PHOENIX – Peter W. Rutti, AIA, associate principal and project director of Westlake Reed Leskosky, has been appointed director of design of the Phoenix, Arizona studio of the nationally recognized architects, engineers, and technology designers. The announcement recognizes the design excellence, leadership, and continued growth of the national and international practice of the integrated design firm in the western region.
According to managing principal Paul E. Westlake, Jr., FAIA, “Peter Rutti is a formidable designer and a premier resource, with a specialty in cultural arts. He brings his western roots and background in California and Phoenix to take a leading role on the national, and now international stage. As director of design of the Phoenix studio, along with his contributions in the academic framework, he advances design excellence and inspires future leaders as well.”
Rutti brings his design approach focusing on fostering collaboration, listening to client needs, assessing project programs, giving design form, and delivering inspiring solutions. Over the last decade he has been asked to help lead and coordinate design teams for some of the most complex and high profile performing arts centers in the United States, understanding not only how to build cultural arts facilities, but more importantly, what makes them resonate with audiences and communities.
“Through my experience on performing art centers in particular, I truly believe the success of architecture can only be achieved through a constant personal involvement on the project from beginning to end. Only in that way that user needs and theatrical requirements can be synthesized into distinctive architecture,” Rutti says.
His current work includes the design of the renovation and expansion of the Avalon Theater of Grand Junction, Colorado, transforming the 1923 historic Vaudeville playhouse into a vibrant multi-venue regional center for the arts as a new anchor for downtown redevelopment and social engagement. He is also designing cultural arts projects of Westlake Reed Leskosky in Beijing and Shanghai, China, and Taiwan.
He has also traveled widely throughout Western and Eastern Europe studying theatres, churches and civic spaces, and first apprenticed as an architect in Prague during the 1990s. He brings to all of his projects a careful understanding of how to finesse complex programs into elegantly designed and carefully detailed buildings. As a result, his work has been widely published in national design journals and nationally cited in design programs including those of the American Institute of Architects.
Rutti extends his commitment to design excellence through his involvements in the development of the architectural community. He is an adjunct professor at the Arizona State University School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture where he currently teaches a graduate level comprehensive design studio focusing on the design of performing art centers. Peter is also a visiting critic at the UCLA School of Architecture & Urban Design and School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona.
A member of the American Institute of Architects and Contemporary Forum of Phoenix Art Museum, Rutti received his Master of Architecture from the University of California Los Angeles, 2001 and his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arizona, 1995, and completed a Semester Audit/Study of Urban Architecture at Southern California Institute of Architecture, in 1993.