Daily Inspiration: Meet Zachary Verhulst

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zachary Verhulst.

Hi Zachary, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born and raised on the west side of Grand Rapids. and am a proud product of Grand Rapids Public Schools. Growing up, I had no idea what an architect was, let alone that I could be one. For much of my life, my father owned a landscaping business. I started working for him at 13, washing trucks and cleaning the shop, and worked into a foreman position managing crews on construction sites at 16. I learned how to read landscape design drawings, how to lay a site out, and had some interactions with trade contractors as buildings were going up.

When I was 19 years old, I was introduced to Isaac Norris, a local architect in town, who took me under his wing for a summer so I could see what he did for work. Through that experience, not only did I learn what an architect was, but I fell in love with many facets of the profession. A mix of art, math, sales, and being on job sites again. It seemed perfect for me so that fall, I transferred and moved to Lawrence Tech on the east side of Michigan. Once I got there, I realized how unprepared I was for the pace and hours needed to be successful. I also experienced a significant lack of diversity, especially getting into the latter half of my academic career.

I finished graduate school just as we started to emerge from the recession of 2008 and I moved back to Grand Rapids to take a position with a large firm in town. Times were still quite tough, so I felt very grateful to land a position being so new to the industry. It was a grind for the first three years. I was working in an architectural office for three long days a week, and was landscaping for three long days a week to make ends meet. In the winters, I would plow and shovel snow from 2:00 in the morning until 7:30, eat quickly, and get into the office by 8:00. At that time, I was renting a house on the westside with seven other people, including my now wife, Anna. It was a formative time in my life, to say the least!

I changed firms toward the end of 2014 to take on a new opportunity with more responsibility and more room to grow. I made a lot of friends and connections, while also becoming the first black person to have ownership. I grew significantly and am very thankful for my experiences. I remember waking up after a couple of really tough weeks asking myself, “What are you doing this for? Are you moving any needle working like this?” I couldn’t get my head around it after a while, so I made a choice to pursue a way of practicing architecture that I hadn’t been a part of for a long time; a deeply connected and purpose-driven practice that prioritizes people and the planet over everything else.

Out of that, Pure Architects was born. Pure, in name and in substance, is a guiding principle as we fight for everyone to have a say in how the built environment is made. Our office of seven is on the third floor of 180 Monroe overlooking McKay Tower and Rosa Parks Circle; two places that are very significant in our history and in my life. I married my best friend on the second floor of McKay and Rosa Parks is recognized her ability to affect change by sticking up for those who might not be able to stick up for themselves. Both of these beautiful pieces of architecture are daily reminders of the important things in my life.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Entrepreneurship is really tough. Believing in yourself is really tough, too. The road to this place has not been easy, but it has definitely been worth it. Since starting, we have had some really great times and some really tough ones, but all of them taught us something.

I left large firm practice in February of 2020, just before COVID became a really big issue. I sold my ownership stake and Anna and I prepared to live on one income for a while as we figured out our future plans. In May of 2020, Anna lost her job and it was the first time I felt real panic set in. We had to significantly reconfigure our life to make sure our three daughters, and each other, would be ok. Through this, we found a new normal; a new pace and some new identities, with each other and in the world around us. It was all quite hard to manage, but also crafted perspective and gratitude for our health and that we were together.

Starting the firm, Andrew and I were in my basement. Moving into fall of 2020 we were seeing big COVID surges. We had make shift desks, two laptops, k-cup after k-cup, and wore sweatpants to work most days. I was trying to procure clients and position us to win work while Andrew was building the back bone of everything we use today. I couldn’t have done it without him. It was a crazy time reflecting on it now. He also has three daughters under six and a wife that made a choice for their family to leave her career to be home. We had a lot to lose if this didn’t go well. We didn’t have investors, I couldn’t get a line of credit as a new business in a pandemic, and I was burning through cash fast.

In October, we landed two nice sized projects that would keep us busy for a few months and then in December, we landed a project that was truly catalytic. We have never looked back since.

Pure Architects is the culmination of 20 years worth of pieces and parts of my life that are all working together to get to me to a final destination. I am blessed to have a strong family that supports me through the wins and losses, parents that continue to lay a foundation for our family to build from, and a wife that refuses to let me feel small. I have five other people I work with that choose to wake up everyday and chase the same dream; a dream that drives us to create purposeful and thoughtful architecture. It is truly an amazing feeling.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We are architects and designers elevating the human experience in space through our work. We are optimists and thinkers, tinkerers and makers, experimenters and learners, and we empathize with those we are designing for. This process creates space for us to find inspiration in unexpected places and, often times, it leads to a very valuable discovery. We believe that Human-Centered Design is the most thoughtful way to capture human desires, technical feasibility, and viable business objectives of the projects we work on.

Human-centered design is used to creatively and empathetically work through design problems. We use customized tools to begin to investigate “who we are designing for” and “who we are empathizing with.” Empathy is the capacity to step into other people’s shoes, to understand their situations, and start to create design solutions from their perspective. This process creates a framework for understanding while collectively sharing our perceptions and knowledge of others. It allows you to leave behind your own biases and preconceived ideas to view issues through someone else’s lenses. We have learned, that starting with humans and the emotions we all have daily, helps us to understand how space helps or hurts our wellbeing and sense of belonging.

We are very proud of the position we hold in our industry and are quickly becoming the sought-after firm for those that seek to experience an inclusive and thoughtful design process. We help our clients identify the problems they’re actually trying to solve rather than identify the minimum amount of scope we will work on. Ultimately, our fulfilment comes from working together, internally and with our communities and clients, to create meaningful outcomes that positively impact people and our planet.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Grit is everything. It gets me through the hardest parts of being the backstop to everything. There are plenty of days I wake up drained, or unmotivated, sometimes even pessimistic, especially with the pandemic and so much suffering happening around us, and grit pushes me through it. Working every weekend isn’t for everyone and to be the best at anything, which is what I aspire for, you have to be gritty and relentless and consistent.

Secondly, gratitude continually shapes my perspective. To be able to have a life and support system to chase the dreams I chase is a huge blessing and I feel very thankful for it. Gratitude pushes me to make the most of everyday. I don’t believe in work-life balance to be honest; it’s all one life for me and I try hard to be the same person all the time. It’s a good, but hectic, cycle of experiences and emotions to manage for sure.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.purearchitects.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purearchitects/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PureArchitectsGR/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/pure_architects

Image Credits
Germination Labs