Architecture, And: Rico Quirindongo, Public Servant

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host, Evelyn Li, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, startup advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this podcast podcast is your gateway to think differently about the role architects play within our global community. Hello, disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today, we're diving into the intersection of architecture, planning and civic leadership with someone who has dedicated his career to shaping more equitable cities. Rico Carandango is the director of office of planning and community development for the city of Seattle, a role he transitioned into after nearly three decades in architectural practice. His journey is one of passion, persistence, and purpose.

A From leading impact design projects to now influencing policy at the city level, Rico is redefining what it means to be an architect in public service. In this episode, we'll talk about his path from traditional practice to city leadership, how architects can influence urban policy, and why he believes design thinking is critical to shaping thriving communities. Let's explore his journey.

B Riko, welcome to practice disrupted. I am so grateful for you to spend your time with us today. You're somebody that I've been wanting to bring on for a while. And I appreciate your enthusiasm, and just commitment both to the profession, but also your community as as an architect as I've seen you progress over your career. Welcome to practice disrupted.

C Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

A Before we talk about your career path,

B I thought it might be good to introduce our listeners to kind of what it is that you do now. So why don't we start there?

C Sure. So I I was a practicing architect for twenty seven years. And then four years ago, months after the tragedy of George Floyd, I got an email and then a phone call from the previous mayor of the city of Seattle, ultimately, asking me to join her cabinet. That began four months of conversation around, like, what that meant and, like, what position would I take and all of that. But, ultimately, I became the deputy and then the interim director of the office of planning and community development for the city of Seattle. And that position of director, I have now had for four years. So I worked for the previous administration for a year. I have now worked for the new administration for the last three years.

C So I was retained, and my position was made official. Ironically, I was interested in holding the position of, director of office of planning and community development when the position was created and put out for consideration around eight years ago, and I actually applied. The previous mayor, mayor Durkin, could not have known that. I didn't make it first past the first round. And Sam Acefa, who was my colleague and friend who held this position previously, like, he absolutely deserved it way more than I did because, like, he'd done the position in other cities and was bringing that expertise to Seattle. I think that I because of my connection to community and and work across the city and, like, with the county and with the state and regionally, it did make sense for me to move into the position. And the work that we do, connecting communities, doing community planning, we put out a equitable development initiative funding around $20,000,000 a year for communities of color to do development and build generational wealth for BIPOC organizations that that are providing social services for communities of of need and communities of color. We we do a a ton of just exciting work as well as kind of the the municipal level work that's required of all cities and counties.

C So we, oversee the comprehensive plan for the city, which includes very typically a large land use action once every ten years. And so we're we're actually engaged very heavily in that work right now.

B That was gonna be a lead into my next question because I feel like even in architecture firms, right, when you come up with a job title, I feel when I hear the Office of Planning and Community Development, when I was getting my MPA and deciding what's next, always seemed like something I wanted to do. But then when I looked at the actual role and responsibilities, it actually varied defined by the city. So in one city, for instance, it might be like a glorified overseeing the building planning, the building department effort, it seems to be a lot more strategic when it comes to the community in in the city of Seattle.

C Yeah. It is it is hugely different from one city to the next. I actually am a part of the Lincoln Institute big city planners, institution, essentially. We get together once a year in the fall to kind of cross compare best practices and talk about the work that we're doing in in so many large cities across the nation. And I have a staff of 50 people. I have colleagues that, like, have a larger portfolio where they're involved where they're responsible for permitting also or they're in involved in other jurisdictional requirements where they may have a staff of, like, up to 300 people. I've been very interested to learn how different from one city to the next, like, how cities are administered. I think for Seattle, the creation so we used to have a planning department, which was underneath the permitting function of the city.

C So it was the Department of Planning and Development at the time. I believe it was four administrations ago now. The then mayor, ten years ago, made a decision to break off the planning function of the city and have it be freestanding so that it could be more strategic and really lean into the cross coordination of all of our capital departments, which is one of our functions, as well as overseeing kind of a larger vision for the city, like and how does built environment support kind of the health and well-being of the communities that we serve as a city. So that's been really refreshing to be able to lean into. Understanding, of course, that, like, I have multiple bosses. My main boss, my main man is, of course, the mayor, mayor Bruce Harrell. But I also, in a support capacity, provide staffing support for our nine council members. And and I also in the work that we do, we support so many different stakeholders and constituents and and organizations.

