It was nearly four decades ago when Nicholas J. White, AIA, LEED AP, owner and principal at N.J. White Associates Architecture & Planning, decided to establish his own firm in Petoskey, Michigan and create the art he had initially studied when an undergraduate in Ohio.
Wayne Visbeen, AIA, IIDA, owner and founding principal at Visbeen Architects Inc., is passionate about his craft, which shines through in his artful, real-time sketches as he combines his creative vision and technical skill to bring his clients’ dreams to reality.
“When I was a little kid, my grandparents owned a saw mill down in Tennessee and I’ve always been around buildings my whole life,” said Gina Van Tine, AIA, LEED AP, principal and owner at Detroit-based inFORM Studio PC.
Robert Sears, owner of the boutique architecture and planning firm known as Sears Architects, considers himself lucky. “I knew what I wanted to do. So many people don’t have a passion or a clear direction for their career,” Sears said. “I’ve wanted to be an architect since I was in sixth grade.”
“I was one of those kids, who always stuck his nose where he maybe shouldn’t, but I was just fascinated with the whole construction process and design and how things went together,” said Mark Humitz, AIA, LEED AP, in reference to the addition project at his childhood home in Dearborn, Michigan.
There was a period in time when Megan Feenstra-Wall, AIA, architect at Grand Rapids-based Mathison | Mathison Architects, and her husband took a year off from their professional careers and spent nearly six months backpacking and traveling through southeastern Asia and the subcontinent of India.
Michael H. Pattullo, AIA, president at Shoreline Architecture & Design Inc., has an affinity for the problem-solving portion of a project where building programs or design solutions meet specific parameters and are brought up to the point of construction documents.