My multifaceted design experience – over 2 1/2 decades of work – spans a large spectrum of physical scales: from architecture and planning projects across North America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, to art and graphic design projects which have reached audiences through television and print.

In developing this work, I have enjoyed listening to and coordinating the many voices involved: clients, cities, communities, builders, fabricators, and fluctuating international design teams.

Recently, in California, I served on El Segundo’s Art & Culture Advisory Committee, developing and supporting public art initiatives directed at getting the community more involved.

As I believe education is the foundation of equal opportunity/equality, I worked extensively with the STEM non-profit Iridescent (now Technovation) on educational art / design / book+ projects supporting underserved youth.

I have also engaged with students more directly, teaching design studios first as a TA at Cornell and MIT, and later as adjunct professor at Roger Williams University, Boston Architectural College, ArtCenter College of Design, and Otis College of Art & Design; as well as participating as guest critic at these and other colleges.

I strive to infuse everyday experience with art and learning because I believe that people are intrisically curious, eclectic beings.

My own educational journey provides evidence of this eclectic curiosity. Growing up, I loved, quite specifically: math, foreign languages, and folk and fairy tales. I spent most of my time playing outdoors, unsupervised, and the rest on a craft project, or quietly with a book, often staring at the illustrations.

Fascinated by people and their distinct personalities, I considered becoming a psychiatrist, but ultimately chose to study interior design, at Cornell. Both math and psychology are fundamental to design, and I thought I could be most useful translating all of my interests into colorful spatial experiences for others to enjoy.

My interest in people and their imagination led me to take electives in psychology, anthropology, non-Western architecture, film, world religions, and foreign languages.

Wanting to expand to a bigger design scale, I began studying architecture, including landscape design and urbanism: first, during a college year abroad in Denmark (DIS); and later, in grad school at MIT (including some coursework at Harvard), where I focused on history and public space.

Participatory processes are integral to my work because I witnessed, from a young age, the damage autocratic systems can cause.

My family & I emigrated from communist Romania to the US (Los Angeles) when I was 10, while our beautiful historic home, garden, and neighborhood – in the civic center of the capital București – was in the process of being demolished to build a “palace” for the dictator.

Playing on the engulfing semi-abandoned demolition-construction sites with my brother and other boys – burning, breaking, and making whatever we wanted – encouraged my creative freedom. Observing the suffering caused by that raw destruction to both things material and immaterial – history, family, community – taught me about things sacred and about things scarred.

CLIENT COMMUNICATION

Projects develop in continuous communication with the client. There are never any big surprises, as a conversational collaboration supports the progress all along.

RESEARCH

Based on a love of learning, all of the projects involve a lot of research, not just the educational graphics/exhibit ones. This means learning about the users; the context and history of the project, including comparable examples and industry trends; the criteria; the means, methods, and materials of fabrication; and analyzing the cost.

CONSULTING FABRICATORS

On projects which require fabrication, I typically consult with a wide array of people, visiting fabricators’ workshops ahead of projects even starting. I once even visited a couple of galvanizing plants with open hydrochloric acid vats!, and have toured many factories as pastime, at home and on vacation. I very much like understanding how things are made, and am fascinated by mass-production.

I enjoy the complex process by which designs become real, keeping a realistic focus on the budget.

BY HAND

Coming from a generation that was trained to draw, draft, and build models by hand, I use a lot of sketches in design development. Alongside digital models, quick cardboard study models are built on all spatial projects, as they can be more truthful and help to communicate the design better to both the client and the fabricators, eliminating the need for additional drawings (meaning faster & cheaper). While most of the graphic work to date is digital, there are plans to incorporate more hand-drawing, painting, and possibly collage.

BUDGETS

Having supported myself through college and grad school, and financed my art and business ventures completely on my own, I strongly understand the need to be extremely clever about and careful with budgets. While I have worked as designer on projects with $100M budgets, I have personally managed projects up to $2.9M, and stayed within budget, and completed construction administration on projects up to $14.5M (in current dollars).

EFFICIENCY

Because I work on many different projects, often simultaneously, I keep good time records (even on my own unpaid art projects), so as to analyze and find ways to be more efficient. This does not mean that corners are cut, but that methods are improved.