In the third installment of our Women's History Month series, we're featuring Senior Associate Jennifer Mateo in our Los Angeles office. Jennifer has been with Rottet Studio since its inception in 2008, but has worked with Principals Richard Riveire and Lauren Rottet since 2002. She cites a line of strong women in her family for providing her with the inspiration and motivation to launch her own career in design.Tell me about your path to a career in design and architecture.I count myself lucky that my parents had interest in traveling and sharing that with me and my sister.  Although the destinations were not always far flung or exotic, I was always intrigued when exploring new places and cities.  For me, examining the built environment and how it shaped or resulted from events or history is something that continues to interest me today and pointed me in the direction of this career.What are potential pinch points that affect talent retention in the design industry, particularly for women? Why do people leave?I believe that a lot of the issues regarding talent retention, specifically for women, are the residual effects of a culture that historically favors men.  Framing the discussion is important in that we cannot just look at talent retention in the workplace, but must also discuss the inequality we face at home or in other social environments. Whether it’s about child care, or domestic work, or career goals, these are all issues a woman may contend with in an adult working life. Until we treat them as important as we would a man’s day-to-day job or career, then we will continue to battle retention of female talent.How do you feel your experience working in a creative field might have been different if you were in a more corporate industry?I don’t believe my own attitude or mentality would necessarily have differed that much.  I am fortunate enough to have a mother to look up to who was a small business owner and aggressively made her way into her field as an entrepreneur.  I also have an aunt working in tech, which is dominated by males, who built her own career despite any hardships she faced as a woman.Now, growing my own career, it seems fitting that I am working with Rottet Studio, founded by none other than Lauren Rottet. The talent and determination of these women have inspired me to forge my own career path, even in economic environments that historically favor men.  They have been primary examples of how women fit into the world.What advice would you give to young women who are just beginning their careers?My advice to all is to be willing to take on the opportunities that present themselves, but also remember to follow your passions.  Your career path is abound with opportunities for you to be great, to contribute meaningfully and to make a difference.A recent study of 22,000 firms in 91 countries found a positive link between the number of women in leadership roles and a company’s profitability. What does diversity in leadership mean to you? What responsibilities do you think companies and individuals, both male and female, share in promoting gender equality in the workplace?I look forward to the day when we are not creating quotas to fill just to portray equality or demonstrate diversity. I hope for workplaces that can naturally do so; where we promote, collaborate and elect people without regarding culturally negative labels. If that means being more inclusive of women, then we should strive to do so, as the statistics show our value time and time again.As designers of the workplace, what can we do to foster productivity and creativity while addressing issues of work/life balance?Seldom is architecture a solo endeavor.  It takes a team to construct or realize a project.  If you engage with people that you can not only rely on but learn from, then you foster both productivity and creativity.  These same people would also understand your personal needs and respect that.  As the phrase states, it is a ‘balance.’  When there is imbalance, you will be hard pressed to find a person performing their best.Mentorship is crucial to professional success and longevity, but many studies have shown that women in the workplace are more reluctant to pay it forward and have a harder time finding mentors than men do. Do you think this dynamic holds true in the design industry, as well?Although I cannot necessarily relate to this concept personally, I can understand how this dynamic pervades our industry. Studies have already identified that, historically, women face more challenges and hardship when it comes to professional growth and success.  That could inform the concept that women are reluctant to pay it forward in that they want to eliminate competition, and not share the success with other women. And historically, women do not hold as many senior roles as men; and men may find it a threat when a woman is performing on par with him. This may hold true in any industry, but I think more and more women are challenging this behavior every day.

