Scott Sivan, AIA

Four decades of designing, building, and developing — in the United States, Israel, and Europe have given me a particular vantage point on the systems we inhabit and the decisions we make within them. I've worked at every scale and nearly every building type: from a house in the Hollywood Hills to homeless shelters in New York City, the Bahai World Centre in Haifa, Israel, a 20-story office tower and 173 store retail/office center in Prague, a 1,200-unit condominium in Kyiv, Ukraine that still stands, a 5 building office compound in Milan, and 144 multi-family units in Indiana, which helped the regeneration of small town USA.

I've started and managed companies, was part of the market making in Prague, Kyiv, and South Bend.

What that arc produced, alongside the projects, is a sensitivity to urban, cultural, economic and socio-political pattern and trend: how people move through spaces and make decisions, how transitions work or fail, what gets designed in and out of buildings and lives for reasons that are not always obvious – except for profit which is a universal goal.

I've practiced yoga for twenty-five years and studied wisdom traditions throughout my life. I've been certified as a coach by the New York Institute of Coaching and am presently enrolled in a Certificate program in Conflict Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. These aren't credentials separate from the architecture and building — they are the same inquiry pursued by different means.

The essays here are an attempt to articulate the structure of the gap: the interval that makes deliberate decision and action possible. I write from knowing that this structure matters — in designing, in building, in the business of development, and the conduct of a professional life and the personal which is always present.

Scott Sivan, AIA — B.Arch. SCI-Arc, 1985 · Licensed, New York State