The Firm
Firm Evolution
With over 40 years of experience, our depth and excellence in architecture allows us to take a comprehensive approach when designing spaces. Our history of successful design, client relationships, and exquisite architecture proves us as forerunners in our field, leading the industry in designing retail, hospitality, and entertainment venues.
Designing for People
Our approach to each project includes taking a comprehensive look at potential spaces, creating places that speak to our clients, and ultimately developing places where people want to interact, shop, dine, socialize, and enjoy. From designing retail, entertainment, and hospitality environments to working with plans and prototypes to repositioning existing spaces, RDC’s expertise covers all consumer experiences. We strive to incorporate our craft into everyday spaces, creating extraordinary work.
With a collaborative practice of architecture, planning, and interior design, RDC creatively meets the diverse needs of projects. We are a full-service architecture practice with deep experience in conceptual design, entitlement, site planning, and all stages of construction documentation and administration. Our practice encompasses many different scales, from small planning to large master plans and everything in between.
Commitments
2030 Challenge
The urban built environment is responsible for 75% of annual global GHG emissions, buildings alone account for 39%. Eliminating these emissions is the key to addressing climate change and meeting Paris Climate Agreement targets.
NOMA Challenge
Fostering justice and equity in communities of color through outreach, community advocacy, professional development, and design excellence.
Years of Experience
Employees
Licensed Professionals
Our Values
Do Great Work
Cultivate Growth
Do the Right Thing
Services
Architecture
We take a collaborative approach that results in architecture that is of enduring value to our clients and their communities. Our depth of knowledge about trends and innovation is drawn from the collegial atmosphere where our team members exchange ideas gained from client projects located throughout the United States.
Master Planning
Our experienced team focuses on the mix of uses that create community, designing the districts of the future where values of timeless design, equity, sustainability, mobility, and sense of place are paramount. Our depth and breadth of work allows us to draw on the perspective of our team members and the variety of projects.
Interiors
We subscribe to a narrative-driven design process that translates the story’s conceptual qualities into an architectural vocabulary. Our projects express their narratives through a sequencing of moments along the user’s path. As these moments reveal more details, they eventually add up to the project’s story in its entirety.
Store Planning
Store Planning takes you from your first flagship/prototype location to a fleet of locations. We will help you identify the foundational elements of your brand and repeat that across multiple real estate opportunities. Expansion is limitless.
Branding
Whether it’s creating a new brand, revitalizing an existing brand, or bridging an identity to a physical space, we bring a wealth of expertise and hands-on stewardship to advance the brand into the next chapter of its existence.
Procurement
We are procurement specialists who achieve harmony between a project’s unique aesthetic, fiduciary, and strategic parameters. Our process focuses on the value achieved through transparency and collaboration with the full project team.
Sustainability
As architects and designers, we shape the urban environment, which impacts the environment, our health, and inevitably, our way of life. With sustainability services at RDC, it is our opportunity to develop creative solutions to achieve a result that goes beyond having a neutral impact and eventually a regenerative one.
Leadership
Brad Williams, AIA
Chief Executive Officer
Brad Williams, AIA, is the President and CEO of RDC. Joining the firm in 1999 as a junior designer, Brad has experience with urban infill revitalization projects, high-density retail developments, numerous successful façade revitalization programs for both public and private entities, as well as institutional projects such as the USC Caruso Catholic Center.
Mitra Esfandiari, AIA
Partner
Mitra Esfandiari, AIA is a collaborative leader of award-winning place making projects for retail, mixed-use, wellness and entertainment developments. Mitra became the firm’s first female principal in 2010 and serves at the highest level, on the Board of Directors and as the Chair of the Racial Equity Diversity and Inclusion committee.
Ian Denny
Senior Principal / Chief Financial Officer
Ian Denny has worked in financial management for over 15 years in a variety of industries and firms, with a focus on the AEC community for the past seven years. Ian focuses on creating efficiency, leveraging technology to create transparency and provide real-time intelligence to decision makers and providing inspired leadership to teams in the front and back office.
Branko Prebanda
Senior Principal
Branko Prebanda joined the firm at its inception in 1979 and was named principal in 1997. He leads the Retail Studio at RDC, working specifically with some of the world’s largest retailers. He has leveraged his experience to create streamlined processes that achieve project goals and best meet the needs of national retailers for ground-up, renovation and expansion efforts.
Sean Slater, AIA
Senior Principal
Sean Slater is the leader of RDC’s San Diego office where he serves as Principal-in-Charge for several high-profile projects. He is a Senior Principal of the firm’s Placemaking group, collaborating firmwide with architects, planners and interior designers on mixed-use development. Sean joined RDC in 2016 after spending over twenty years practicing architecture in Berkeley, Atlanta and Austin.
Jackson Thilenius, AIA
Senior Principal
With over 25 years of experience in the design and construction industries, Jackson has created a broad range of award-winning projects across the globe. As a Senior Principal at RDC, Jackson brings his passion for design and innovation to every project, while jointly maintaining close client relations and quality assurance. As a writer, painter, sculptor, musician, and inventor, Jackson bridges the gap between art and architecture within every project he engages.
Bob Lisauskas, AIA, LEED AP
Principal
Bob is focused on regional and international projects that include master planning, mixed use low rise and high-rise residential towers, workplace, and re-imagining of shopping / entertainment centers. He is currently leading the design for three major mixed-use high-rise multifamily residential developments in Downtown San Diego. Bob is a licensed architect in California, a LEED accredited professional, and an active member of the AIA and the ULI. He has served as a board member of the Silver Lake Urban Design Committee for the past eight years and acts as a student mentor at USC.
Virginia Maggiore, AIA
Principal
Since joining RDC in 2019, Virginia has built the firm’s practice of Retail Store Rollout and Planning, adding notable clients to the firm’s roster and garnering accolades for her work from colleagues and clients. Virginia is a licensed architect, responsible for developing the in-store experience and customer journey, creative strategy, visual communication, and marketing integration for retail clients.
Maura K. Schafer
Principal / Chief Marketing Officer
As chief marketing officer, Maura is responsible for the firm’s strategic marketing initiatives, serving as a member of the firm’s board of directors and working along with key leaders to provide a comprehensive national marketing, business development and public relations platform for RDC. Maura offers an in-depth perspective gained from working in various sectors of the design and real estate industries.
Joseph Serruya, NCARB
Principal
As Principal and Director of the Washington, DC office of RDC Joseph Serruya is responsible for senior project oversight and business development for the Eastern Region. With a depth of knowledge and over 25 years of experience in planning, site development, design, building construction and codes, he has successfully led project teams with a combination of creativity and organizational skill.
Terry Todd
Principal
Principal Terry Todd is the co-leader of the firm’s retail and grocery store practice area. Terry joined RDC in 1995 and since that time, has focused on architecture and design services for anchor retailers and shopping centers, developing an extensive knowledge and perspective on creating retail that serves the daily needs of local and regional communities. Terry is known for his thoughtful and responsive and approach to client projects. He offers clients in-depth technical knowledge that serves complex urban locations and suburban locations alike.