Davison Architecture + Urban Design

By Ingrid Spencer

For Dominique Davison, AIA, and Ryan Warman, AIA, principals of four-person firm Davison Architecture + Urban Design (DA+UD), living in Kansas City, Missouri, a city that has more linear miles of highway per capita than any other U.S. city, is like being in the right place at the right time. Warman has lived in the region his whole life, so roots are deep, but Davison moved there six years ago with her husband (also an architect) from New Haven, Connecticut.
“There is an enormous opportunity to reenvision the downtowns of both Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri,” says Davison. “What we do as architects and urban designers can make much more of an impact here than in other, already densely built cities.” Warman agrees. “The inner core has a wonderful history and beautiful historic buildings and homes. If we could get more businesses and families into the core, it would really be a catalyst for the city.”

Davison and Warman aren’t just talking among themselves about the area’s sprawl problems. While their five-year-old firm continues to work steadily — with a handful of completed projects, including houses, a park, a church, and a preschool, and more on the boards or under construction — the two architects are deeply involved in engaging the community in the issues. They’ve joined forces with the Kansas City Design Center and the AIA Kansas City to organize a series of lectures to get people talking about ecological urbanism. “It’s a way to raise awareness about how urban design impacts ecology,” says Davison. “We have to. It’s not a choice anymore.”

It’s that serious take on urban issues that led Davison to set out on her own after four years working for Pelli Clarke Pelli. “The dream was always to have my own boutique firm that was sustainably oriented,” she says. Indeed, DA+UD offers sustainability consultancy services as well as design. Her love and knowledge of her adopted home drives her work, as well as her sense of the part she could play in its improvement. “The region has a nostalgia and allure to it that attracted me immediately,” she says. “And there is a tension and pull toward contemporary culture fueled by new architecture, and a burgeoning art scene.” Davison is an artist herself, and a classically trained cellist. “It was music or architecture for me,” she says. For Warman, who joined the firm as principal in 2009 to “broaden the expertise of the firm, especially in the realms of building and detailing,” architecture or furniture design were the career possibilities, and he still builds when he can.

But there’s not much cello playing or furniture building for the duo these days. Davison lectures at the University of Kansas’s School of Architecture, and DA+UD has a full plate of projects. The firm is currently working on designing a 52-unit, energy-efficient, environmentally appropriate community near Lake Quivira in Kansas. Davison says she finds few differences between designing public spaces and residential work. “With a park, you may be expanding your user group,” she says, “but you’re still trying to create flexible, inviting space that people will use.” Davison and Warman see it as their great opportunity (“We don’t look at it like a job,” says Warman) to shape their region, be it with residences or public space. “The vision has been there, and the technology is now catching up,” says Davison. “We want to be in the forefront.”

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