Scott Sivan, AIA

In my four decades of designing, building, and developing projects in the United States, Middle East, and Europe, I’ve learned how the cultural, political, economic, professional, and personal systems we create and inhabit affect the decisions we make within them. This taught me the importance of adjusting to the system I was in to optimize the assignment I was tasked with.

I’ve worked in multiple scales and building types: from single-family to homeless shelter, religious center, office tower, retail center, multi-building office campus, multifamily apartments, and condominium communities. I've started and managed companies and developed projects that were market-makers.

These experiences honed my knowledge and craft in a wide range of design, construction, and management projects, combined with the sensitivity required to work with a diverse group of people from all parts of the world.

The baseline of my professional life is a twenty-six-year yoga practice, a healthy lifestyle, discipline, and continuous education, including the study of wisdom traditions, philosophy, psychology, art, and architecture.

Formally, in the interest of assisting people through life-changing decisions, I obtained a certificate from the New York Institute of Coaching and am presently enrolled in a Conflict Resolution certificate program at the University of Massachusetts.

The Architecture in the Gap essays are intended to articulate views on the architectural, building, and real estate professions and businesses, as well as the investigation of related issues like art, culture, technological, and human progress. I start from the perspective of Systems Theory, which holds that the relationships between things and organisms are as valuable to consider as the organisms and things themselves; and that reality is a holistic endeavor regardless of observation.

This is, after all, one reason architecture is so compelling. It alchemizes inert material and amorphous space into formations of beauty, function, and meaning that sustain and elevate life.

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