Principal Project Architect, Designer, Silling Associates, Inc.
By Jeremy Jarrell
Life couldn’t be better for Jody Driggs if he designed it himself, and although he had a hand in his success, he must give credit where credit is due. “I’m here through God’s grace,” says the principal project architect and designer for Silling Associates, a Charleston-based architecture firm. “I have been very blessed, and I don’t think it’s luck at all that things have fallen into place for me professionally.”
At 34-years-old, Driggs says he didn’t always want to be an architect, but he knew his early creative instincts would lead to his future profession. “I didn’t decide I wanted to go into architecture until my senior year of high school,” he explains. “I wanted to be a musician or artist. I was always on the creative side of things. From a very early age, I always had a pencil in my hand, doing a lot of free-hand drawing.”
Leaving his childhood home in St. Albans, Driggs would pursue architecture at the University of Tennessee following some inspiration provided by his high school piano teacher. During a trip to Pennsylvania, Driggs and his classmates visited the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house. “That kind of sealed the deal for me. I had never heard of it and when I saw the house it all kind of clicked in my head that that is what I wanted to be a part of,” says Driggs.
During his time at UT, Driggs says he benefited from professor Stroud Watson, an “urban design guru,” who he studied under his junior year at the Urban Design Consultancy Studio in Chattanooga. “He was a professor who embraced the idea of a city and the diversity and the beauty of living around a lot of different people and appreciating those differences. He turned me on to the possibility of architecture as a way to change things from a social standpoint,” he says.
In 1996, after graduation, he started searching for jobs by simply knocking on the doors of various architecture firms in Charleston. “I looked in the phone book and picked the firms that had their names in the biggest font and the ones I knew I wrote up cover letters and addressed them directly to the president of the firm. I walked into five different offices over a lunch break,” he jokes about his timing. “Dick Blankenship (then president of Silling Associates) was out to lunch, but Tom Potts, (then a fledgling principal), was in the conference room eating a sandwich. He took a peek at my resume with pictures of buildings I had worked on and they eventually called and offered me an internship.”
The rest, as they say, is history, but it’s nothing Driggs forgets. He continuously credits previous architects at Silling Associates for being mentors, and specifically remembers Howard Johe, a past president, who recently passed away. “I didn’t work directly for him; he was a retired partner who would stop by on occasion. He was larger than life and embodied the spirit of architecture with a great love of people, and I was able to learn enough to respect him and hope to continue that same spirit.”
Driggs’ father, Phil, instilled in him both a work and personal ethic that he carries with him to this day. His wife, Rachel, and their three children are supportive and the reason for his own dedication to architecture and success. “My wife tells me that she’s proud of me, and that’s inspiration enough,” he says.
Now Driggs is working on a part of the team responsible for creating Chesapeake Energy’s 120,000-square-foot building at NorthGate Business Park in Charleston, among other projects. “For me it’s like playing in the major leagues. I can’t think of anything else I would rather be doing.”
Driggs’ life is encompassed by appreciating the diversity of people and making positive changes through his profession. “In the architectural business you try to design a snapshot of the people that use that building,” he says. “You have to roll your sleeves up, listen to them and get to know them. Sometimes they are business owners, political leaders or just the people in the town square who really know that area’s history and culture and their project should be a reflection of them.”
Photography by Rick Lee
