Director and Architect, FREE NYC

With more than 19 years of experience, Armando has lived and practiced in 4 different countries and 7 different cities. He is an architect with experience as a designer, developer, sales and marketing director, and business development and BIM coordinator. His expertise involves the design, execution, and coordination of international projects of widely varying scales. Armando’s main interests are new building design and delivery methods, and searching for new solutions that promote the interaction of cultures, building bridges between them.

He has explored prefabricated construction systems, social housing, and the cultural relationships and the social impacts surrounding each.

In a globalized world, collaboration is essential to any project – the rules have changed in how we design, deliver, build and manage projects. Recently he has devoted energy to understand and try to change how architects and designers interact with one another in an industry that has been somewhat left behind in our technological era. He thinks our design culture does not seem to fully take advantage of all of the new technologies available to us. We have the tools, now we need to develop the know-how and the culture.

“Every single project, you’re thinking of something that’s never been done. You’re starting the project from zero. You’re trying to communicate about all these components, sometimes with people that you’ve never worked with before. Try to get as much experience as possible in every single part of our field. Be flexible — don’t stay in one place. Do everything that you can, from model making to drafting to 3D work to parametrics to roles like marketing and business development, project management. It’s a very complex career. And you get to be good at all these things.” — Armando Ramos