N America News June 2017

16 NORTH AMERICA NEWS / JUNE 2017 , Joaquin is the consummate global architect; he was raised in Latin America, educated in the US and has worked and lived in several countries. As proud winner of the Best of the Best: Guatemala awards, we invited him to write about his respected work and reputation in the field of architecture. A Consummate Global Architect Joaquin is a member of the National Council for Architecture Registration Boards, the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, is a professionally licensed architect in Arizona and Florida and holds several higher education degrees in design, architecture and construction economics. His business acumen includes having worked with several high profile world-class firms such as Foster+Partners in London and Will Bruder in Phoenix. As a highly mobile person, he splits his time between the U.K., U.S. and Latin America. Joaquin’s work fuses architecture, design and project management into a holistic practice; with special interest in capital asset projects, economics and the way culture informs and drives a project. He considers himself a jack-of-all- trades, rather than a specialist in only one discipline. This did not come easy, but is rather, a result of over a dozen years of professional experience across a wide variety of projects, countries and work cultures. Joaquin trained academically in a manner that older traditionalist architects do; drawing by hand with a straightedge and pencil. It was only during his later years in graduate school that the computer and now commonly used-CAD software became the norm. He began his professional career the way most architects’ do; working under the tutelage of an experienced master, and learning the ins and outs of architecture practices. The parochial approach to the practice of architecture is one that works in ‘silos’ with limited collaboration with other disciplines. It allows for a pragmatic approach to projects where maintaining a narrow focus lessens the need for grander discipline knowledge, but requires a large degree of coordination effort and is prone to errors. For example; engineers toil under their own scope of work and ‘coordinate’ with the architect; as several other disciplines do, such as landscape, mechanical and plumbing, under the management effort led by the architect. It was during his time in London, at the world-class firm of Foster+Partners, that Joaquin learnt about the global scale of infused collaboration and having the several specialist disciplines under one roof. This provided ample, and oftentimes frustrating, experience in project development. Eventually, Joaquin moved sideways from a traditional role as an architect and started to gain experience as a project manager; affording him a macro view of projects, rather than continuing to be siloed in one discipline. After a decade of professional work, as a mid-career professional he undertook a post-graduate degree in construction economics and management at the prestigious University College London in the U.K. because he wanted to expand his overall knowledge of projects and the roles capital assets, economics, and financial planning play in the development of projects. In a way, he was looking to expand his macro view of projects even further out; one that contemplated even more knowledge across a variety of disciplines and factors that influence a project, such as culture and socio-political inputs. Joaquin recognised later that financial gain in the architecture discipline, under the auspicious project scale, plays a very small role. It is a discipline that has traditionally commanded low financial reward or incentives; other than reputation or name recognition. The real returns exist higher up at the macro- level; where typically developers, owners and investors operate. Therefore, his focus became how to combine his experience across a wide variety of disciplines - and consider these various inputs into a cohesive and holistic approach to project development - where architecture can play an equally important role. It is often said that ‘people’ make projects, thus having a Jack-of-all-trades at the top of the hierarchy benefits the project. An architect who is also able to act as an owner- investor, and at the same time, understands the complexities of project management, will surely provide a project with a premium over a competing architect who lacks experience in everything else other that its own discipline. Thus, Joaquin, a sole-practitioner, offers clients and investors his aggregated experience of working across countries, disciplines, cultures and typologies as only a few other architects do. Joaquin can provide clients who are typically accustomed to USA and UK-based project development methodology and standards, such as code compliance under IBC, AIA contracts, RIBA work stages and deliverables, who wish to invest, develop and construct in Guatemala City. Where clients wish to transfer, or implement USA or UK project standards into Guatemala City’s capital project markets through project investment and require a client’s representative, architectural 1706NA01