PROfiles

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

Richard Doria

Richard Doria isn't a skeptic by nature, just a realist. The New York native and Arizona State University graduate started his Phoenix firm in 1994, taking both residential and commercial projects, small and large. "You do everything at first-kitchens, bathrooms," says Doria, who's both an architect and contractor. But when he was first asked to design a new facility for HomeBase Youth Services, a nonprofit based in Phoenix, Doria admits he had his doubts. "The first day I was on site," he recalls, "the clients said they had no money and wanted a 12,000-square-foot building. I started wondering how I could make my exit." But miracles happened, and the organization, which helps homeless youth, raised more than enough money for the project. Doria designed a bright, airy, positive space, which is the subject of this issue's "Project Walk-Through." "This" says Doria, "is something good for the city."

Lynn Moore, FASLA

Lynn Moore, an "almost-native" of Colorado and Kansas State University grad, has spent 30 years in the profession of landscape architecture, including the last 16 with Davis Partnership in Denver, where she's a principal and partner. During those years, she's worked on numerous landscape and planning projects, including medical centers, university expansions and sports fields. One of her favorite projects, however, was the relocation of Elitch Gardens, a 100-year-old Denver amusement park, to a new site in the Central Platte River Valley. "This was a beloved place," says Moore, who worked with a Davis Partnership team to masterplan the new campus, "and it couldn't expand at its old site. We worked with an amusement-ride designer and even rebuilt the old wooden roller coaster. It was a really fun, visible project." You can see another one of Moore's favorite — and more recent — visible projects, Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette, Colorado, in this issue.

Faith Okuma, ASLA, AICP, LEED AP

If you're imagining the sounds of crashing waves, rustling palm fronds and ukulele music in the background as you read this, you just might chalk it up to professional jealousy. After a much-admired and longtime career as a landscape architect in the Southwest, Faith Okuma has gone surfing. Well, not exactly. But Okuma has recently relocated to Maui, garden paradise, working as the general manager of Betsill Brothers Construction, a building and development firm, where she's also doing planning and design. Growing up in Glendale, Arizona as the daughter of a nurseryman, Okuma came to landscape architecture almost accidentally. She became an art teacher, and one summer she picked up a drafting job for extra money, working for Scottsdale, Arizona landscape architect Carol Shuler. Okuma followed her now-husband to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1978. "I really didn't want to teach anymore," she explains, "so I got a job drafting for [landscape architect] Craig Campbell in Santa Fe." She and Campbell clicked, and along with Bill Perkins, formed a partnership that eventually became the largest landscape architecture firm in New Mexico. In 1996, Design Workshop bought them out, and Okuma stayed on as a principal. "I've had the great luxury of literally being able to design a small residential garden as well as plan a 42-square-mile plot of land in the same afternoon," says Okuma of her tenure with Design Workshop, which has numerous locales around the country. "It allowed me to grow professionally." One of Okuma's last residential projects with Design Workshop, a home in Tucson, is featured in this issue.