 To celebrate Women's History Month, we're featuring some of the inspiring women who are crucial to our success and embody the creative growth to which we always aspire. Rottet Studio occupies a unique vantage point in the conversation about women in the workplace - over 60% of our full-time staff are female, and we are a proud Women Business Enterprise (WBE) Certified firm under our Founding Principal, Lauren Rottet.This week, we interviewed Associate Principal Patricia McCaul, who leads our Los Angeles office with over 20 years of experience practicing interior design and architecture.Tell me about your path to a career in design and architecture. I think I was always interested in being an architect. My grandfather loved to take us on tours of old houses. The rest of my family always hated it, but I loved it. He taught me how to draw in perspective when I was 10. I studied Interior Design at Drexel [University] - I was fortunate because it had a strong art and design program, but it also had a strong engineering school, so I was able to take classes in both. I went to UCLA for a Master's Degree in Architecture, and when I graduated I went to work in the Frank Gehry Model Shop like many other architects. It was a great place to learn that design ideas are not precious and that you have to keep thinking and responding to what is happening around you. After a few years, I found that I was interested in interior space building rather than buildings as objects - I've been working in interior architecture since that time. I think that being in L.A. has been an inspiring place to work in the design profession, because people are open to and want to see creative new design ideas.What is your favorite part of your job?Seeing design ideas become real. I enjoy the challenge. It's one thing to think of a cool, beautiful, or inspiring idea, but to actually then work with all of the different people it takes to sell the idea, document the idea, and then build it - that takes determination and vision. I like the moments in the project when others start to see your vision and help to make it happen. What are potential pinch points that affect talent retention in the design industry, particularly for women? Why do people leave?It is hard to work and have a family as an architect or designer. It's a job that takes up so much time and is really difficult to do part-time, particularly when working in larger firms. I've seen a lot of talented women stop working in the field or working at a much reduced capacity because they have a family. I would love to see a path for both men and women that encouraged people to take time with your family, and then be able to come back into the profession after your family is grown. It is a job that I believe can be done better by someone with more life experience. Mentorship is crucial to professional success and longevity, but many studies have shown that women in the workplace are more reluctant to pay it forward and have a harder time finding mentors than men do. Do you think this dynamic holds true in the design industry, as well?Absolutely. I think that this is one place where all of the advances in computer technology have not been helpful. When I started my career, everyone who I worked for started out doing exactly the same tasks that I was doing in the exact same way. Now that software and technology change so fast, the way something was done two years ago is not how it's done today. This makes mentoring difficult.What piece of advice would you give to young women who are just beginning their careers? What did you wish you knew when you first started out?You are only competing with yourself. Don't waste your energy comparing yourself with what others are doing or achieving. There are barriers, but if you spend time focusing on them, you don't get past them. Focus on what you want to accomplish and how you can do it. 

