by John Gendall

Summary: With the anchor of a successful New York City practice, Ismael Leyva, AIA, has positioned his firm as a global business.

Since founding his New York City-based firm in 1996, Ismael Leyva, AIA, has realized projects all over the Big Apple, from Battery Park City to the Upper East Side, and from Brooklyn to Columbus Circle. His firm, Ismael Leyva Architects, is now wrapping up a Modernist glass-clad residential building in Chelsea. And recently, Leyva collaborated with Polshek Partnership Architects on Riverhouse, a LEED-Platinum-certified residential development in Battery Park City. His impressive record of built work throughout the city testifies to his consistent and effective project delivery.

Though many architects would be content with a successful New York practice, over the last several years, Leyva has positioned his firm as a global business. He maintains a 45-person firm in Midtown Manhattan, but despite his considerable local portfolio of built work, he remains largely untethered to the office space itself.

“I spend about 50% of my time on the road,” Leyva explains. “Right now, I’m doing a lot of traveling, doing a lot of presentations to developers in the Middle East, China, and throughout Latin America.”

This internationalism is not an entirely new approach for Leyva: he has maintained an office in Costa Rica since 2005. There, he collaborates with Costa Rica-based architect José Luis Salinas, AIA, with whom he partners in both design and development work. The two AIA members met while Leyva was building a house in Costa Rica for an American client. The Costa Rican office takes on mostly residential and hospitality projects in a country that has seen much growth in those markets over the last decade.

Building on that Latin American experience, Leyva has sought to grow his international practice as a business strategy because of the current recession. “When we saw that things were getting slow here, we started to explore other markets,” says Leyva. “We’ve been trying to get more involved in the international market since the market in the U.S. is so slow. No one is thinking about residential work, so we are exploring other program types also.”
He is now at work on a hotel in the Middle East, and is committed to investigating the market in China. In an effort to pursue those markets further, this year the firm opened offices in Qatar and China.

Leyva credits the AIA with opening up opportunities both at home and abroad. Not only does it bring pragmatic networking opportunities, he says, it also carries with it a certain cachet. “Being a member of the AIA brings a level of prestige when we are looking for work overseas,” explains Leyva. “The AIA is a highly regarded institution—especially overseas. It has a big impact—absolutely.”

Though the overseas markets may be sizeable—and now more able than those in the U.S. to take on property development—they do bring with them their own sets of challenges. “The international fees are not as good as the fees in the U.S.,” explains Leyva. “So we look for ways to offset that. Typically, this means we send the working drawings and construction documents overseas. We are involved in the process throughout the whole construction phase, but most of the production takes place overseas.”

“For international work, we usually associate with a local architect, since they know how to negotiate the system,” says Leyva.

Leyva is no stranger to bridging international experiences. Born in Mexico, he undertook all of his Bachelor of Architecture there. When he came to the United States in 1978, his license was not recognized, so he worked for three years in an apprenticeship, earning his American license. He then worked for 12 years at Costas Kondylis & Partners before opening his own firm.

“It’s tough out there right now,” bemoans Leyva. “We just have to play smart. We’re doing everything we can to generate work, and part of that means exploring new markets in other countries.”