Spotlight Series

Peter, tell us about yourself and how you ended up in the position that you're in now.

Darby: First of all, I am an architect, and my focus is on transportation architecture, but it does kind of break down into different areas, including things like aviation, rail and transit, urban design, adaptive reuse, and mobility. I did a lot of parking garages a long time ago, and now I kind of converted into how to not build parking garages as we look for new ways to utilize space.

I grew up in Chicago, which is where I began to really appreciate architecture and mobility. As a kid growing up there, I was exposed to architecture and transportation. You have airports, buses, transit, and then you have the highways for automobiles. When you see this as a young kid, you begin to understand the connections they make and how they all work together. That became the catalyst for me when I was in college. I finally figured out this is what I wanted to do professionally because I started out at Lake Forest College doing computer science, which I was doing really well at, but I was also bored. So, I wanted to have some new challenges and try something new. That led me to decide I wanted to be an architect.

I ended up going to Virginia Tech, and the undergraduate architecture program also had an urban studies program, where I was able to focus a lot on urbanism and related urban studies issues along with my pathway through architecture. The economy was in bad shape when I graduated from Virginia Tech, so I applied for graduate school at the Harvard GSD in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I started focusing more on enabling technology as a design tool using computer-aided design, as it was called then, which is today's integrated building design. I tested the idea of designing air rights buildings over urban highways and interstates using CAD and 3D animation, which was cutting edge then.

So, that pattern of design thinking through technology drove me into what I eventually started doing in my early career at AECOM for about 12 years. I began helping them visualize airports and rail projects as well as the Big Dig in Boston. That set the stage for me as far as where I was going in my professional career. I had some stints in New York City and some in Washington, DC, but most of my work was in the Northeast for two and a half decades of my professional career. I ended up with a smaller firm, SGA, a 50 to 75 person practice at the time. They were doing mixed-use projects as part of their commercial office building and corporate interior design projects, and I supported them on the mobility and urban design side of adaptive-reuse and mixed-use architecture through parking garages and other circulation-type projects.

We moved to Dallas about 12 years ago as part of my spouse's relocation. We were staying in the Victory Park area, and I walked over to Klyde Warren Park, which had literally just opened up that weekend. For me to see something transformational in Dallas, I saw the opportunities from my experience being in the Northeast and understanding successful project delivery up that way. Seeing the opportunities in Dallas certainly gave me the green light to come to Dallas and make that happen.

I have been involved with the GDPC since around 2014 and have met people like Bud Melton, David Dunnigan, and many others at various events. I remember the first tour I ever did with GDPC was with Carmen Garcia, who I believe was the president at the time, and she did a tour of DFW airport. I have a pretty extensive collection of urban design and architecture books on my bookshelf, and one of the books I have is about Aerotropolis, one of the topics on which the DFW tour was focused. Airports are like cities, and that tour became a pathway for me to get more involved with urban design and planning at DFW and other transportation programs in the region.

Around 2015, Steve Salin was the Vice President of Rail Planning at DART, and they were doing some next iterations of the D2 subways and other mobility studies through downtown Dallas. So, I got involved through my public advocate side, just my curiosity set in, and I ended up going to coach Steve. I just took a map I developed in PowerPoint and drew several different alignments on it, including a segment along Canton Avenue, and I said, “I think this is the solution for DART”. He cracked a laugh and told me that it was some of the alignments that they wanted to propose, and he did tell me there were some technicality issues as well. Still, the problem was the funding had to be related to population centers, and if you go on Canton Avenue on the south side of Dallas, there's no population or development in play; it's all parking lots and still parking lots today, but it could have been transformational then. So, I probably had the vision they wanted, but because of the regulatory process, it wasn't going to be that. However, that engagement connected me further with DART and other urban issues in the city.

