Traveling Architect
Cliff Montague, AIA, spent a short time as partner in a construction business before pursuing a career as an architect. He gravitated toward Kahn and never left – though he’s been on the move nonetheless. “I never thought in my career as an architect I would go to South America, Korea, Germany – all the places I’ve been, and all the people I know from those places.” Clift started in the Architectural Development Department and moved first to the firm’s Project Management Department in a matter of a few years. “The old master architects-builders – the people who really ran the process of the built environment – used to be philosophers, and business people. That’s what Albert was; that’s our legacy. We wanted to get back to that.” They wanted to talk “big picture” with their clients. more...
“We first formed Kahn Program Management Services and then when we moved more into facility management and strategic planning we renamed the group Kahn Strategic Services. Our mission was to incubate new businesses that supported our architectural core. Our success at that turned into what’s now called Kahn Global Services.” Global as in all-encompassing – though it might well describe its geographic reach as well. Clift serves as mentor to those in Kahn’s Birmingham and Brazil offices, and he travels there and other places often. “I’ll never forget the first time I came over the hill [in Brazil] and saw our first Mercedes-Benz factory coming together there. We were in a foreign country, doing program management with a local architect and local contractors, and we’ve put this whole team together. Just the enormity of that project and where it was…I was really proud of that.”
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