A trifecta for Narrate, a new name for Tulsa architecture firm marking 30 years, new digs

In addition to 30 years in business this year, Selser Schaefer Architects has changed its name to Narrate Design and has moved into a new 15,000-square-foot downtown office space.

“It’s weird because usually we’re kind of celebrating one thing, but being that we’re celebrating 30 years, changing our name and coming to this new space, … it’s just amazing,” said Whitney Stauffer, who as one of three partners of the company handles business development and community outreach.

Narrate recently moved to 2 W. Sixth St. in the historic TransOK Building, a former headquarters of Public Service Company of Oklahoma several decades ago.

“This new space is awesome. It’s really cool coming to the heart of downtown. I really underestimated how much I would love that,” Stauffer said.

The firm has won hundreds of awards in design, construction and community outreach since its founding in 1993 by Bob Schaefer and Janet Selser. It now has more than 30 employees.

Its Tulsa projects can be seen all over the city and include the Mother Road Market, the Boxyard, Greenwood Rising, Meals on Wheels of Metro Tulsa headquarters and Tulsa Community College’s Center for Creativity.

Its national clients include H-E-B, a San Antonio-based supermarket giant, and Chick-fil-A.

Stauffer said that when her friends or family visit Tulsa, she enjoys showing them the firm’s work.

“The fun thing is almost no matter where we’re going, I can point something out, which is kind of cool,” she said.

Stauffer said it took the firm about two years to find and decide on a new name, something that was planned since she and co-partners Hank Spieker and Shane Aaron took over the business in 2017.

“We had planned to change the name. We just took this long to get to it,” she said.

“We knew what we didn’t want. We didn’t want it to be our names.

“The old-school way was it to be about the principal. When you think about some of the most famous firms, it’s all a guy’s name, pretty much.

“We have these teams in our office, and everybody is designing and collaborating to come up with the best thing. We just work differently than we used to. And so (the name) being around like the three of our names seemed so bizarre. We were like, ‘No, that’s weird.’”

“The success of this firm is not about the three of us; it’s about all of us.

“We knew we didn’t want (the name) to be an acronym, because every other firm, like when those owners left, just became the acronym of those letters.”

“We kind of wanted it to be one word, and we wanted it to be representative of what we do. We had a binder probably this big (with names),” Stauffer said, motioning with her hands a height of about eight inches.

“Getting a group of people to all agree on something is harder than we thought, because it’s just a big decision,” she said.

“But when we landed on Narrate, we really did know. When we looked it up and found it was still available, we were just shocked. And very elated.

“It says a lot about the way we work. The process for us has always been about storytelling.

“When you look at a lot of our work, you can see it’s not just a building. We want it to be a representation of who they are,” Stauffer said.

“Our new name, Narrate, articulates the parallels between storytelling and design,” Aaron said. “It succinctly captures the idea that with every project, we create environments that tell your story with purpose, clarity and a distinct point of view.”

Stauffer also said many clients may need an architecture firm only once.

That means the firm’s role often is to answer questions that clients may not even know to ask.

“If you’ve never done this before, then you don’t know what to ask for,” Stauffer said. “So we have to be the experts and ask the right questions to draw out of them all these things. That is a huge part of our process — is that beginning stage, where you’re really learning.

“And then we come back and we type up all our notes, compare them, and we put that back in front of them and we ask, ‘Did we hear all this correctly?’ And then it starts with a bubble diagram … and it shows us (spatial) relationships and how big things need to be, and that goes to the next level and the next level.

“And so you finally get to that really pretty concept design that’s like photo-realistic.

“A lot of people send these things out to China and they produce it and send it back. We do it all in-house here.”

She said the concept — in many instances in the form of an animation video — can then be used to help raise funds for the project.

“A lot of times, for nonprofits, we’ll design something; they’ll go fundraise; and then we’ll go do the actual project,” Stauffer said.

“(It’s) so important in this day and age because everyone is so visual. People need that. They need the visual,” she said.

“One thing won’t change,” Spieker said. “People are at the heart of every story and at the center of every design.”