Thought Leadership: A Passion for Problem Solving: Richard Price
Richard Price, the newest principal at Arch Nexus, can’t imagine being involved in any other profession than architecture. For Richard, architecture provides opportunities to enhance people’s lives and solve problems. Empowered by this passion, Richard is deeply invested in mentoring youth in creative solutions and team work and has served as the state director for Odyssey of the Mind, a problem-solving competition involving students from kindergarten through college. He is inspired by watching youth and observing what they can do with limited intervention of adults, claiming that “We don’t give kids nearly enough opportunity to see what they can do on their own.”
He uses this passion to build and expand educational facilities throughout the state of California. One of these projects is the Los Rios CCD American River College Culinary Arts Expansion which involved a major addition (3x the size of the original building) which was done while keeping the existing building up and running. This allowed the educational programs within it to continue and not interrupt the school’s flow of income during construction. The project enhanced the current operations and gave students a sense of enthusiasm for their education, something that Richard found to be the most rewarding aspect of his work.
Another highlight for Richard was working on the County of Kings Courthouse, a $100 million dollar project in which he unified and directed project consultants around the nation, including Florida, Arizona, Washington and various parts of California. Richard is enthusiastic about the variety of challenges that arose within the project and how each team member was able to find a solution. The courthouse serves a large diversity users and is considered an ideal example of planning and programming while being aesthetically beautiful.
Richard looks forward to working on more educational projects, enjoying the diversity of needs- from a classroom to something specialized such as a welding shop or research lab. When asked about what he looks to in the future, Richard says that “I have loved giving back to the community, as well as being involved in some great projects, but my best is yet to come.”
For more on Arch Nexus’ leadership, see http://www.archnexus.com/company/leadership/