C So it's it's very challenging. It's a challenging job. I will I will I will leave it there for now. I've got lots of interesting stories.

B I think when we come back full circle, let's let's think maybe maybe there's an opportunity to tell those stories without getting yourself in trouble navigating any political waters. You opened the conversation by saying that you were in traditional practice for twenty seven years. Can you talk to us a little bit about about what you were doing and and whether or not that actually informed your relationship with the previous mayor who reached out to you?

C Yeah. So I I went to Washington University in Saint Louis for my undergraduate where I, double majored in African American studies and in architecture. And I think that even then, my focus was around wanting to lean into how work in the built environment really has a positive or negative impact on communities and really wanting to take the experience that we all have on a daily basis. You know? Like, the bus that we get on to go to work, the walking through our neighborhood, the storefront that we pass by when we're in our downtown center. Most people take all of those experiences for granted, but how we feel, like our sense of well-being or our sense of place is defined in large part by the built environment around us on a daily basis. And so I wanted to become a black architect to elevate the importance and value of that to, you know, a whole stakeholder group of, like, black and brown people that really don't typically have the access to information, access to capital, access to relationships that inform how our neighborhoods grow, how they're invested in.

B Did you grow up in St. Louis?

C No. So I am a born and raised Seattleite. I actually grew up in a white suburb of Kirkland, Washington where, you know, like, after after being very much the minority in my junior high and high school, well, elementary school too, I needed to get as far away from that experience as I could. And I I I couldn't have known how informative moving into Saint Louis for five years would be, but moving from a very affluent community in the Seattle area to kind of the blight of, like, haves and have nots that is St. Louis, which, like, to be clear, in its heyday in the, what, the late fifties, early sixties, St. Louis was a larger city than City Of Seattle is today. It was 850,000 people. City Of Seattle is almost 800,000 people today.

C Now Saint Louis today is more like 370,000 people, which means it has very unique urban planning challenges. I was just there with a great group of planners, a bunch of folks from Germany actually that were doing a German American exchange to talk about planning practices and how to get to better outcomes for all related to housing. But my greatest experience, my greatest educational experience being in St. Louis for five years in undergraduate was just seeing,

B you

C know, the site that was, the tearing down of, like, affordable housing that was just inhospitable, all the gated communities of white wealthy families, the lack of a tax base in Downtown St. Louis, which ensured that, like, you know, when people left their office towers and went back to their private communities, there was no investment in, like, civic infrastructure downtown. It very much has informed, like, the work that I do today and and the work that I did as an architect for twenty seven years. I had the good fortune of being able to work with Donald King who started a small black owned business, which when I joined was 10 people. I I joined in 1996. He started that firm in 1985, and I helped him grow it to almost 30 people and worked for him for the better part of seventeen years, became a partner at the firm in 02/2008. But, like, our our clients, you know, we were doing affordable housing, working for the housing authorities. We were working for not for profits providing social services.

C We were doing public school work. And then we were doing essentially work for government agencies, whether that was city related or county related or at the state level. I even had the, good fortune of being able to be project architect for a federal project out on the Yakima Indian Reservation, which was essentially a alternate to a youth correctional facility where young people, instead of getting sentenced to go to Juvy Hall, they would be sent out to this campus, frankly, in the middle of nowhere, where they would live, work, and learn.

B I feel like there is more social models like that that typically happen outside The US, but not necessarily within The US.

C Yes. I think that's right. In all the work that I was able to do as an architect, this project included, what I've tried to find opportunities to lean into is projects where we could push the boundaries of traditional practice, not architecture, but, like, the practice of civic service. So just going back to that project in Yakima, that was an opportunity that the feds and the folks out on that reservation were creating for underserved youth of color to get to a better path in life and to be able to build the architecture that supported that, which in this case was the rooms that they stayed in and the bioswales that, like, collected water outside their bedrooms and, like, the entry alcoves and gathering spaces that that those students, frankly, like, lived in and benefited from while they were there. Like, really, really important stuff will never be on the front page of architecture magazine, but of my early work, like one of my proudest projects.

