Designers & Builders

Two years ago, Steve Larosiliere started Purpose Design Build with closets, built ins and a few pieces of custom furniture. This year the firm is on track for 45 to 50 projects, with quotes going out in minutes and bathroom designs finished in a week. On the Designers and Builders Podcast, guest host Brittany turns the tables on Steve and asks how custom AI agents are helping him run a design buil...

Pablo Escutia wanted to be a psychologist. He ended up running KKC Development, a design build firm in the South Bay of Los Angeles that draws houses and then builds them, and arguing that the split between those two jobs was never real to begin with. A line from one of his professors stuck with him: everything works on paper. Finding out what happens when the paper meets the site is what moved hi...

Ten months ago Alyssa Olson left a salaried seat to run her own landscape architecture practice. Since then she has been moving between master planning work, local residential gardens, campus work in Michigan, projects in New York and Washington, and a backlog of wood projects she finally has the hours to build. The contrast is the part she likes. It is also what makes the calendar nearly impossib...

A friend saw Priscilla Auyeung standing next to a materials palette in an Instagram repost and messaged to ask whether she took on interiors too. She did not, at the time. She said she did. GAMPworks was founded somewhere in the middle of the project that created it, and a year later that project is an award winning trading card store in New York City and the foundation of an interior design busin...

Patricia Algara came to landscape architecture through feminism, not through drafting tables, even though four generations of architects preceded her. She founded BASE Landscape Architecture in the wreckage of a recession, with one project, one collaborator, and an office in an abandoned building. Nearly two decades later the firm is ten people, most of them women, most of them immigrants. She gre...

Keita Turner put her project types and her budget range on her website, and the phone went quiet. She had decided her studio would no longer take the single bathroom or the paint colour consultation, and she knew going in what that would cost her. It is one of the more honest accounts of raising a minimum you will hear from anyone running an interior design business, because she does not skip the...

Steve Duncan decided to become an architect at fourteen. He graduated into the 2011 recession, watched all but four people in his class fail to land design work of any kind, and took a lighting design job instead. Fifteen years later he is Creative Design Lead at BŌK Modern, and he treats that detour as the reason he is good at the job rather than a delay on the way to it.   The route ran from lig...

Seventy feet above downtown San Francisco, on the roof of a transit center, there is a half mile loop of path where strangers stop to point at leaves and name species out loud. Adam Greenspan, partner and design director at PWP Landscape Architecture in Berkeley, California, helped design that park, and he still goes back four times a year to look at the trees. This conversation with host Alyssa O...

Larissa Cook was studying criminal justice when she took an executive assistant job at a Boston remodeling firm. Nearly twenty years later she is president of that company, FBN Construction, a 40-person, $30 million builder working on some of the most complex homes and inner city renovations in greater Boston. The path there ran through a comment nobody should have made, and a decision to work thr...

Maura Rockcastle designs landscapes by first standing in them for hours, feeling how the light shifts, how the ground gives underfoot, how a single site changes across a day. As Principal and Co-Founder at TEN x TEN, she has turned that slow, sensory way of working into a practice that treats deep attention to a place as the starting point for design, not the first line item to cut when a budget t...

Gary Fusselman cashed in his retirement, waited two days after his daughter's wedding, and launched Precision Millwork out of a shared shop in Utah. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, Gary sits down with host Alyssa Olson to share how thirty plus years in the industry taught him that building a great door and building a great business require the same thing: precision, patience...

Jaya Kader has spent decades building luxury homes in Miami, but a calling back to Costa Rica changed everything. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, Jaya sits down with host Alyssa Olson to share how regenerative design became not just her practice, but her philosophy for life. Jaya is the founder and principal of KZ Architecture and the creator of Regen Design Lab, an arm of h...

MeLinda Kann did not plan on becoming a millwork specialist. She went to school for teaching, then theater design, then interior design, and somewhere along the way, a drafting internship at a cabinet shop changed everything. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Steve Larosiliere sits down with the founder of MeLinda K Design Studio to talk about what it really takes to buil...

Meghan Talarowski has spent the last decade proving that Playgrounds can be so much more than plastic slides and rubber mats. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alyssa Olson sits down with the founder and executive director of Studio Ludo to talk about research-driven play design, why half the people in Playgrounds are not children, and what it actually takes to build publ...

Vasyl Lukyanenko left Ukraine two weeks before the war started and built a custom millwork business from nothing in the United States in just four years. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Steve Larosiliere sits down with the founder and owner of Epure Millwork to talk about precision craftsmanship, the realities of scaling a shop, and what it takes to say yes to every opp...

Chanae Richards turned a creative outlet into a thriving design practice that spans New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and beyond. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alyssa Olson sits down with the CEO and Principal Designer of ọlọrọ Interiors to explore how intentional design, deep listening, and community investment create spaces that truly enrich people's lives. Chanae's...

Brian Messana has spent 30 years proving that architecture is not about trends, square footage, or flashy materials. It is about how a space makes you feel. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alyssa Olson sits down with the co-founder of Messana O'Rorke to explore what it means to build a practice rooted in clarity, craft, and an unwavering commitment to the human experien...

What does it take to build a career, and a reputation, in one of the most demanding construction markets in the world? Daniel Monteiro, Managing Partner at Reidy Contracting Group, has figured it out, and in this episode he breaks down exactly how. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Daniel to trace his path from a childhood obsession with L...

What does it take to design buildings that feel as natural as the landscape they sit in? Lance O'Donnell, FAIA, founding principal of o2 Architecture and newly elevated Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, has spent decades answering that question in one of the most demanding climates on earth: the Coachella Valley desert. In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alys...

In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alyssa Olson sits down with Mike Riddle, owner and CEO of Riddle Construction, to explore his unconventional journey from sports medicine to custom home building. Mike shares the profound lessons learned from overcoming significant challenges, including a major lawsuit and bankruptcy, and how these experiences transformed him into a bette...

In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Sarah Allen of Sarah Allen Design to explore her journey in the interior design industry, the evolution of her design philosophy, and the mindset shifts that transformed her business. Sarah shares candid insights on the importance of investing in your own space, navigating the challenges of entrepreneurshi...

In this episode of Designers and Builders, host Alyssa Olson sits down with Evan Goldenberg, Architect/Owner of Design Build Consultants Inc., to explore his decades-long journey in architecture, his specialized expertise in wine cellar design, and his unwavering commitment to quality craftsmanship. Evan's approach to construction management and client relationships reveals how treating every proj...

In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alyssa Olson sits down with Dr. Diane Jones Allen, Principal Landscape Architect with Design Jones LLC and Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Jones Allen's remarkable career bridges academia and practice, community engagement and environmental design, revealing how landscape architecture can be a powerful tool for stor...

In this episode of Designers and Builders, host Alyssa Olson sits down with Drew Lang of Lang Architecture, architect and founder of Brick and Wonder, to explore how taking agency over your career, generating your own projects, and fostering genuine collaboration can transform your path in architecture and design. Drew's journey into architecture didn't follow the traditional route. Starting with...

In this episode of the Designers and Builders Podcast, host Alyssa Olson sits down with Roberto J. Rovira, a remarkable professional whose career spans mechanical engineering, U.S. Navy service, and landscape architecture. Roberto's unconventional path from serving as a naval officer to becoming a leading voice in landscape design reveals how diverse experiences shape creative vision and innovativ...