Every month we’ll be touching base with past 40 Under 40 honorees to see what’s been happening in their professional and personal lives since winning the award. (U40 alums are invited to participate by sending an update to: jhigginbotham@sgcmail.com.) This month: Standout architects in Chicago and Los Angeles make their mark with massive, complex projects.
DAVID MONTALBA, AIA, SIA, LEED AP
Founding Principal
Montalba Architects, Los Angeles
Class of 2012
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Montalba continues to serve as acting Design Principal on all projects for his firm, which handles retail, restaurant, residential, hospitality, office, institutional, and educational work. The practice has clients in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East as well as the U.S., and has grown to 30 full-time employees since it was incorporated in 2004. Recent projects include numerous luxury retail stores (Stylehaus, Isabel Marant, Barbara Bui, Ports 1960), representing an expansion of the sector for the firm; Nobu Malibu, a Japanese restaurant; concessions design for the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX (in collaboration with LAWA and Westfield); and Duty Free Shops in the Tom Bradley International Terminal.
Teaches “Introduction to Construction” for the Graduate Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, his alma mater.
Recent awards: AIA Los Angeles Presidential Honor Award, Building Team of the Year, 2013 (for the LAX International Terminal collaboration); Los Angeles Business Journal 2014 Commercial Real Estate Award (hospitality category, for Nikita restaurant).
EXTRACURRICULAR
Actively involved in supporting the A + D Museum in Los Angeles. Firm collaborated with the museum in the recent ARkidECTURE children’s workshop.
Jury Chair, AIA Institute Honors for Interior Architecture 2014.
OFF THE CLOCK
Montalba enjoys playing tennis and hanging out with his kids in Santa Monica, where he resides. Takes frequent trips to visit his family in Lausanne, Switzerland.
MATT DUMICH, AIA
Senior Architect / Project Manager
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill
Architecture, Chicago
Class of 2009
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Dumich recently joined Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, a firm dedicated to the design of high-performance, energy-efficient, and sustainable architecture on a global scale. He is currently a Project Manager for EXPO-2017, an international exposition in Astana, Kazakhstan, with the theme “Future Energy.” This large project includes exhibition and cultural pavilions and a new residential community with office, retail, hotel, educational, and civic facilities, as well as parks. The design is performance-driven, with each building oriented and shaped to harness energy from sun and wind to create a highly sustainable development.
Recent honors: 2012 AIA Chicago Dubin Family Young Architect Award, 2013 AIA National Young Architects Award.
EXTRACURRICULAR
Selected to join the AIA Chicago Executive Committee as Secretary for the Board of Directors in 2012. Working to support the chapter as Chicago hosts the AIA National Convention this June.
Co-founder of Bridge, a mentoring and leadership program that pairs young architects with members of the AIA College of Fellows.
Keynote speaker, 2011 Chicago Architecture and Design College Day. Has presented talks on architecture to student groups at the Illinois Institute of Technology, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Judson University, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
OFF THE CLOCK
A self-proclaimed foodie and beer snob, Dumich constantly seeks out new restaurants. A recent vacation took him and his wife to Tokyo and Kyoto, where they photographed the unique textures of Japan.
Related Stories
| Mar 9, 2011
Winners of the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition
Winners of the eVolo 2011 Skyscraper Competition include a high-rise recycling center in New Delhi, India, a dome-like horizontal skyscraper in France that harvests solar energy and collects rainwater, and the Hoover Dam reimagined as an inhabitable skyscraper.
| Mar 9, 2011
Igor Krnajski, SVP with Denihan Hospitality Group, on hotel construction and understanding the industry
Igor Krnajski, SVP for Design and Construction with Denihan Hospitality Group, New York, N.Y., on the state of hotel construction, understanding the hotel operators’ mindset, and where the work is.
| Mar 3, 2011
HDR acquires healthcare design-build firm Cooper Medical
HDR, a global architecture, engineering and consulting firm, acquired Cooper Medical, a firm providing integrated design and construction services for healthcare facilities throughout the U.S. The new alliance, HDR Cooper Medical, will provide a full service design and construction delivery model to healthcare clients.
| Mar 2, 2011
Design professionals grow leery of green promises
Legal claims over sustainability promises vs. performance of certified green buildings are beginning to mount—and so are warnings to A/E/P and environmental consulting firms, according to a ZweigWhite report.
| Mar 2, 2011
Cities of the sky
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Silk Road of the future—from Dubai to Chongqing to Honduras—is taking shape in urban developments based on airport hubs. Welcome to the world of the 'aerotropolis.'
| Mar 2, 2011
How skyscrapers can save the city
Besides making cities more affordable and architecturally interesting, tall buildings are greener than sprawl, and they foster social capital and creativity. Yet some urban planners and preservationists seem to have a misplaced fear of heights that yields damaging restrictions on how tall a building can be. From New York to Paris to Mumbai, there’s a powerful case for building up, not out.
| Mar 1, 2011
Smart cities: getting greener and making money doing it
The Global Green Cities of the 21st Century conference in San Francisco is filled with mayors, architects, academics, consultants, and financial types all struggling to understand the process of building smarter, greener cities on a scale that's practically unimaginable—and make money doing it.
| Mar 1, 2011
How to make rentals more attractive as the American dream evolves, adapts
Roger K. Lewis, architect and professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, writes in the Washington Post about the rising market demand for rental housing and how Building Teams can make these properties a desirable choice for consumer, not just an economically prudent and necessary one.
| Mar 1, 2011
New survey shows shifts in hospital construction projects
America’s hospitals and health systems are focusing more on renovation or expansion than new construction, according to a new survey conducted by Health Facilities Management magazine and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE). In fact, renovation or expansion accounted for 73% of construction projects at hospitals responding to the survey.
| Mar 1, 2011
AIA selects 6 communities for long-term sustainability program
The American Institute of Architects today announced it has selected 6 communities throughout the country to receive technical assistance under the Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) program in 2011. The communities selected are Shelburne, Vt., Apple Valley, Mn., Pikes Peak Region, Co., Southwest DeKalb County, Ga., Bastrop, Tx., and Santa Rosa, Ca. The SDAT program represents a significant institutional investment by the AIA in public service work to assist communities in developing policy frameworks and long term sustainability plans.