INCLUSION SOM’s Baxter Under Threat Powerhouse The (W)rapper Vitruvius in Circulation

As a young architect with SOM in 1972, Richard Tomlinson saw something special in the Baxter International suburban office campus, which was already underway when he joined the firm. “It was conceived as a dynamic campus that made flexibility a fundamental principle,” he told AN. “What fascinated me about Baxter was its application of flexibility principles from high-rise office buildings for corporate and commercial clients to a campus environment.” It wasn’t one of his assigned projects, but he took it on as a “hobby” anyway. “I basically volunteered to help out after hours, weekends, whatever the firm needed, and I did that with Baxter,” Tomlinson recalled. After the 600,000-square-foot development for a medical equipment giant opened in 1975, he stayed on, working with the client through an expansion in the ’80s and beyond, making it one of his longest-term clients at SOM, from which he retired in 2014. continued on page 14