
After being hired by Ellerbe, Pehling eventually found his way to Tampa where he joined Reynolds, Smith, and Hills. In Minnesota, Pehling had the chance to work alongside people with great craftsmanship and picked up techniques through watching demos of renderings, which were mostly done by hand over the course of a few weeks. In school, I was lucky that I had a good mentor, the 50s classic architect Ralph Rapson, who took me under his wing and helped me get a job before I was even finished with college.” I was one of the few people that got accepted to Harvard and Columbia but declined both. My mother encouraged this: she was a teacher, but also a concert pianist and had art in her bones.” Pehling says. Because of that, I focused on design because I would conceive unusual designs. “When I was younger, instead of talking, I would draw things. Though he doesn’t consider himself one, the artist has always been drawing, even though he never had an art class before he attended the University of Minnesota for architecture. I don’t consider myself an artist, I’m just a chicken scratcher,” Pehling says.

“The drawings start out when I’m in late-night conference calls: I will doodle and talk at the same time. Most folks know the feeling of sitting through long work meetings, but John Pehling knew just how to cut the tediousness: through drawing.
