COMMUNITY DESIGN - Key Persons
Anai Perez is an Architect and Urban Designer passionate about how cities affect people and how this built environment continuously adapts to their daily needs. Her work is driven by a people-oriented approach, environmental responsibility, resilience, and equity in communities. Anai strongly believes that interdisciplinary collaboration is a must during an urban design process.
Her educational background emphasizes the development of transit-oriented neighborhoods, revitalization of abandoned and contaminated lands, new models of cooperative habitation, and resilient master plans. Anai has worked as an architect and urban designer in New York, Mexico, and Peru, where she developed affordable housing, mixed-use residential towers, and urban interventions such as master plans, street and intersection designs, public space designs, public art installations, placemaking, and community engagement strategies through programming and development of annual calendars to hold events and activities for urban activation that focused in engaging and supporting local communities.
In her free time, Anai enjoys exploring new places in the city, trying food from different cultures, cooking Peruvian food, collecting stationery, and binge-watching new series.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Landscape Architect
- Principal
Connie is a landscape architect, urban designer, and community planner with broad experience in multimodal green and complete streets, urban design, public space and placemaking, streetscapes and quick-builds, landscape architecture, land use and site planning, planning, construction documentation, and entitlements. She has managed multidisciplinary teams providing services to private and public clients, and has been project designer, manager, and client representative for a variety of projects.
Connie enjoys working on challenging projects and is committed to helping her clients achieve their goals. She develops innovative solutions and designs to gain stakeholder support and project approvals. Connie has the ability to focus on the details while keeping the big picture in mind to lead a project into successful implementation. She works to integrate sustainable practices into her projects that achieve environmental and social goals, as well as economic benefits. Connie strives to create communities, places, and streets that are pedestrian friendly, vibrant, and of high quality that ties to the context of each project.
In her free time, Connie likes to explore and observe favorite and new places, do photography, go to museums, read mysteries, and learn about and see new things. Much to her son's chagrin, this includes stopping and taking pictures of almost every new green infrastructure project Connie comes across.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Project Urban Designer
Jaime Varas is an urban designer with experience in project management, a background in architecture and planning, and a keen interest in urbanism. His education and professional background emphasize the development of urban placemaking, green streets, public space redevelopment, urbanizations, design guidelines, and specifications. He has worked as a designer and in the construction business in the US, Australia, Brazil, and Chile - where he ran his own design and build company for five years. His work ranges from architectural detailing to designing large urbanizations and city planning.
Urban placemaking has been Jaime's focus since he started working as a city planning consultant for four municipalities in the central coast of Chile, where he played an integral role in community engagement and designing project proposals guided by local governments. Jaime believes that design can create positive change on a community scale and urban public spaces are potential catalyzers for that change. Jaime helped in the design of a civic center, community plazas, and a waterfront park in the Valparaiso Region (Chile), working with interdisciplinary teams, communities, and municipalities.
He participated in a series of charrettes to design and build public space infrastructure in South America as part of a nonprofit organization. Working with an international team of designers and scholars, he helped to renew key public space for displaced communities in Brazil. These public realm design experiences inspired him to study Urban Design at UC Berkeley.
Lucky father of three children, he enjoys going for walks and riding bikes with them. When not working, Jaime appreciates time to read, do Yoga, craftsmanship, and stream movies in the middle of the night.
Job Titles:
- Architect
- Designer
- President
- Principal
Phil Erickson is an urban designer, architect, and planner with extensive experience in urban design, transit- and pedestrian-oriented development, context sensitive multimodal complete and green street design, land use/transportation planning, site planning, and architecture. His work focuses on placemaking, innovation, and transforming under-utilized and auto-dominated streets and corridors into vibrant, active communities and public spaces. Phil believes creating more sustainable, equitable, and vital communities requires a high quality, functional, and attractive pedestrian environment, which improves the experience and access of people walking, bicycling, taking transit, and riding in private vehicles. The scale of his work ranges from the region to the detail of specific site and public space design. Phil leads the design and planning efforts of many of the firm's projects and is responsible for the management of multidisciplinary teams working for public and private clients.
Phil's success in his work results from a commitment to working with clients to analyze their needs and identify creative solutions and designs to satisfy these needs. His approach balances a stakeholder consensus-building process with creative design and technical analysis. His experience in design, implementation, transportation planning, market economics, management, and community participation allow him to effectively work with and focus the efforts of multidisciplinary teams. He has authored national standards for the integration of street and land use design.
Phil enjoys bicycling for recreation with his family, and cannot wait to be able to bike to work rather than walk to his "work station" in the dining room. He also likes to read a good book, and to cook and share a good meal.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Project Urban Designer
Soulby Yoon is an urban designer with an educational background in both architecture and landscape architecture. She grew up in Daejeon, South Korea during a period of hyper-modernization and economic development. She believes in creating living spaces that acknowledge and support racial and gender equity, community, and culture.
Soulby believes that mindful design of public spaces results in a stronger society by supporting community. Creating livable places not only connects residents and businesses, it also weaves the past, present, and future together. She strives to create great urban design that enables and inspires people to discover new viewpoints and express forgotten stories, resulting in vibrant communities that connect neighbors through sustainably improved places.
She loves outdoor activities and adventure, especially hiking, golfing, swimming, and bike riding. When she wants to relax, she practices meditating and doing yoga with her four cats (or just watching Korean dramas while having a glass of wine).