’ve been able to ride through recessions not free of problems, but we certainly manage it better than a lot of firms because of the clients we’ve fostered,” he said.

Positive change would find the firm as Lund took the helm, though it came about quite unexpectedly. NWL had maintained a contract with the federal government (GSA) to complete various small projects as needed, which led to an opportunity to update and refinish some courtrooms in the historic Frank E. Moss Courthouse in Salt Lake City. In 2003, when a fire destroyed the Latter-Day Saint Temple in Apia, Samoa, it was this experience working with elegant historical finishes from the courthouse that helped NWL land its first contract with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Wentworth said.

A new chapter for the firm began after completing the Samoan temple. For Lund, whose love for architecture began while growing up abroad in Portugal and Mexico, working for the Church opened up opportunities to work in places he knew growing up. But taking on international projects also played to another of the firm’s strengths, according to Principal Travis Naisbitt.

Because of the firm’s slow-growth philosophy, NWL partnered with outside firms to complete projects that required more manpower than NWL had on staff, Naisbitt said. Working on international projects for the Church—especially during Covid-19—required a similar approach that saw NWL partnering with designers located in the country receiving a new temple.

“Looking back on a roughly 30-year career, I never would have imagined working in countries around the world,” Lund said. “Continuing that is a legacy I’d like to make happen.”

But while maintaining the firm’s current client list remains a priority, Lund said, current company leadership is also looking to diversify their services in the future. NWL wants to capitalize on Utah’s expanding higher education, industrial, and manufacturing sectors—a sign, Wentworth said, that the company is in good hands.

“If I were there I might want to hunker down and stay in the world we know,” he said. “But that’s the old man mentality. We need the energy of youth to keep pushing us forward.”