RTA Learning Community

Ryan founded Ryan Taylor Architects LLC in 2002. He was working for a commercial A|E (Architecture and Engineering) firm ranked among the world’s ten largest firms. He worked with talented and dedicated people, whom he considered family.

They worked on a diverse collection of projects with in-house engineers and other related professionals who taught Ryan to work with and eventually lead project teams. Ryan even got to do a kitchen renovation for the CEO of the company. It was during Ryan's tenure with this commercial firm that he earned a registration to practice architecture: an eight year process.

Though his commercial work seemed (relatively) glamorous at the time, as Ryan matured in his work, his appreciation for the subtle details and client relationships quickly became most important to him.

The scale of commercial projects can make it difficult for the project manager to really know the details of the project. To address these concerns, Ryan decided to change the scale of his practice.

By focusing on single-family residential projects (renovations, additions and new construction), we're building stronger client relationships though we can still focus on the details. We’ve also been able to bring best practices and perspective from a sophisticated commercial firm to address common challenges of residential projects before they arise.

In the years since Ryan founded this company, the creation of green building programs and social media has contributed to a dramatic evolution in our industry’s understanding of building science, sustainable building and vernacular architecture. We’ve built strong skill sets and networks in these areas and we compliment them with vision, experience, process and technology.

Creativity is critical to the success of our projects – not just the creativity that yields a good design. It’s also important to be creative about how we advocate for our owners, how we collaborate with other project team members and how we lead the project team from programming through construction.

Creativity always starts with a question so we’ve learned to listen: could we...? Through experience, we’ve also learned to anticipate questions so we work to empower our owners by offering answers before questions arise. Owners are always emotionally invested though you’re not intellectually invested unless you understand your options and make decisions in a proactive manner.

That’s the goal of our purpose-driven practice: we think education makes you better owners and we believe better owners make better architecture. We don’t look for patrons who will award a commission that we design. We look for partners with whom we collaborate and for whom we advocate during all phases of the project.

Good architecture is only possible through the efforts of a dedicated and gracious team. We're thankful for all the teams of which this company has been a part and we look forward to establishing many new relationships.