Juan Moreno, AIA

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Juan Moreno, AIA, is director of design for Ghafari Associates Design Studio in Chicago. Born in Bogotá and raised in Los Angeles, Moreno received his BArch from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He also studied architecture in Florence and has worked on projects in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North America. His current and recent projects include an International Inclusion Center for nonprofit El Valor in Chicago, a competition entry for the Hajj Airport in Jeddah, and the Kansas City Star’s headquarters in Kansas City, Mo.

Emigrating to the U.S.: Both my parents are Colombian. My mother is from Bogotá and father is from Medellín. I was so young [when we moved to the U.S.]. They were essentially waiting for my birth to throw me on a plane to go with them. My father still lives in Medellín and my mother lives in Los Angeles.

Drawn to design: Although I can say I’m 100 percent Colombian, I grew up very American. In the last few years, I was reacquainted with my father and have established a relationship with that family [and am] getting to know my culture. I have an enormously large family: my dad has 12 brothers and sisters, so you can imagine how many cousins I have. As I get to know those roots, I have found [that] the arts have been prevalent in so many—whether it’s art, music, or literature—so I’m convinced those creative seeds are in my genes. Mine just happen to be architecture.

There also is a confidence that I think was instilled in me when I had this ability to draw things. I can remember a contest [in school] where we had to recreate something for James and the Giant Peach and I won a dictionary. Those little moments stick with you and instill that confidence as you grow and mature.

Aspiring to architecture: I just shared this not too long ago with some high school students. I was one of those high school students who was an underachiever. As I look back, it really worked to my advantage because I paid for that. When I graduated high school I couldn’t get into the architecture program at Cal Poly. I could get into the civil engineering program, but it wasn’t my first love. Fortunately, I grew up and I had enough people to coach me and say, “Look, the only way you’re going to get into architecture is to do well and then transfer in.” Fortunately, I did.

That circuitous path was really interesting because I always gravitated toward architectural drawings. [In college,] we all had our little part time jobs. I was doing this security guard job at an office building where they were doing tenant build-outs. The blueprints were [left] in there, so I’d always look at them and I was fascinated by these blueprints. Then, I remember that I couldn’t understand the lines on the blueprints and what they all meant and thought, “I’m going to get a job in construction.” I [became] a laborer as I was going to school because I wanted to understand what all those little lines meant. All of that has really helped me to this day.

Current read: I am currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but in Spanish. It might not mean anything to most people, but the truth of the matter is since meeting my father three years ago, I’ve made it a point to learn to speak, read, and write Spanish. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel comfortable attempting to read that, but I’m finding that I have to hit the dictionary quite a bit because there are words that I’ve never encountered in Spanish, but it’s fabulous nonetheless.

Professional background: Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d end up in Chicago, but I had a job offer eight years ago to head up design for a design-build firm, The Austin Company, and I hadn’t even worked in that realm before. My interest had always been design and that was what fascinated me, but as a younger architect at the time, it was the opportunity of my career. You hear architects talk a lot about wanting control. You sketch an idea and there’s the genesis, but then there are so many factors along the way that can change it and we do lose control, but going to that design-build realm was a great opportunity to have more control over the projects. Aside from being an architect-developer, it was the best opportunity to control the integrity of the design. It was fascinating and I really enjoyed it.

Professional influences: My mentor is a former professor, Judith Sheine. I still talk to her to this day. And also, Marvin Malecha. He was the dean at Cal Poly while I was there.

On the Kansas City Star building: I think the Kansas City project is special on so many different levels. In many ways it represents who I am as an architect. It’s one that engaged a client and a community. On the Kansas City project, we had a client that was truly visionary, but the constraints on that project were just like every other. There were issues on budget. There were issues on schedule, but you have to know how to work within those and still create quality work. You may look at the building and see an interesting material or the expanse of glass around the press hall and think, “Oh, it’s just one that had a really huge budget.” Well, no it didn’t. It’s still a big hall that has a press in it and a warehouse component.

[In the community,] we worked with the University of Kansas and one of the professors there: Dan Rockhill and his Studio 804. I was introduced to him and now we have a cool relationship. I really admire that man. He’s just fantastic. But, as we were razing some of the buildings on that site, they were able to use some of the old steel windows in one of their Studio 804 project houses. It’s great that some of what used to be there lives on in what is now a residential project.

What I really like about that project is that when you look at the impact that architecture and architects can have, I think that project is a great study. That part of Kansas City is called the Crossroads District and it was pretty run down, but now [when] you go to Kansas City, you see what’s going on around the Star. I’m always flattered and humbled by what people tell me. I’ve had absolute strangers walk up to me in Kansas City and tell me “thank you.” I was at a bar, just having a beer after a meeting once. I needed to mellow out for a while and one of the waitresses recognized me from an interview and walked over and said, “You’re the architect for the Star building, right?” I was taken aback, but said yeah. She said, “Thank you for giving us that project. It’s the most important project in the city since I’ve been here.” I was completely floored. When it’s all said and done, that’s what it’s about. That, as a built work, represents so much of what I really care about and where I want to go.

Community impact: I’ve also found that as architects, we need to reach out to firms and individuals who need advice architecturally. It’s not always the firms or clients that have an RFP ready. Sometimes they just need help with creating a vision. They have this idea that’s percolating in their minds, but they don’t have anybody to help translate it into something real. A year ago, I [became acquainted with] this organization called El Valor. It’s an organization that was started 30 years ago by a Latina woman with a disabled son. She found that there were no services in Chicago for her son, not rehabilitation services but reintegration, to help her son become a viable part of society. She started in her basement and worked with the church and that organization has grown. They now have three modest facilities in Chicago, but they have this idea, this dream for what they call an International Inclusion Center.

It’s a facility that brings together people of all disabilities, and ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds to learn to reintegrate and learn [skills] like the culinary arts, horticulture, and music. I’ve been working with them essentially a year on a $30M building and I haven’t gotten paid one penny. I haven’t asked for a penny because I feel like if I’m worth my weight as an architect, not only can I design a building that matches their dream, but I can help them inspire others to invest in this cause with their fundraising and so forth. It’s been incredibly well received and there are already people involved at so many levels that understand the true need for this type of facility. If this project is realized, I can tell you without any reservation that socially it’s by far the most important thing that I’ve worked on. Just talking about it I get all fired up. Those are the kinds of things that I’m very, very proud of as an architect.