2021 Year in Review: Colin Montoute, WXY architecture + urban design

Name: Colin Montoute, AIA, RA, LEED AP

Job Title: Director of Architecture

Company Name: WXY architecture + urban planning

What was the biggest lesson you learned while working during the pandemic?
We’ve needed to continually question how we work our values and then, our client base. For a firm like ours that is strongly civic minded, that value-versus-values statement has emerged as something that permeates all our work now. More clients want to have that conversation—how resiliency and equity define how we engage in civic and economic spaces. They want that to be part of the brief, not an added service, and for us to arm them with the tools to have that conversation. It’s our responsibility to help clients make difficult choices and build a vocabulary to be effective.

What are your predictions for your industry in 2022?
As capital that has been sidelined during the pandemic reemerges and stalled projects come back online, briefs we answered on projects pre-pandemic are being examined. We’re in a different place and time. The world that a project was designed to exist in no longer exists. There are new concerns. Spatial changes about what spaces are used for—desks, offices, hoteling of desks—are being questioned. How are people moving through spaces, in mobility and during transportation? These types of things are happening quickly. We’re going back to a different world in different respects.