Company Profile
Symmes Maini & McKee Associates
Company Overview
Symmes Maini & McKee Associates is a leading multi-disciplinary design firm with a rich dynamic office culture. Our award winning architecture, engineering, interior design and planning services, our diverse client base and corporate, institutional, commercial and science technology and health projects keep our 140+ professionals energized and challenged. SMMA is an ISO 9001-2000 certified company that is dedicated to client service and to our employees. We foster a team environment and provide excellent benefits for our employees.
Company History
The Early Years -
Two MIT engineering graduates, Parker Symmes '47 and William L. Maini '51, founded Vappi Symmes and Maini, Engineers and Architects, in 1955. Our offices were located on Sydney Street in Cambridge, MA. In 1958 a graduate architect from Rensselaer, Jon McKee '49, joined them. With a staff of 8, they changed the name to Symmes Maini & McKee Architects and Engineers.
The firm's original design commissions included distribution, light manufacturing, and airfreight facility projects at Logan Airport, a flight kitchen for United Airlines, and an office building for Northeast Airlines. The company's "spirits" were lifted with distribution facilities for the liquor industry, including Seagrams. The Towns of Framingham and Lexington MA, and West Hartford CT awarded the firm projects that established our early reputation as designers of municipal ice-skating arenas.
The Growth Years -
SMMA grew from 30 to 90 people. Larger and more diverse design commissions included the new Burlington Mall off Route 128 (as associated architects and engineers) and work for First National Bank of Boston at Columbia Circle that led to over 100,000sf of new and renovated space for offices, data processing, dining, and recreation. In the early 1970s, we began the first of over 60 projects with L.L. Bean, starting with a distribution center and then involving new stores and additions in Freeport, ME.
Our founders' dream of designing institutional projects was realized when we began flagship microelectronics and plasma fusion R&D projects at MIT, and the first of nearly 30 projects - including dormitories, offices, a concert hall, and a clinic - for Boston University. SMMA developed a close-knit family spirit with a reputation for providing strong architectural and engineering design and solid service for repeat clients.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Route 128 Technology Belt expansion around Boston saw SMMA serve rapidly-growing, regional high tech clients - Digital, Wang, Raytheon, Analog Devices, Lockheed Sanders, Dupont/New England Nuclear, New England Telephone - as well as RCA, a national client. This same period brought new commissions for the design of a number of significant suburban office buildings. These included the Lexington Corporate Center in Lexington, MA for Boston Properties; Reservoir Place, a 535,000 sf aluminum-clad office building in Waltham, MA (known along Route 128 as the "silver streak"); offices and a data center for UNUM in Portland, ME; and the original BayBank Tower in Burlington, MA.
In 1979, our first historic restoration and renovation project transformed the Atheneum Building, built in 1892 and facing the Charles River and Longfellow Bridge in Cambridge, into a unique office facility with a restaurant and racquetball club. Our design team convinced the client to commission and install a 15-foot statue of Athena on a roof pediment - a statue that was included in the original 1892 architectural drawings but that had never been erected. The building has since become a landmark, visible from the Boston side of the river.
Closer to Harvard Square, SMMA completed a dramatic renovation of 1280 Massachusetts Avenue.The award-winning, 47,000 SF mixed-use project has been cited by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Robert Campbell as a contemporary design that successfully fits into the traditional Cambridge architectural context.
Not far away, SMMA designed and moved into a newly constructed office building at 1000 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge in 1982, where we are today. Soon after, SMMA and all of New England's design and construction industry rode the famous economic roller coaster of the late 80's/early 90's. A major downturn from 1987 to 1991 affected the firm, but SMMA's leadership set their sights on diversification and, with patience and tighter controls, guided the company into the recovery of the early 1990s.
Mature Years -
Recognizing increased demand for public school design in Massachusetts, in October of 1991 SMMA acquired Peirce Pierce & Kramer, a well-known Boston architecture firm with a strong track record in public school design. The company also associated with Chicago firm Perkins and Will to win commissions for new high schools in Lynn, Chelsea, and Mashpee, MA. With renewed strength in the economy, SMMA parlayed previous success in the microelectronics field to land technology projects at MIT; with IBM in Burlington VT and Fishkill NY; Harris Semiconductor (now Fairchild Semiconductor) in Mountaintop PA; and continuing work with Analog Devices in Wilmington MA. Also in 1991, SMMA opened an office in Minneapolis MN, and acquired Winsor/Faricy Architects, Inc. of St. Paul, a prestigious firm with a 25-year history of award-winning work in municipal and institutional facilities and in historic preservation.
