The Anti-Starchitect

"Peter Kuttner pauses at the center of his firm's airy, open offices not far from Harvard Square...on all sides of him, in the form of computer-rendered schematics, models, and large-scale photo displays, is evidence of the myriad projects the 60-plus architects, designers, and staff are working on at Cambridge Seven Associates. As president of the 45-year-old company, Kuttner is, as longtime friend and colleague Carol Haper describes it, the firm's conscience and soul."

"It is largely his vision that has steered C7A in recent years to do both big-name public projects -- the $47 million expansion of the Boston Children's Museum, for example -- and smaller jobs such as the sushi bar at the InterContinental Hotel. And it is Kuttner's approach that defines many of the firm's jobs. This is not ego-driven architecture meant to make critics swoon. No, frequently, he and his team are imagining and creating spaces for people who may not think about design much at all -- kids, harried parents, devoted sports fans, busy students. The way Kuttner sees it, it's his job to bring the usefulness and elegance of design to them.

"All of our projects are public," says Kuttner, who's also working on renovations of the New England Aquarium and the Science Museum. "No speculative office buildings, no private homes. A lot of our work is concerned with how large groups of people have an experience."

Kuttner, 57, knows he works in a region increasingly drawn to "starchitects." Frank Gehry designed MIT's Stata Center. Norman Foster is slated to expand the Museum of Fine Arts. Renzo Piano has signed on to do the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Still, Kuttner is decidedly low key. Slightly round and balding, he dresses in oxford shirts, casual slacks, and loafers. Since 1989, he's lived in the same 10-room stucco Tudor in sleepy Winchester, where he still volunteers for a parent-run arts group, even though his youngest kid went off to college six years ago."