ROTo ARCHITECTS, INC.
MICHAEL ROTONDI & CLARK STEVENS
600 MOULTON AVENUE # 405
LOS ANGELES, CA 90031
Michael Rotondi, FAIA
Michael Rotondi is a practicing architect and an educator. He is a principal in ROTo Architects founded in November 1991 and has been the director of SCI-ARC (Southern California Institute of Architecture) since 1987.
He has been working independently and in a partnership since he received his diploma from SCI-Arc in 1973. He was one of fifty people who founded the Institute in 1972.
He returned to SCI-Arc in 1976 as a graduate faculty of which he was Chairman from 1980 to 1987. In 1987 he became the Director of the Institute, a position he still holds. The school has 400 students and 50 faculty.
He began professional practice in 1973 as a designer with Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall (DMJM) in Los Angeles and from 1974-1976 he practiced independently and in freelance collaboration with Peter de Bretteville and Craig Hodgetts. In 1976 he formed the partnership Morphosis which continued until November 1991. He is the co-recipient of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture 1992.
Projects over the 20 years range from educational to institutional, cultural, commercial, and residential. The works have been widely recognized receiving over 40 awards including 19 from Progressive Architecture Magazine and 21 from the American Institute of Architects.
His primary interest now is exploring how the concepts and methods of educational practice and professional practice can find common ground in the discipline of architecture.
Clark Philipp Stevens. AIA
Clark Stevens is a practicing architect, principal and co-owner of ROTo Architects, lnc. in L.A. He is also a teacher and lecturer, and is currently an adjunct faculty member and juror at SCI-ARC (Southern California Institute of Architecture). His range of professional experience includes a wide variety of building types, from large scale commercial to residential and cultural. Product design also figures prominently in his professional experience.
The beginning of his professional experience coincided with breaks from architectural school and includes work in 1986 as a designer at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Chicago. He began his association with Morphosis Architects in Santa Monica in 1987 as a consultant, where he first became involved with industrial design. While there he was the collaborating designer of several kinetic lamp prototypes and of a cast aluminum clothes hanging system for clothier Leon Max. In 1988, he was the project architect of Morphosis' prize-winning entry to the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek (Berlin Library) competition. Clark left Morphosis in 1991 with Michael Rotondi to form ROTo ndi, which became ROTo Architects, lnc.
Stevens holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from The University of Michigan, where his work is selected for the College of Architecture's permanent archive. His undergraduate design work was included in the 1985 National A.I.A. Traveling Exhibition of Student Work. In 1989, he received his Master of Architecture, with distinction, from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He was the recipient of the school's Julia Amory Appleton Traveling Fellowship, awarded yearly in recognition of the recipient's body of design work, academic performance, and proposed topic of research.
Stevens' work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions. His firm, ROTo Architects, lnc., has received at least one professional honor for each of its completed projects and has been recognized in over 75 architectural publications. In 1995 he was selected for the "40 under 40" list of the 1990's in a national competition, a tradition that dates to the original list of 1941.
As a lifelong naturalist, Stevens approaches the design process as an extension of the structure and "intentions" of landscapes and natural systems. His working process encourages improvisation and collaboration by all participants in the building process--users, craftspeople, and the site itself.
Projects:
DORLAND MOUNTAIN ARTIST COLONY
72 MARKET STREET (WITH THOM MAYNE)