Happy International Women's Day! In the spirit of celebrating the women, past and present, who've dedicated their lives to breaking barriers and paving the way for others, Rottet Studio is featuring some of our fabulous and fierce female designers on our blog. Over the course of Women's History Month, we will be profiling their experiences in the architecture and design industry as they put a face to the realities and rewards of being a working woman.Though the conversation around women in the workplace is hardly new - buzzing with oft-quoted entreaties to "lean in," fraught with questions of work/life balance and "having it all" while working a "second shift" -  it continues to have profound, if varied, applications for both genders. In what has become known as The Missing 32% in the architectural practice, women represent about 50% of students enrolled in architecture programs in the United States, but only 18% of licensed architects are women (Equity by Design). Rottet Studio occupies a unique vantage point in the industry - over 60% of our full-time staff are female, and our Founding Principal, Lauren Rottet, has broken new ground as one of the most celebrated architects and interior designers over the past few decades.As the only woman in history to be elevated to Fellow status by both the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and International Interior Design Association (IIDA), Lauren shared some of her thoughts on and advice for women in design:Tell me about your path to a career in design and architecture. I was always constructing and inventing things. When I was a child, I used to build little rock houses for the toads that would hang out in our driveway in Waco, Texas. I’d construct these little houses, then put the toads in there, and I considered it a huge accomplishment if the toads were still inside the next morning - it meant that I had built something sound and secure. During high school in Houston, I watched as these lovely high-rise buildings were constructed. My father let me skip school one day – which was a very big deal – to explore what I thought would be amazing interiors way up in the sky. I was so disappointed that these great buildings had such uninspiring interiors, and thought I could do better.What is your favorite part of your job?That it’s so different every single day. I love going into a space and it’s just like you imagined it, that you created something out of nothing and everyone’s so happy and enjoying it – if it’s an office space, they say it’s enlightened and catapulted their business, and if it’s a hotel, watching the guests enjoy their stay and come back. Every designer wants to make people happy.What are the ways in which men's and women's careers in architecture differ?I was raised by a father who told me that there would be no difference between men and women in my generation, and that I needed a career so that I wouldn’t have to rely on anybody else. So when medicine didn’t work out [at The University of Texas at Austin], I switched to architecture. Fewer than 10 percent of women graduated in my class, but I didn’t really think consciously about being a woman in architecture. I never really thought about it as a man’s field. Then again, I don’t think I’m a normal woman.Once in a while, when the guys are standing around taking credit for your ideas (not the design ones, as they figure you might know how to “design,” but the structural, mechanical or project-siting big ideas), I do get a little annoyed. But, it’s a team effort at the end of the day, and I always end up giving those big ideas away anyways. In my studio there is, of course, none of the man/woman thing. We all work hard, and we all have each other’s backs. If you’re knowledgeable, have done your homework, and can hold your own on a job site or in front of a client, you’ll be respected. If you never even realize that there’s something holding you back, then there isn’t anything holding you back.What are potential pinch points that affect talent retention in the design industry, particularly for women? Why do people leave?The time pressure of a design or architecture career is tremendous, so having a family and rising to the top of your game are an effort, to say the least. It is physically difficult to be a young mother with children and work the long hours that being a designer or architect requires. But businesses should be flexible with employees who have children; it’s incredibly helpful when firms are flexible.How do you feel your experience working in a creative field might have been different if you were in a more corporate industry?I just couldn’t have worked in a non-creative field. I would have been an absolute failure, because my brain works too non-linearly. I think you have to match what you love doing with your career, then you can’t help but succeed - because you love it! Working in a more corporate industry wouldn’t have been as fulfilling for me – in a creative field, you’re always learning, excited, and inventing. Every day is a new challenge.Describe the professional moment, accomplishment, or realization that you are most proud of to date.One of the first interiors projects I did when I moved to LA was for a law firm, and it broke so many new grounds. Paul Hastings’ office in New York turned the way people office upside down, catapulted a new way of thinking about office furniture, and went on to win Best of NeoCon. They were moving out of a building with 360 degree views on Park Avenue to a space with no views whatsoever. That’s how I figured out little tricks – the use of materials to make them seem like they go on forever and make a space feel bigger, which was a precursor to what we do now. I had been influenced by Light and Space artists from LA like James Turrell, Larry Bell - and found it fascinating how light alone can manipulate and create the illusion of space. So with the Paul Hastings project, I really added in form and started to look at a space three-dimensionally. In modernist architecture, you look at the floor, wall, and ceiling like planes, whereas in Paul Hastings New York, I looked at the space like a volume that you sculpt into – planes, angles, forms, that trick your eye.Other than that, I must say I was proud to have a parking spot with my name on it when I worked for Keating, Mann, Jernigan & Rottet.What's the best career advice you've received?I’ve been given quite a bit of wonderful professional advice, but I think probably one of the best ones is just to listen. Listen very, very well. You know, you always want to come up with a solution or an idea, or instantly retort back, but I think if you really sit back and listen to the parameters – what the client wants, what the surroundings are telling you about a project, I think that’s probably the most helpful professional advice.And another piece of advice – one of my favorites – is if you start to recognize what you’re doing, you’re not designing. A recent study of 22,000 firms in 91 countries found a positive link between the number of women in leadership roles and a company’s profitability. What does diversity in leadership mean to you? What responsibilities do you think companies and individuals, both male and female, share in promoting gender equality in the workplace?In any field, your responsibility is to promote the candidate with the most drive, who is best equipped to do the job, and that means if you end up with all women or “pink people,” then so be it! Businesses have an obligation to hire the best talent: young or old, male or female. Don’t make people wait for their age bracket or take their “turn” to catch up.You’ve often said that your work centers on improving the human experience through the built environment. What are specific ways we can improve women’s experiences through the design of the physical environment? The way we can help any person in the workplace is having good lighting and more personalized temperature control, because that seriously affects the way people work. Give people inspiring spaces – spaces that are light-filled, uplifting and environmentally clean. There’s nothing wrong with beauty and aesthetics. In my opinion, making your path beautiful from here to there is equally as important as actually being able to get from point A to point B. We have more of an obligation to make things “pretty” than we do just to make things. It’s human nature to respond positively to a smile, a hug, or something that looks or feels welcoming.Mentorship is crucial to professional success and longevity, but many studies have shown that women in the workplace are more reluctant to pay it forward and have a harder time finding mentors than men do. Do you think this dynamic holds true in the design industry, as well?I find that shocking – intuitively, women are nurturing, they’re typically givers. I could see it happening if women were not confident in themselves, or came from a past generation. They always say – hire your replacement, because then you can do bigger and better things. Those people must have come in the workforce late, or don’t understand how to grow people.The key to being a good mentor is the day you realize you can’t do it all by yourself, so you have to teach someone else how to do it. I think the education of our staff – and of our clients – is really important. I love nothing more than getting a student straight out of school - very smart, very talented - and then, you know, kind of hovering over them and helping them learn. Then, once you do that, I feel like they’ve learned from my experience, which amplifies the experience they came to the table with – and now they’re twice as good. They’re better than I am! And I love that.Who is your mentor? The absence of one was my mentor. You can self-mentor by being a sponge and watching people, even if they’re not sitting down and teaching you. You can also learn what not to do by watching those same people.

