Growing up in southern Indiana on a parcel of his grandfather’s farm provided the perfect setting for a young Paul Strohm to discover his love for creating things.

“I was a kid who ran around the farm a lot and I built things—forts, tree houses, structures,” says Strohm, now a senior vice president and director of healthcare at HOK (St. Louis) and the HCD 10 Architect for his work in 2014.

His love for building things was complemented by his skill in drawing, and by high school, Strohm had a career in architecture as well as a career in medicine on his radar screen. So how did architecture win?

“I thought it was a profession where you could leverage the art of building and the special nature of creation to help people,” he says.

Today, he continues to enjoy the complexity and multidimensionality that his work brings and helping clients figure out how to use their spaces more efficiently in order to deliver the best care possible.

But there’s one challenge he’d like to see architects, designers, and planners help their clients solve for good—even if it means working themselves out of a job. Listen to this HCD 10 podcast to learn what it is as well as hear the number one request he gets from clients.

For more HCD 10 podcasts, read “Getting Up Close And Personal With The HCD 10.”