I got involved with the Public Policy committee with AIA Dallas, and at the time, the Trinity Toll Road was going on, and they were trying to build a massive highway inside the levees of the river. Working with Public Policy with people like Bob Meckfessel of DSGN and others, I remember that it was then AIA President Bob Bullis who told me to write a letter to the city. It was a long letter, but I did it, and it somehow got the mayor's attention. I remember we went to a Trinity Toll Road event at the 6th Floor Museum and walked in, and I got tagged by someone and was introduced to Mayor Rawlins formally, and ever since then, he would always remember me on a first-name basis. I think it's part of the four core initiatives I talk about currently; it's about making connections and building relationships, right? It's about the people business in this world. My other two initiatives are to be of service and become engaged. I used those four initiatives this past year as president of AIA Dallas. It's about how we can make ourselves be of service and become engaged to make those connections with people and then build those relationships.

I worked for Michael Baker, a large national A/E firm of about 5000 and eventually served as a national practice lead, servicing architects, landscape architects, urban designers and building engineers, working on a wide range of large-scale projects – airports, rail & transit, and other mobility project types. But we also had an Urban Design Studio which tied architecture and building engineering with our planning group. There was an Urban Design Studio roundtable group of 10 of us nationally; half were architects and landscape architects, and half were urbanists and planners. But that roundtable discussion was probably my favorite conversation of the week because 10 minds would come together to think about how we position ourselves where we can make a difference.

I eventually returned on my own during the pandemic and started my consultancy practice with an public advocacy approach, and a mission for better-connected spaces. It's about a combination of working with architecture – the design of buildings - with mobility, which involves circulation and transportation, and the community, including public urban spaces. My goal is to find the synergy of that combination, make the connections, and work with the expertise of designers and engineers through these different disciplines to create a well-connected design aesthetic. So that's what I do now, and most of it I do this through my practice as a consultant, but I also do it through organizations like GDPC and AIA.

AIA Dallas has a Communities by Design committee known today as the AIA Dallas Urban Design Committee. But a bunch of us got together in a room with a whiteboard, and the question of the day was, “What makes Dallas Dallas? " Interestingly, if you compare Dallas to other major metropolitan cities, why are we not a destination city? People don't come here for vacations. It's more of a conference city, which Mark Cuban touched on that a little bit earlier this year at the GDPC’s Sport Economic Forum. It's not the game itself but the economics around the stadium that build the entertainment district. Dallas revolves around sports and conventions when it comes to visitors.

There are also a lot of businesses moving to Texas, particularly North Texas, mainly because it makes economic sense to be here. It is also a great place to be geographically. You can get to either coast on a relatively reasonable flight. We are also becoming the 2nd largest financial center after New York City. The future of Dallas is bright in the sense that we have all these parts, and yet, you know, we're not a destination city in terms of vacation, but we have everything else and that has seemed to work for us.

Tell us about a project or multiple projects in the past that you've worked on in our region that you think have made an impact on the connectivity that you're working for.

Darby: One of the first major projects I worked on was the Big Dig in Boston. My role was to create a 3D virtual world and visualizations, which was groundbreaking at the time, as this was 25 to 30 years ago. The technology was new and emerging, but we successfully recreated the construction sequencing in a time-based model to understand how to remove and replace existing utilities and infrastructure in a centuries-old city. The project dealt with above-ground infrastructure, underground subways, highways, and buildings, among many other things. By sequencing the construction process digitally, we provided insights that helped the project integrate many design facets through multiple disciplines more effectively. The ability to visualize these challenges and communicate them clearly was incredibly powerful.

Following the Big Dig, I transitioned to work at Logan Airport, where I modeled the entire airport as part of a $4 billion modernization effort. That was my first major airport project, including a modernization effort with 16 new and distinct projects throughout the campus over 10 years. The scope of this project included highways, utilities, parking garages, new terminals, connections, and upgrades to existing terminal facilities and cargo operations. Collaborating with 16 different architectural and engineering teams, I served as the integrator, identifying gaps and ensuring all the design elements came together and worked cohesively. This role reinforced my ability to connect large-scale projects and improve outcomes through effective integration.