B But changing more lives than a single family resident with an unlimited budget.

C That's exactly right. So kind of to answer your question about the time segue to my work currently, after Donald and I had to close DKA, which was our architecture firm, I moved on to a large international firm, DLR Group, who I was with for seven years and helped to grow their civic practice. And in that, I was able to bring a handful of of projects that were civically focused and among them, projects that were really a part of the fabric of City Of Seattle as a place. So, like, one of my last projects was the conversion of the Seattle Coliseum on Seattle Center campus, which was built in 1962. I also have a background in both historic preservation and adaptive reuse, turning that nineteen sixty two facility into a twenty first century entertainment and sports venue, so, Climate Pledge Arena. It was a $250,000,000 problem, like, that the city didn't have the money to, like, continue to maintain or upgrade that facility. And it was a totally underutilized facility that was only had something like 30 events a year that happened in it. It really it turned into a $2,000,000,000 project.

C We were able to court and bring onboard a new hockey team. And, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll also be able to bring back a basketball team to the city, goSonics. But, like, now, it's an amazing facility that is a part of the place making of, you know, our our extended definition of Downtown Seattle. And I love going there just to hang out, but it's a beautiful facility. It's a beautiful place. Why is this important to my my transition? By the end of my, like, years of practice, all the work that I was doing was civically focused, and this was, like, one of the cherry on top projects that I was able to to be a part of as local architect. But I think that that meant that I had built up a lot of relationships with with decision makers at the city as well as relationships with developers in the city that have a lot to do with how it has transformed over time and continue to make critical investments in how we continue to expand and grow. And so, like, making the transition into, like, the planning function of the city felt like a natural transition and kind of being able to instead of focusing on single site solutions, being able to to hold a body of work where I am serving 800,000 people with a staff of 50 passionate, qualified, and invested staff that really do amazing work.

C On a weekly basis, I'm amazed at the both the quality of work that we're able to do with a relatively small staff and our level of reach. Our portfolio is pretty large, actually.

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B I wanna talk a little bit about the move to the role that you have now. I think a lot of what architects struggle with when they are thinking about alternative paths and even as you progress through leadership at a firm running as a principal of a firm where you're overseeing a staff of up to 30 at the DKA or even running a studio is that you get away from like doing the actual design. Yep. Work. Did you find that you're you were more passionately engaged with the role you were growing into in those leadership roles, and the relationships that you were forming? Or do you miss any of, I guess, what, you know, the big a architects would qualify as doing architecture?

C So it's a great question. Interestingly, I did have to go through a large transition period after taking this job where I did miss, like, doing traditional architecture. And oddly enough, like, you know, the job I was just talking about Climate Pledge Arena, I almost so for the I wanna say it was three and a half years, I think, that I worked on that project. The number of times that I put pen to paper in air quotes was maybe 1% of that time at best, which I also think made my transition into my current administrative role at the end of the day fairly straightforward. The politics, not so straightforward, but that's a that's a fun conversation. Well, actually, this so this is interesting because you brought up a really good point. So at DKA, I was second in command to Donald, and we had a staff of 30 that I was, like, a large part of, like, overseeing that staff. And now I have a staff of 50 here.

C I will tell you that my leadership skills now are so much more refined and impactful than they ever were in 02/2008. And some of that's just simple experience, but, like, some of it's also an appreciation for the value of design through leadership beyond what is understood as traditional architecture. Now totally I will totally cop to the fact that, like, two things. One, over the weekend, we had friends over to our house for, late lunch, and they started a conversation around the house that they wanna design out in the Methow Valley. And I'm like, hell, yes. Sign me up. You can take the boy out of architecture, but you can't take architecture out of the boy. I will always be excited for the opportunity to lean into, like, actual design problems.

C But two and I know this is gonna sound like a total cliche, but everything's a design problem. Most people don't see it that way, and I understand that. But in our schooling, in our profession, what we are taught is how to solve problems, hierarchy of information, hierarchy of levels of communication and types of communication. How do you convey the information? What are the graphics associated with it? What's the high level summary high level executive summary versus the information that needs to be doled out to the mechanical engineering, like electrical engineer, interior design. And those same realities exist for me as it relates to what's the information that I need to deliver to counsel versus general public versus key stakeholders versus the mayor's office. It's about curating and managing information. I will tell you, like, four years ago, our office was not, like, knocking it out of the park like we are today. You can go to our website and see video storytelling about the community partners that we work with and and the development projects that they're working on and the services that they provide.

