Ben Parco, also chairman of the board, steers the strategic direction of the company. He defines the goals and scope of the design work, as well as allocating that work throughout the company.

 

With over eighteen years in the profession Ben has established himself as a leader in the  field of architectural design. He has acted as the chief designer on an unusually wide range  of challenging project types ranging from high-rise office towers and aquaria to performing arts theaters and five-star hotels.

While at the San Francisco office of SOM  (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) he led large teams of architects and engineers, shepherding a  number of the firm’s most significant projects from initial concept through completion.

Located just west of the Forbidden City, Ben  master planned the $1.5B, 16-city block Beijing Finance Street  project and designed a number of its more important buildings. The complex includes office, residential and hotel towers along with shopping and entertainment spaces all arranged around a central park space. At its peak he orchestrated a team of over 30  architects and engineers, delivering the 16M square foot  project from blank sheet of paper to  completion in less than six years. The project was recently named the Best Planning Project in Business Week’s 2007 China Awards.

In 2005 the Knowledge and Innovation Community Plaza project located in Shanghai, for which Ben was the lead designer, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Ben was recently honored by former Vice President Al Gore with an invitation to speak at a closed door climate summit held in New York, a small conference of thirty world leaders from business, government and academia.

Prior to joining SOM Ben launched and ran the  San Francisco office of HLW International, a large New York based practice.