Happy Transformation Tuesday! This week we're bringing you before and after images of The James Royal Palm in Miami Beach, FL. Designed by Lauren Rottet, The James Royal Palm is a modern tribute to the local area and art deco roots of the historic Royal Palm which was built in 1939. The entire design vision behind the hotel was to transport guests into an era of nostalgia reminiscent of Art Deco Miami in the 1920s through 1940s.Several design elements pay homage to this art deco period including a grand sweeping staircase on the first floor and a “moon gate”—shrubbery that frames the front entrance and serves as an air of privacy for the living room garden behind its walls which features oversized topiary lawn furniture including chairs, sofas and lounges. Many signature design elements original to the hotel were also kept intact such as the decorative compass rose on the terrazzo floor in the lobby, porthole windows in the lounge and the green glass reception desk which was restored and converted to a fresh juice bar.

Welcome to the first post in our new Transformation Tuesday series! The Rottet Studio Houston team recently completed the 301 Congress building lobby renovation in Austin, Texas. This remarkable transformation is part of a growing theme across the country to bring older buildings up to Class B+/A-standards in order to compete with newer office construction. Take a look at the before and after shots below:

Pursuitist India named Loews Regency among Ten Best Luxury Hotel Openings in 2014, noting in particular the “addition of six designer-inspired Signature Suites”, including the Rottet-designed Glamour and Pop Art Suites.“Loews Regency tapped international architecture and design firm Rottet Studio for The Grand Suites, inspired the cultural icon, Marilyn Monroe.  Suite 1620, The Glamour Suite, is an interpretation of what might have been Marilyn’s Park Avenue pied a terre, evoking how she would have lived in the heyday of her celebrity glamour in New York City. Next door is the Pop Art Suite, which pays homage to pop artist Andy Warhol.  Black and white architectural finishes, inspired by comic books and ad-based Pop Art graphics, provide a bold background.”Read the full article here.

Interior Design Magazine took a look at Design Hive with a walk-through slideshow of the various spaces.“The project called upon six architecture firms in downtown Los Angeles—all of which work in prominent high-rise office towers—to create office suites for creative, tech, media, financial, legal, and consulting clients. Designed by Gensler, Rottet Studio, IA Interior Architects, Shlemmer Algaze Associates, Wolcott and Unispace, the suites encapsulate the advantages of operating in progressive workspaces in the downtown core.” Read more at Interior Design.

Interior Design Magazine took a look at Design Hive with a walk-through slideshow of the various spaces."The project called upon six architecture firms in downtown Los Angeles—all of which work in prominent high-rise office towers—to create office suites for creative, tech, media, financial, legal, and consulting clients. Designed by Gensler, Rottet Studio, IA Interior Architects, Shlemmer Algaze Associates, Wolcott and Unispace, the suites encapsulate the advantages of operating in progressive workspaces in the downtown core."Read more at Interior Design.

Our space at Design Hive was featured in the Los Angeles Times!“At Brookfield’s Gas Co. Tower and Wells Fargo Center, the architects have completed the hip new spaces the landlord ordered up as models. Each is designed to convince prospective tenants that they can get the benefits of an open plan and creative office inside a traditional corporate-style tower.… In offices created for a fashion media firm, dramatic printed wall coverings offer a counterpoint to a vast mural by artist Frank Stella visible through the north windows.”Read the rest of the article at the LA Times! 

         Our space at Design Hive was featured in the Los Angeles Times!"At Brookfield's Gas Co. Tower and Wells Fargo Center, the architects have completed the hip new spaces the landlord ordered up as models. Each is designed to convince prospective tenants that they can get the benefits of an open plan and creative office inside a traditional corporate-style tower.... In offices created for a fashion media firm, dramatic printed wall coverings offer a counterpoint to a vast mural by artist Frank Stella visible through the north windows."Read the rest of the article at the LA Times!