Susana A.

AICP Urban & Architectural Designer | Planner

MY EXPERIENCE, IN A NUTSHELL I am an Urban Planner + Designer with an Architecture background, with 25+ years of experience. Over the years, I have managed, planned and led project deliveries for world-renowned firms (including SOM, WSP, Perkins+Will, HOK, SmithGroup…) leading client meetings and presentations, while coordinating interdisciplinary teams, balancing ideas from, clients, community, stakeholders and consultants through the typically fluid and iterative planning and design process. Some of my duties included developing project scopes and schedules and devising and producing reports and presentations, while also actively contributing to project content with zoning, site, context and building feasibility analyses, plan visioning, inspiration and precedents curation, site layout, design and development, and developing innovative design principles and vision strategies along with concept, illustrative and framework plans. My efforts typically culminated in attractive written and graphic presentations and reports, such as Site Development Plans, Master Plans, Small Area Plans, and Comprehensive Plans. My work has included both unabridged reports where I wrote urban design framework narratives and guidelines preceding official policy and zoning code, as well as eye-catching PowerPoint presentations distilling complex information into something the public can easily and enthusiastically grasp. I’m also very comfortable presenting to all types of clients and leading community engagement sessions in English and Spanish (one of which made the local TV news). WHY FREELANCE NOW...? After couple of decades of an exciting and very demanding career, I find myself looking for a work arrangement that better suits my present lifestyle, while just choosing the projects I love to do and I know I'm good at. MY PRODUCTION & SOFTWARE SKILLS: I’m an expert in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, in which I integrate AutoCAD drawings, ArcGIS data layers and PowerPoint graphics to produce planning documents, drawings, reports, pitch books and presentations that are eye-catching and easy to grasp. I’m also an expert in Excel, which I use to clearly track and display space allocations, and easily calculate development data, gross floor area, and acreage tabulations, among other things. PLUS, AS A HOBBY... At a smaller scale, one of my favorite things to do is residential design: space planning, from site layouts to floor plans is my expertise – I find space where no one sees it, resulting in more practical, better (and happier!) places to live at. Just to point out a few jobs: • a friend of a friend commissioned me to remodel her kitchen, resulting in a total reinvention, a kitchen-dining-living addition with a window-filled "great room" commended for “bringing the backyard in" and ideal for family gatherings; • my sister needed to add an office in her 2nd floor townhouse, and I also added a master bathroom that she never imagined to have; • a friend commissioned me to split her (feisty) teenage daughters’ bedroom, and I gave them two private bedrooms each with a door – they said they never imagined it could look so good and feel so spacious in such a small area; • my other sister wanted an open kitchen but didn’t want to lose her pantry, so I relocated it to unused (and unseen!) space ideal for shelving in the adjacent laundry room, revealing an inviting central space for a kitchen island, frequently used by her young adult children gatherings