Welcome to BarryAParks.com – a website devoted to illustrating selective examples of my career and hobby work so far.
I am a registered architect having practiced in both Winston-Salem, NC (with projects that spanned much of the state between 1987 and 2013) and in Houston, TX (where I received my formal architectural education, began my career, and have returned as of 2013). Now that the rubber band has snapped, I am back in Houston serving as a Senior Project Director at Lone Star College’s University Park campus.
I’ve had the good fortune to work with great clients over the years in all sorts of settings and a variety of building types. While I have a fairly diverse portfolio, two sectors certainly stand out: church and university projects. These two are notable for their inherent complexities: the need to communicate with and satisfy large groups, to produce buildings that will be long-lasting with limited maintenance, to be particularly sensitive to setting and the need for integration into a larger campus fabric, to incorporate intense utility requirements (often linked to a larger system), and to work through greater scrutiny by plan reviewers.
With over 60 church projects in my portfolio, I have deep experience in master planning campuses, the design of worship spaces, classroom buildings, fellowship halls, kitchens, recreational facilities, offices, and the other components that go together to produce a church. Projects have ranged from very small to mega-church scale.
The university work has punctuated my experience at intervals. My first project was as a right-out-of-school draftsman working on the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building at The University of Texas in Austin. Some years later I led a team of architects, engineers, and interior designers in the design and production of construction documents for The Thurston-Bowles Buildings at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I continued in the role as lead architect providing construction administration skills for this project even as I shifted my focus to a large addition at Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center next door to the one under construction. Since then, I have done numerous small projects for Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem – the most visible being the development of guidelines for all the exterior signs on campus. My new position as Senior Project Director in the Facilities Planning and Construction Department at Lone Star College in Houston has built upon my educational experience from a new perspective — that of the owner’s representative for multiple construction projects including the Energy and Manufacturing Institute Building at University Park campus.
Other architectural work has included corporate and retail projects such as post offices, office buildings, branch banking, retail centers and individual retail stores.
Oh yes, and in my spare time, I like to sketch and paint. I’ve devoted a few web pages to examples of my artwork, some of which was produced recreationally, while others serve as examples of commissioned work. I’ve also added a few web pages that provide examples of writing, and if you are a real glutton, you can see a bit of biographical information as well.
Thank you for your interest.
Barry A. Parks, Registered Architect