PROfiles

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

John Carney, FAIA

If you just read a brief summary of John Carney's life, you wouldn't really peg him as someone who would carve out a brilliant career in the mountains and meadows of Wyoming. He spent part of his childhood in Chicago until his screenwriter father moved the family to Beverly Hills, where they lived in Humphrey Bogart's old house. There was a degree in art from Stanford, followed by a master's in architecture from Harvard. But in between all the decidedly urban landmarks of his youth, there was also the ranch his family acquired outside Jackson, Wyoming. "We spent summers there," explains Carney, "and that's where I got that Western spirit." Carney started his architectural career at a Chicago firm that moved him to Denver for a project. He leapt at the chance to come back West, where he eventually launched his own firm that focused on LoDo revitalization projects. After a merger and a move, he founded Carney Architects in 1992 in his beloved Jackson. The firm has grown to 24, and Carney has been joined by two principals, Eric Logan, AIA, and Kevin Burke, AIA. A recent project — a home in Sundance, Utah that melds modern lines with the local vernacular — is featured in this issue.

Stephen Dynia, AIA

It's been a few years since we've caught up with Jackson, Wyoming architect Stephen Dynia and, likely, a few dozen projects. His Jackson Hole Center for the Arts was completed in 2007 and garnered a Western Mountain Region AIA design award. There have been numerous residences, multi-housing and mixed-use projects, plus programming for an arts center in Michigan. Dynia, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design (not to mention Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York), is also involved in the Taxi project of Denver's River North neighborhood, the redevelopment of a transportation hub into a mixed-use urban setting. "We've also just bought a new office building in Jackson," Dynia reports, "and we're planning a renovation." No renovation is needed for the Dynia-designed residence in Bozeman, Montana featured in this issue.

Leo Marmol, FAIA
Ron Radziner, FAIA

Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner met as architecture undergraduates at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. "We had classes together and lived in a co-op — an old hotel — near campus that was filled with design students," recalls Marmol. "It was torn down and replaced with a Jiffy Lube. Time marches on." Time hasn't stood still for the two architects, who launched their Los Angeles design/build firm, Marmol Radziner and Associates, in 1989 and quickly became known for their Modernist aesthetic. In the early 1990s, their restoration of an architectural icon, Richard Neutra's 1946 Kaufmann house in Palm Springs, put the firm on the national radar screen. Since then, Marmol Radziner and Associates has grown to become a 140-person firm that encompasses furniture lines and a line of prefab, modern steel-frame homes, designed with sustainability in mind. Though widely known for its residential designs, the firm also receives numerous commercial commissions, such as the yoga studio we're featuring in this issue's "Project Walk-Through."