C You can see imagery related to our ideas around what the next level of land use is for the city and the map, the interactive maps. There's a graphic intelligence to the work, which is entirely about design and entirely designed, and it makes a big difference. We are better understood, better respected, engaged more regularly. I'm just I'm very proud of not only the work that we're doing, but, like, the fact that I get to do it as an architect. Like, it is different. The work is different because of my background and my training.

B Thank you for that. I mean, you're you're speaking to the choir when you say everything is a design problem. It is a cliche, but there's truth right to it. And I think that's how I approach what I do with with my work too. It's it's all a design problem. Mine's just more numbers based than maybe others in a way. What's interesting to me is I use a lot of these architecture and conversations to talk about like how others might follow in your footsteps or, you know, maybe there's a young listener out there that's like, I wanna know what Rico is doing. So a few things.

B How many architects do you see when you gather that once a year in similar roles as as you? And is there something as a young architect who, like, believes in licensure, for instance, or somebody like a young graduate who believes in licensure? Like, is there a stepping stone to get through to there from traditional practice? So maybe take the the first one first.

C I I wanna say this straight out the gate. Licensure, super, super important. Even though I do not stamp drawings, having a license that I maintain, having continuing education that I maintain, very important to remaining competent, relevant, and responsible. So for anybody out there that's, like, interested in your your background is in architecture and you're thinking about transitioning to, like, public service or community planning, I encourage it, and you still gotta have your architecture license. Critical, important. Having said that so I I think that I I have been told that I was uniquely focused as a younger person in architecture. I knew that I wanted to become an architect when I was in eleventh grade and kind of my focus on the idea of architecture to make people's lives better began as an undergraduate.

B I mean, honestly, I think that insight given your upbringing in white suburbia is a huge step for most because you also didn't come from a lived experience that made you come to that conclusion through a a different means.

C Yes. That is that is very true. Well and if I'm being totally honest, through architecture, the study of and the practice of, I sought to and was able to get in touch with more of my own roots as a as a black person that I wasn't able to have access to as a young black kid growing up in white suburbia. The work has not entirely been selfless. It's it is it is also been very much about enriching my own experience, but also about giving back. Right? So I think the the reason I bring up my focus from early on is that, like, I knew that I wanted to change lives through architecture. I knew that I wanted to support in kind of the largest conception of the idea, the community that I was from that I was from and lifted up by as a as a young black person, including the sacrifices made by my by my parents to get me to this place where, like, college was an important thing to actually do. I think that because of the focus that I had in what I wanted to achieve through architecture, that became a fairly singular lens for me regarding the choices that I made to ensure that I would get to do the things that I wanted to do.

C And the reason I bring that up, like, at if you if anytime that I have the chance to, like, speak to a class of, like, undergraduates or graduate students or even k 12 students, I like to talk about the fact that you shouldn't wait for a tomorrow that you're never gonna get to. Like, you should whatever it is that you're passionate about, you should lean into it right now. Not because the future is uncertain, although that is true also, but because there is no time to wait. I think that for anybody that's listening, that's interested in planning, architecture and planning, community planning, what whatever it is, find the opportunities to dip your toes into those waters now. Not only because it gives you an opportunity to test out the theory of what you're interested in, but also because it all it will help you to begin to build a portfolio that can be leveraged as you seek to make a transition into the practice that you want to be in. So by volunteering my time, by joining the historic Seattle council, like, I built up experience, and I also built up relationships that then left that I was able to leverage into additional civic work, additional civic opportunities, which you can connect the dots into how my interest and my work led me to the job that I have today. What none of this was by accident.

B And one of the reasons why I ask is I see the next generation coming out of school wanting to have such a greater social impact on the communities around them. So I feel like there are more to the benefit of our future that more younger people are are really considering what that that path is. I guess my question to you is, honestly, how many architects do you see in in your role?

C Not a lot.

