PROfiles

>>> meet the designers behind projects featured in this issue

Andy Byrnes, AIA

Architect Andy Byrnes has never really worked for anyone else, per se. The Tulane University graduate has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, mowing lawns in his native Massachusetts during high school, and painting houses and doing construction during college. When Byrnes and his artist wife moved to Phoenix after he received his master’s degree, he lasted for “about two weeks” working for a local architect’s office. He started The Construction Zone in 1993. “The whole idea was to build other architects’ designs,” he explains of the now 50-person firm. “We’re a licensed general contractor, we’re a concrete company, we’re a cabinetry company–we do it all.” During the course of 17 years, Byrnes and his partners D.J. Fernandes, AIA; Michael Groves and Rob Rubin have built the award-winning work of such regionally and nationally known architects and firms as Eddie Jones, Will Bruder, Lake/Flato, Steven Holl, DeBartolo Architects, Michael P. Johnson and more. “I’ve had the privilege of seeing both the good and the bad by doing some 100 commissions a year,” says Byrnes. Despite the firm’s emphasis on building, Byrnes and the firm members did get to design some of their own projects. “We designed just about 10 percent of the projects we built at first,” he explains. “Now, it’s about 40 percent.” One of Byrnes’ most recent designs, a rammed earth real estate sales office/guest house in Sedona, Arizona, is featured in this issue.

Annette K. Stelmack,
Allied Member ASID, LEED AP

When we last caught up with Annette K. Stelmack, she was the design director for Associates III in Denver, an interior design firm she joined as an intern in 1979 and helped transform into one of the nation’s pioneering sustainable design firms, specializing in residential interiors. In fact, she helped co-write the book on green residential design, Sustainable Residential Interiors (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007), with her Associates III colleagues, founder Kari Foster and marketing director Debbie Hindman. It’s a tome that’s widely used in college-level interior design curriculums. Despite nearly three decades with the design firm, “something still itched.” With all her research and discovery in the field of sustainable design, Stelmack wasn’t sure if she wanted to work as an interior designer any longer. “I wanted to give back, I wanted to teach,” she explains. Recently, Stelmack launched her own firm, Inspirit, LLC, in Louisville, Colorado. “It was an evolution for me. I’m now a sustainable design consultant and educator.” One of her last projects for Associates III, a residence in Aspen, Colorado, is this issue’s “Residential Walk-Through.”

Philip Weddle, AIA, LEED AP

Frankly, we’ve lost track of how many times Phil Weddle’s super-sustainable projects have appeared in our annual, summer “green” issue. It’s because his firm, Scottsdale-based Weddle Gilmore Black Rock Studio, founded in 1999 with Michael Gilmore, AIA, has become the “go-to” architects for sustainable design in Arizona–and the Southwest, specializing in work in the public sector. The firm’s array of projects is impressive, ranging from zoo exhibits and trailheads to schools and aquatics centers, all designed with the environment in mind. Weddle Gilmore has garnered dozens of awards, ranging from an ASLA national Honor Award for the Lost Dog Wash Trailhead at McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale to AIA Arizona’s Firm of the Year in 2009. Weddle, whose current projects include the renovation of the Tempe, Arizona history museum and new campus housing for Prescott College, which is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification, recently walked us through a new project, the LEED Platinum-certified Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center, featured in this issue. During the tour, done mostly outside in 110-degree, monsoon-swampy Arizona heat, Weddle did have a request. “Can we switch Sources+Design’s sustainable issue to winter? Might be cooler.” We’ll take it under advisement.