Jerry Alexander says he was destined for a career in architecture. Growing up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in a creative household, regularly building things with his commercial artist dad, Alexander found his future career one day at an exhibit of the work of architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright.

“It’s classic. As a child, 12 years old, I see a show of Frank Lloyd Wright, and it was captivating," Alexander said in an interview. "I just decided at a young age on architecture, and it never wavered. I just followed that passion."

He went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture and then applied his education to work on projects in Singapore and Thailand, all before re-routing to his home state of Texas. That's where he has worked in architecture for the past 30 years, with some high-profile projects built to be eye-catching and to promote the brands of their owners. Alexander was named in the past month co-managing director of national architectural firm Gensler's Houston office.

Alexander has mastered multiple disciplines within architecture, including brand identity development. That's evident in projects he worked on such as the Coca-Cola Northpoint Experience Tour, a 1 million-square-foot bottling plant in Houston where guests can walk a facility promoting the company's history. It can also be seen in TK Elevator's $200 million Americas headquarters and innovation center that opened this year near Atlanta. The structure includes the tallest elevator test tower in North America with 18 shafts and a mesh screen that serves as a digital canvas, making the building stand out on Atlanta's northwest suburban skyline.

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, he pursued his graduate studies at UCLA, where he started focusing on mixed-use architecture, particularly in Singapore and Bangkok. Mixed-use was a relatively new concept when Alexander was working there during the 1980s and 1990s.

“I kind of had two careers. I started out with a lot of retail and mixed-use, because that was where I saw so much energy and so much of my passion. When I moved to Los Angeles, it changed because I started working [on projects] in Asia, and I started seeing these massive projects with all these people — high-energy and all this interaction. I just loved that — people connecting and a lot of lives intersecting,” Alexander said.

Alexander was working with RTKL Architects at the time, and for his designs in Asia, "they wanted to bring some of this Western mixed-use philosophy, because it was all about density, how you mix these people in different things from day to night,” he said.

He then moved to Houston in 1992 to join Gensler as a senior associate before leaving in 1997 and founding Acumen Design, a branding agency he co-led for 20 years. Like his return to Texas, life again came full circle for Alexander when he made another return, this time to Gensler in 2017 as a brand design leader. One year later, Gensler made him a principal.

He was able to apply his experience in mixed-use design from Asia when returned to Texas.

“When I left Los Angeles and moved to Houston, I locked in on mixed-use, and that is what I still love now,” he continued. “I came to Houston and started working with Gensler. It was a great opportunity. We were emerging in mixed-use, but not in the central regions. I had a unique skill set coming to Gensler.”

The co-managing director role was added to Alexander's title a few weeks ago, a title he shares with fellow co-managing director Stephanie Burritt, who has been in the role for about a decade. With Burritt, he said, "I have a great co-managing partner now and we’re very complementary. Her background is in interiors and workplace, and mine background is in mixed-use and lifestyle.”

San Francisco-based Gensler is the largest U.S. architectural firm by revenue, with more than $1.3 billion last year, more than double the revenue of the second-largest firm, Perkins & Will, according to Architectural Record.

Gensler's Houston office has about 240 employees and is the company's seventh largest out of its 51 offices across the globe. Gensler Houston relocated into 46,000 square feet at 909 Fannin St. at 2 Houston Center downtown in 2020. The move from Pennzoil Place marked a shift from a traditional workplace-focused office to modern space that offers a range of work styles, including direct access to a landscaped outdoor terrace and a virtual reality room.

Gensler's new Houston office is in a building that is part of a larger redevelopment of Houston Center, a 4.2 million-square-foot office and retail complex that Gensler is repositioning for owner Brookfield Properties. Another local project Alexander and his team are working on is Memorial Town Square, a 27-acre, open-air lifestyle center being built on the site of a former Sears department store and parking lot next to Memorial City Mall in West Houston.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Gensler's Houston office, and the company is planning to celebrate. Alexander's priorities, for now, are ensuring Gensler Houston continues to evolve without straying from its roots.

“For me, what’s exciting is to continue to build off this great legacy that we have, this momentum, and add all this new texture, color and flavor,” Alexander said.