What made you want to become an architect? I was always drawing things – cars, buildings, portraits – even at a young age. And my dad was a builder, so I grew up around construction. It made sense to combine the two together with Architecture.
What do you like most about your job? Problem solving. I always have a new challenge and I like getting to help our clients and project teams figure out the best solution.
Do you have a favorite project/program you’ve worked on in your career? Overall, I’ve really enjoyed working on the Amazon program. It’s especially interesting any time I get to design a new prototype facility for a client; I like creating the standard that will lay the groundwork for a lot of future buildings.
You’re a technical mentor and serve on the technical development committee – what made you want to get involved with the technical development side of things and why do you think it’s important? As someone who’s artistic, I really like getting into the details no matter if I’m painting or working on a car or designing a building. My mentor’s mentor used to say, “where does the water go when the whistle blows”, which really speaks to what I’m interested in; I want to know how this building stands up, how we keep water out. All that technical detail has always been interesting to me, and I enjoy getting to share that technical knowledge with others. I help anyone interested in the technicalities of how to put things together. I love starting from all the individual pieces and then helping to put them together into a whole.
What do you like to do outside of work? I love working on cars, so I build racecars and then sell them. Each new project starts with just a bunch of steel tubes (see above pics!) and I build on from there. It’s like what I enjoy about architecture, I start from a bunch of individual pieces and get to build it into something complete.