B Not a lot. So this is still a place where you can either look at it as an opportunity for architects to raise into, but I think it also means that there is going to be an education and a requirement. How do we encourage that? But also, how do we make way for more architects in public servant jobs?

C So interestingly, I just accepted the opportunity to become an affiliate instructor at the University of Washington, Culture Built Environment, and my first seminar. So it's ten two and a half hour classes, will be around what is planning, what is community planning. It will be to a multidisciplinary audience. The affiliate instructor position is co affiliated with both urban planning and architecture. I I think the reason that I bring that up is because I I do think that education is changing in part very much in response to what you're suggesting that our next generation of leaders in design are more interested in social well-being, reform, social justice, and action than what the profession looked like fifty years ago. And so what we do at our universities, both in undergraduate and in graduate and in research and, like, the connection between, like, design and policy and the decisions that get made on high that affect the regulatory framework that we all have to work within. I do think that what we expose both young professionals and young students to that is related to the profession of architecture continues to need to evolve. It's complicated.

C Right? There's so many different there's so many different ways to be in architecture. Like, you can talk about biophilia. You can talk about planning. You can talk about climate change, and we should be talking about all of those things. So there's a bias that I have. I I think that fifty years ago, most of our colleges and universities that taught architecture and design, the focus was on the practice of design, like, with a capital d and lots of Red cape architecture. I think that now the more impactful reality is what is the connection between design and policy, how cities, counties, municipalities work, how do we serve people through the architecture that we build. And that has a lot more to do with vision at a 50,000 foot level and then how does it get applied to a single site solution.

C But that it it requires a totally different mindset and a different way of working. It's about public private partnership. It it's about what's the tax base. It's about who are the administrators that support the projects that we want to see happen. Well and it's about finance. It's about bank practices. It's about co ops. It's way more, dare I say, complicated than it used to be, which in my mind is also way more interesting and exciting, but it does it does mean that you need to be intentional about what you're interested in and lean into that selfishly.

C And it also means, like, you have to choose the area in which you want to become an expert because you can't really be an expert in everything. There's just too much.

A So I think you talked about

B the pipeline from an education standpoint, but I also think there is an education of current municipalities about the strength between design and policy that needs to be happening. So as as somebody who works with a lot of architects that are interested, that are later in their career and interested in that engagement and have the connections have started to establish the connections that you did in cities. How do we support the education on that end to enable there to be more city architects in our cities?

C So I think that the reality is, you know, in the same way that coming into architecture on the front end, very much in my head was the idea of most people don't understand what architecture is, why it matters, or how it affects them, full stop. That is the same as it relates to this conversation that we're having around municipalities. Most of our elected officials and most of the constituents that they serve do not know what architecture is, do not know what its impact is, or why they should care about it. So I think that the only way that you get there is through positive outcomes. So I can go back to the Climate Pledge Arena example. I can talk about the artists that we brought in that that became a part of the built product. I can talk about how the community was engaged in the design process. I can talk about the transformation of public spaces where you don't have to pay a ticket to, like, experience the beauty and vitality of that space.

C I can talk about the transformation of the neighborhood. All of that happened through, design process and an investment with a developer and a collaboration with a city. Super complicated, but the outcome was because of architecture. And I think the more that we can, a, do that good work, but then also document and tell those stories, particularly to our decision makers and public officials, the more they can see, wow. You know, we just, like, transformed an entire neighborhood of the city that we would not have been able to do had we not invested in this, like, big visionary idea and project. And that only happened because we had, like, this architecture team do it and and engage like like these developers in the process. We need to do more of that work, more of that storytelling. We, as architects, need to volunteer on all the civic committees, you know, the transportation civic committees, the lading of, interstates through urban areas committees, the taking down of I'm thinking of, like, projects that we work on in our office.

C We have two reconnected communities grants right now to explore how we can transform urban fabric by readdressing highway systems that are urban blind. As architects, we need to do more of that work, which then, by the simple nature of it, connects us to more administrative staff that work in government that then have influence on electeds that then elevate the need and value of the practice of architecture and how design can provide a positive impact on the development of policy and policy decisions that then have a positive impact for people.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community at practiceofarchitecture.com/community. Our social media handle is practice of arch. That's practice of a r c h. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.