Yumi Moriwaki
DESIGN DIRECTOR
AIA, RA, LEED AP BD+C, NCARB
Design Director since 2019, in her 20+ years at Ronnette Riley Architect, Yumi has designed projects on many different scales, from planning and infrastructure, to preservation and restoration, renovation and new construction to precise details and furnishings for civic clients, businesses, schools, universities, community centers and families in their homes. Yumi loves diving into the particular histories of a project, exploring and working together to distill clear and attainable objectives in a process that balances scope, cost, and time. She is inspired most of all by the diverse rhythms and voices which eventually animate the built places she has worked on.
Yumi has led many of the firm’s seminal and most collaborative projects including FDNY Engine Company 287, EMS Ambulance Station 39, Roosevelt Island Sportspark, New York Institute of Technology Manhattan, the Westin Ottawa and the Apple Soho Store. Working on homes, stores, schools, courthouses, firehouses, community centers and public housing in almost every neighborhood across all 5 boroughs in New York City has reinforced her belief in the importance of renewing the existing built urban fabric with care so that people continue to feel comfort and pleasure in their daily lives.
Yumi grew up in Tokyo and by way of a Catholic international school, summers in California and Spain, ended up in the U.S. where she received a B.A. in History & Fine Arts from Harvard College and a M. Arch from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. After stints at Akira Watanabe Architect and Kajima in Tokyo, she moved to New York, joining Ronnette Riley Architect in 2001. Yumi lives with her family in a 120-year old brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn that will be a lifelong restoration project. She is a licensed architect in NY, a member of the American Institute of Architects and a LEED Accredited Professional.
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