PROfiles

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

Carol Coover-Clark, AIA
Brian Duggan
Coover-Clark & Associates, Inc.

When Carol Coover-Clark, principal of Denver's Coover-Clark & Associates, Inc., was an architecture student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman during the 1970s, Bruce Goff occasionally taught seminars. Well into his 70s, the iconoclastic architect and former chair of the university's school of architecture lived in Tyler, Texas, some three hours away. "He was rather elderly," recalls Coover-Clark, herself an Oklahoma native, "and couldn't drive from Tyler to Norman. Students took turns driving him there and back, and I got to go once. He was fascinating, and taught us that there really are no rules in architecture—that the sky is the limit." Coover-Clark has taken that to heart on many levels. Founding her own firm in 1987, she specializes in education, military and aviation projects—most recently the LEED-certified helicopter facility her firm designed for the Colorado Army National Guard in Aurora, featured in this issue. Coover-Clark's youthful associate, architect-in-training Brian Duggan, 29, served as project designer for the helicopter facility—at the time, the largest project he'd worked on. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Duggan, a Maryland native, already has an impressive list of military, aviation, municipal and transit projects under his belt—and he's currently working on a larger military facility in Wyoming. At this point, neither Duggan nor Coover-Clark have been invited on a Chinook or Black Hawk flight. "I keep telling them that we want to look at the Aurora facility from up in the air," says Coover-Clark. "But so far, I've just been able to step inside one of the helicopters."

Christopher R. Gunning, AIA
Julie Walleisa, AIA, LEED AP
Dekker/Perich/Sabatini

Christopher R. Gunning, a principal of Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, didn't attend the University of Oklahoma's school of architecture during the Bruce Goff era, but he is convinced that "there's something in the water" of that state and that particular school that makes Oklahomans go into architecture. In fact, two of his brothers, as well as his sister, are all architects. "We used to have a family t-shirt that read 'What if we started a firm called Gunning, Gunning, Gunning and Gunning?'" he says. All the Gunning siblings went their own way architecturally, though. In 1995, Gunning and his wife (also an architect) decided to move from Oklahoma to Albuquerque, where he joined Dekker/Perich/Sabatini as a staff architect. Working on his LEED accreditation, Gunning was the architect of record on the Jefferson Green project (also Dekker/Perich/Sabatini's new offices) featured in this issue, which was awarded LEED Gold certification for its core and shell. Leading the Dekker/Perich/Sabatini LEED charge is architect Julie Walleisa, who has managed to combine her love of creativity and the environment into one career. Several years ago, the East Coast native and University of Miami graduate decided that her choice of psychology as a degree and career wasn't exactly what she'd imagined. She realized that architecture was more her cup of tea and applied to graduate programs "based on the school's location, not necessarily the program." Luckily for her, Boston—and Harvard University—became her educational destination. "I was in with all these brilliant people," she admits. "It was really intimidating—but I absolutely loved it." In 2003, armed with her master's, she relocated to Albuquerque and joined Dekker/Perich/Sabatini. "They've let me pursue my two interests, libraries and sustainable design," she says.