Architect does projects around world
CHICORA — Working out of a former church in Chicora, architect Karen Mortland has seen her designs spread across the nation and across the world.
Mortland is the president and sole employee of Mortland Planning and Design, which plans laboratories for colleges, businesses and hospitals.
And, if commissions are any evidence, she's quite good at it.
“I've designed millions of square feet of laboratory space, the majority of them for hospitals, but I've done some private labs,” she said. She's also been a consultant on laboratory design for other architectural firms.
Her designs have been used in laboratories across the nation and in Canada, Mexico, Tibet and Saudi Arabia.
Mortland said she's done some planning for Armstrong Memorial Hospital and some design work for Butler Hospital.
“I'm the only one in the country with a dual degree that goes out and does designs like that,” said Mortland.
Mortland took a circuitous route to become an architect. She graduated from Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., with a medical technologist degree.
“This is combined chemistry/biology degree,” she said. “Medical technologists work in hospital laboratories. They're the people that run all the tests and give the results to the doctors.”
But after 10 years of hospital work in upstate New York and Colorado, a chance remark sent Mortland down a new career path.
“I was drinking too many magaritas with a friend who asked me, 'If you could be anything you wanted to be, what would it be?' I said I wanted to be an architect. And she said, 'Why not?'” Mortland said.
When she couldn't think of a good answer why not, Mortland said, she enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy and got a master's degree in architecture.
“I wanted to design museums, houses and beautiful buildings,” she said. “Laboratories weren't seen as a career path.”
But a chance meeting with Dick Rittelmann of the Butler architectural firm Burt Hill Kosar Rittelmann Associates (now called Stantec) brought her to Butler to do her mandatory three-year apprenticeship for her architect's license.
Mortland said her dual background in medical technology and architecture made her a natural for laboratory design.
Designing a lab is very different than designing, say, a hotel, she said.“It's very technical as opposed to artistic. Most of what I do ends up being about efficiency,” she said.And not many hotels call for gas jets or vacuum outlets in every room.“There's a lot of automation in laboratories now. There's an emphasis on molecular diagnostics, the forensics stuff. They use a lot of molecular testing for a lot of work,” she said.“She is a delightful person to work with. She started out as a medical technician, so she has an intuitive feel for the subject,” said Deb O'Malley, director of lab services at Butler Health Systems. She said Mortland had been “involved in taking a look at what opportunities we might have.”“I actually always learn something from my clients, so each job is something different. That's what makes this job fun,” said Mortland. “I tell Dan it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It's very detail-oriented work.”Dan would be her husband, Dan Mortland, a Connoquenessing native, who helped get Mortland Planning and Design up and running.Mortland said she was working for another architectural firm when her husband suggested she set up her own firm.“He said we could do this on our own, so we did. He really had the wherewithal with business design,” she said. “I tell people I get to color and draw with crayons. He's the HR director because he directs me all the time.”“It's a pretty easy job for a HR director when you only have one person,” said Dan Mortland. “I worry about the nuts and bolts of the operation. She's the talent.”Noting that she will be out of town for a series of meetings over the next two months, Dan Mortland said, “It's kind of important that there is somebody in base camp to keep an eye on things.”That base camp is the former St. Paul's Lutheran Church, which they bought and renovated 10 years ago.She shares the office with her computer, her painting supplies (she paints flowers and landscape in acrylic) and with an office cat named Portia.She said using the Internet allows her to send blueprints to clients across the country as an e-mail with a PDF attachment.At present, she's doing laboratory designs for Quest Labs in Boston and Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles.“We could be anywhere in the United States, as long as we're near a big airport, but this makes us happy. We've been here long enough that we feel we are part of the community,” said Dan Mortland.
