Michael grew up in St. Louis, MO—home to Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch, Louis Sullivan’s Wainwright Building, and Gyo Obata’s Abbey Church of St. Mary and St. Louis, with its rings of stacked parabolic arches. “The city was a tapestry of architectural influence,” Michael says. At the same time, he watched its prolific tendencies to demolish old buildings to make way for new ones, which inspired him to study urban design and planning. And as a writer for The Architect’s Newspaper and Texas Architect, Michael continues to study the intersection of the built environment with community interests. Since he began practicing in 2010, he’s approached each project as an opportunity for storytelling, focusing on a building’s community context and how it can both respond to and enhance its surroundings.
Our Perkins Eastman
The complexity of urban projects demands collaboration across practice areas. By reaching out and working with other teams and studios within Perkins Eastman, Michael believes these connections can uncover new potential, benefitting the design team members, clients, and the project’s outcome. He also values the role teaching can play in practice; he is a lecturer in the Master of Arts in Design and Innovation Program at Southern Methodist University and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council at his alma mater, Kansas State University.
In personal pursuits, read Michael’s review of the Mustang GT-H in D magazine