Memorial designers made Oklahoma City their home
After working on the memorial, Hans and Torrey Butzer started working on the city
Torrey Butzer is concerned about the water in the reflecting pool of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
The stone slabs have “moved somewhat” because of thermal fluctuations, causing a disruption in the water flow.
She’s working with maintenance to find a solution.
Torrey and her husband, Hans, are still as engaged as they were when they designed the memorial more than 20 years ago. In fact, they’re still here. “It wasn’t just a single moment in time, but basically for the rest of our lives, we’ll be part of this project,” says Torrey.
In 1997 while working in Germany, their entry was selected as the winning design in an international competition. Out of 624 entries from 23 countries and all 50 states, their design was chosen. They were 30 years old.
After a project is complete, most designers get out of town — fast.
“We found such a welcoming community that we decided to stay,” she said.
After working on the memorial, they started working on the city.
Kari Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, credits the Butzers with helping rebuild downtown Oklahoma City.
“They helped rebuild a core part of a major city. A bomb-ravaged block, they helped rebuild,” Watkins said.
Still helping OKC
Today, Hans is a professor and dean of the OU Gibbs College of Architecture. He and Torrey co-own their downtown design firm, Butzer Architects and Urbanism.
They are credited with the renovation of numerous downtown areas, including the Skydance pedestrian bridge. Current projects include five buildings in the new MAPS 3 Scissortail Park.
Torrey drives by the memorial a couple of times a day; they live and work about a mile away.
“I look at the visitors there, and wonder what they’re thinking. I hope they’re finding comfort.”
Both graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1990 from the University of Texas at Austin, and married one year later. (Hans also has a master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.)
It was Torrey’s idea to enter the competition.
Hans’ parents were well-known German geographers and anthropologists.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he spent his formative years in Flossmoor, an affluent Chicago suburb, and in Aachen, Germany.
“I was privileged enough to travel a great deal in Europe and saw the monuments of history,” he said.
Torrey was born in Nowata, a small town near the Kansas border, and moved to Wichita as a baby.
Hans credits Torrey with being the “people person.” She studied biographies of all 168 victims as they worked on the design.
“She has this amazing gift of seeing people as people,” Hans said.
“I don’t have this gift of seeing people as she does. I love to ‘read’ the physical environment, the topographies, the shadows.
“But she poured herself into those stories (about the victims),” Hans said.
Torrey says their youth was an advantage.
“Young people often have fresher, newer views because they haven’ t experienced life as much. Some of the details we wanted were kind of crazy, but we didn’t know any better,” she said.
“You’ve heard so many times that something can’t be done in a certain way. In that way, youth plays a role in helping one to be open to new ideas.”
Magdalena Schaffernicht, an architecture major from Talca, Chile, is enrolled in her third class with Butzer, who is always encouraging the students to dream “big.”
“He always takes our ideas into consideration, putting us (students) on the same level as him, which is amazing,” she said.
‘Life is not a game’
Since the memorial was dedicated in 2000, Torrey has given birth to three children, all daughters who attend Classen School of Advanced Studies.
Daisy, the oldest, was born two months after the memorial was dedicated.
“Hans and I both realized it was time to let go. We were very fortunate that we had another ‘project’ coming. My daughter likes to say she was part of the design team,” Torrey said.
Having them was “my best project.” She put her career on hold for 10 years to be at home with them and never regrets it.
Each has lost a parent in the past two years. But it’s been their meetings with the victims’ families and survivors that have influenced them.
“It helped remind us that life is not a game. It’s real. It’s raw. Architecture is real and raw. We have to take every moment and every act seriously,” Hans said.
“Our parents didn’t die in the form of violence that those 168 died, and countless others throughout the world. A quiet death is one thing, but a violent death is another,” he said.
Torrey says, “Nineteen of those chairs are smaller, for the children. It has made us, as a parent, more appreciate the loss of a child.”