SMMA's Midwest commissions included large-scale projects such as the Hawthorne Transportation Center for the City of Minneapolis; Vitesse Semiconductor in Colorado Springs CO; FSI International's manufacturing facility in Chaska MN; the preservation of the historic Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul MN; Arlington High School in Minneapolis MN; and the Residences at World Golf Village near St. Augustine FL.
The firm's reputation for office building design was enhanced in the 1990s with a major project for UNUM/Provident in Portland ME and with multiple design commissions for The Gutierrez Company, the Flatley Company, Beacon Properties, and Nordic Properties. SMMA's design profile was also enhanced by an iconic historic preservation project - the Farwell-Read Block in Harvard Square - for Cambridge Savings Bank, the result of a long-standing design relationship with the bank. The firm's distinguished long-term retail clients - L.L. Bean in Freeport ME, and Talbots in Hingham MA -- were joined by new clients operating at the leading edge of technology - EMC Corporation, Nokia, Nortel, and Compaq. The firm also participated in the conceptual design of IBM's new 300mm wafer fabrication facility in Fishkill NY. Teradyne and Analog Devices continued over 20 years of relationships with SMMA into 2002, with the firm completing a study of a major semiconductor plant for Analog and a major new corporate campus for Teradyne.
The academic market continued to grow with public schools in Marblehead, Norton, and Andover MA; dormitories at Endicott College in Beverly MA and St. Joseph's College in Standish ME; laboratory science buildings at the University of Maine/Orono and the University of Southern Maine; an Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center/ATMC for Mass Development and the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth; and campus master planning at the University of New England in Biddeford and Portland, ME. Farther afield, we completed state-of-the-art buildings in microstructure research for The Ohio State University and University of Maryland.
SMMA's traditional pursuit of design and technical quality became more focused, resulting in our adoption of an internal Quality Plan that would pass the annual rigors of ISO 9001, an international program of quality standards. SMMA achieved certification under the ISO plan structure in record time and in April of 2003 celebrated its sixth consecutive year of certification under this standard.
Also in the mid to late 90's the firm succeeded in institutionalizing consistent design excellence in the areas of interior design and master planning, adding these elements as primary core services.
In 1998, in recognition of his 33 years of service leading Symmes Maini & McKee to a prominent position in Boston's design community, founder William Maini was named Chairman Emeritus of the firm.
The Future – the Next 50 Years -
Unique in having only three presidents over five decades - William L. Maini, PE, Thomas E. Vogel, AIA, and Michael K. Powers, PE - the SMMA of today is a 140-person professional practice with an established reputation as a full-service design, engineering, and planning firm. Client focus is in the educational/institutional, corporate, commercial, advanced technology and sciences market sectors, and SMMA continues to build on its solid foundation for strong and continued growth.
In May of 2001, acclaimed health science architects Hoskins Scott & Partners merged with SMMA, deepening the firm's science and technology expertise.
We are committed to our staff, our future leaders, and our clients. We are passionate about design and service excellence. We look forward to our next half century as the 21st unfolds.
Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
As we look to our next half-century of business, SMMA continues to add prestigious new names to a client list that reflects New England's future. Recent work includes a new headquarters in Rhode Island for Fortune 500 firm Cox Communications, a master plan for Bose Corporation, new laboratory facilities for Wyeth and Draper Lab, a comprehensive master plan and 350 bed residence hall for Providence College, luxury condominiums and mixed-use development for Catamount Management, and major high schools for Quincy, Montague, Marblehead, Bridgewater/Raynham, Bedford, Swampscott, Douglas, and Hudson, Massachusetts.
Benefits
SMMA pays 80% of the health insurance and 100% of the dental insurance premiums and provides life insurance and accidental death and dismemberment insurance equal to twice the annual salary, $100,000. maximum.
401(k) - SMMA currently matches $.75 of every dollar contributed up to 6% of the employee earnings.
Paid Vacations / 7 Sick Days / 10 Holidays per year