Bryan Trubey Leaves HKS Architects for Overland Partners

DALLAS — In June, the world of massive sports architecture was rocked slightly by the seemingly abrupt departure of Bryan Trubey, FAIA, from HKS Architects, one of the largest architecture firms in the United States and in the world. Trubey headed up the design team for AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field, among other very large structures, and had worked for HKS for nearly thirty years.

Now, just three short months later it has been announced that Trubey has joined Overland Partners, and he has apparently recruited other HKS employees to go with him, including John Hutchings, Austin Ash, Trip Boswell, Dan Trafford, Katie Miles and Cheryl Karalla, forming a sort of “dream team” of skilled designers who are particularly specialized at creating large-scale sports arenas and entertainment facilities.

With this influx of the renowned stadium design team, Overland Partners opened new offices in a trendy zone of downtown Dallas to accommodate them, overlooking Klyde Warren Park.

Those those who had conjectured regarding Trubey’s move following his exit from HKS likely did not predict he would end up joining forces with Overland Partners. But, he had longterm relationships with members of Overland’s top management group. Prime among those was Robert “Bob” Shemwell, a principal at the firm, and who was Trubey’s close friend for decades as well as roommate back when they both attended Texas A&M University and the College of Architecture there.

Overland Partners is headquartered in San Antonio, and the company has a powerful body of work in the State of Texas in addition to throughout the U.S. and also abroad. As the firm expanded, Shemwell presented Trubey to his company’s senior partners, among whom is their CEO, Rick Archer.

The “Trubey Team” now joining up with Overland Partners have driven cutting-edge entertainment venues worldwide. Their portfolio highlights include such august venues as the renowned AT&T Stadium which is home to the Dallas Cowboys football team; SoFi Stadium which is home for both the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams — and which spreads across an eye-popping 3.1 million square feet in Inglewood, California; and the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis which is home for the NFL Vikings football team. For the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team, Trubey’s team created the brand-new Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, noteworthy for being the baseball team’s very first arena with a fully retractable roofing system; and they developed American Family Field for the Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team.

This remarkable portfolio of work is added to Overland’s, which has received greater than two hundred design awards and has also been highlighted in various international and national professional creative journals and other media. A Texas Society of Architects Firm of the Year in 2010, Overland Partners has been acknowledged by Architect Magazine as one of the leading 50 architecture firms and is among the leading 50 environmentally sustainable design firms in the country.

It will be interesting to see what Trubey’s team will next produce while working with this agile and innovative smaller firm.