Architect Honored for Mentor Role

As a young man fresh out of USC’s School of Architecture in the late 1940s, Robert Kennard had a tough time getting a job.

“I found it was very difficult for minority students to get into a lot of architectural firms,” said the 70-year-old Kennard, who was born and raised in Los Angeles.

“I’d send out a resume, get the job and then, when I’d go there, they’d turn me down. That’s when I decided I’d never close my door to a student.”

He’s been opening his door to students of every color ever since, to give them advice and an occasional job at his KDG Architecture & Planning, which has designed everything from private homes to public buildings since he established the firm in 1957.

“Bob Kennard is in a group of people I think of as extraordinarily capable architects who are also good citizens,” said Robert S. Harris, dean of the USC School of Architecture.

Kennard will be honored April 2 at a USC Architectural Guild dinner as recipient of the USC School of Architecture’s 1991 Distinguished Alumni Award.

“Bob has probably been an unwitting mentor to many,” said Virginia Tanzmann, president of the Architectural Guild.

“Throughout his career, he has served as a role model and offered invaluable guidance to young people of minority groups aspiring to become architects and urban planners,” Tanzmann said.

The Architectural Guild and Los Angeles Unified School District award scholarships to minority students to study at USC during the summer. Kennard and other architects participate in a mentor program to further the students’ interest.

But Kennard also works with students from UCLA and Cal Poly, Pomona and San Luis Obispo.

“Cal Poly is particularly aggressive,” he said. “They have a shadowship program that we do, and in that, a kid comes down from San Luis Obispo, spends the night in Los Angeles, then follows an architect around the next day.

“It’s hard for kids, unless they have strong family support, to make it in a profession. They need moral as well as financial support.” By spending a day with an architect, a student learns what a workday is like and gets some moral support, Kennard explained.

His firm also sends speakers to area high schools. “It means a lot for kids to talk to a real architect,” he said. “Then they can find out what the profession is about.”

To Kennard, being an architect means being a board member for the American Institute of Architects, the USC Architectural Guild and the Dean’s Council of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA.

He’s a mayoral appointee to the Design Advisory Panel of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, and he is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects and a past recipient of the Ebonics Award, recognizing outstanding minority alumni of USC.

Through his achievements, Kennard has been following in the footsteps of the late Paul Williams, who also studied architecture at USC. “He was a role model for architects my age,” Kennard said.

While taking a drafting class at Monroe High School, Kennard first became aware of the famous black architect, who designed dozens of movie-star mansions and other buildings during Hollywood’s Golden Era.

“My oldest sister met some people who knew Paul Williams, and she got hold of a brochure about his company and sent it to me, since I liked to draw,” Kennard recalled. “Years later, I did a job with him late in his life.” Williams died in 1980 at the age of 85.

“Paul Williams was a fantastic architect, and he did it when it was practically impossible for a minority,” Kennard said.

Inspired by Williams, Kennard went to Pasadena City College for two years before he was drafted for World War II. “When I came back, I was able to go to USC because of the GI Bill,” he said.

After he finished his education, he married, had three children and established his architectural practice, which now has a staff of 35, including 24 architects.

“We’re heavy into school projects, and we do a lot of transportation work (including service centers and master planning) for Metro-Rail and the Blue Line,” he said, referring to the Long Beach/Los Angeles Light Rail Line.

His firm designed the Carson Civic Center, major expansions for the Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Complex, many school buildings for the Los Angeles Unified School District and more than 3,000 units of housing throughout California. KDG is also the associate architect for the Los Angeles Central Library expansion.

“I’d like to see more minorities and women go into architecture,” he said. “But I’d like to be remembered as someone who did the best he could, created some good architecture and did something for the minority community, encouraging some young blacks and others to go into the profession.”