A pivotal moment in my career came after 9/11. Since two of the four hijacked flights departed from Boston Logan Airport, the airport authorities immediately sought ways to enhance security. Our team was brought together the next day after the attack to help explore and develop new security measures, including checkpoint enhancements, baggage screening improvements, and access controls. What began as a 12-month project evolved into working directly with the Department of Homeland Security, including Secretary Tom Ridge, and setting the national standard for TSA security measures. The solutions we developed were implemented nationwide, demonstrating how our work could have a broad and lasting impact.

Later, I shifted to the private sector, focusing on Department of Homeland Security projects, particularly security infrastructure and access control. My work with parking garages evolved from security concerns into integrating these structures as essential components of urban environments. Instead of viewing them as static buildings, I pushed for high-quality, well-integrated facilities that enhanced the urban fabric. Since moving to Dallas, I have taken on more managerial roles than direct project design work. However, I did contribute to DFW Airport's long-term planning and asset management, particularly in assessing the 50-year-old terminals, infrastructure like bridges, and other facilities, including the parking garages. We evaluated whether to retain or replace key structures, providing analytics to guide decision-making.

Can you touch on some stuff that you're working on now which you are excited about?

Sure. In 2020, I joined the DART D2 Subway Advisory Committee for AIA Dallas. At that time, the D2 subway project was still in progress, around the 20% design phase. DART approached us, and we assembled a panel of five architects to evaluate station design, public spaces, connectivity, and community impact. We worked closely with Kay Shelton, the program director and VP of Capital Planning at the time, along with other stakeholders. One of our key focuses was the impact of the line connecting Deep Ellum at Good-Latimer, also known as the Swiss Avenue WYE. We asked, “How can we make this better?” We played an instrumental role in influencing DART to reroute the northeast terminus of the subway alignment so it no longer connected directly into Deep Ellum but instead shifted north to connect with the current Central Expressway alignment. This change helped preserve connectivity between East Dallas and downtown, particularly around what is now Carpenter Park. Although this was just a few years ago, we had a meaningful impact. Unfortunately, and for good reasons, the project was later put on hold, partly due to post-pandemic ridership declines and shifting funding priorities. The feasibility changed, and resources needed to be allocated elsewhere. That project was a significant success for us, and I enjoyed all of the people we worked with.

Interestingly, about a year later, after the D2 project was shelved, DART reached out to me again. They had a new initiative and asked if I’d be interested in having AIA Dallas help with a competition to study their next-generation bus shelter program. Initially, they wanted us to organize a traditional design competition, but we saw an opportunity to approach it differently—by engaging local architecture and urban design students. We partnered with the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), specifically the College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs (CAPPA and ended up creating a semester-long design build studio course. During the studio semester, we worked with 16 students who analyzed the existing bus network, pedestrian usage, demographic data, and more. They conducted a thorough study, providing fresh insights into how people interact with these spaces. As part of the professional advisory group, I worked alongside other architects to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world application. This collaboration brought together DART, AIA Dallas, UTA, and additional partners, including architects, urban designers, other consultants, and fabricators. It became a truly collaborative movement, aligning different stakeholders toward a common goal. The students ended the semester with a pair of true-to-scale prototypes along with a strong design statement through their research, which became the guiding document for DART’s design consultants to further refined and to complete the design phase documents.

Fast-forward to today: The final design was handed over to a fabricator in California, and the first prototypes were completed this past summer. Four bus shelters have been installed across the network as part of a pilot program to assess their feasibility for final refinements and a full rollout. This project has been one of the most exciting ones I’ve been involved with recently, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see the impact we can make.

I love hearing about private companies collaborating with educational institutions because it's one of the unsung strengths of our region. We have so many outstanding schools—SMU, UTA, UNT, TCU, Dallas College, Texas Wesleyan—and hands-on experiences like the one you provided for UTA students are invaluable. I can only imagine how beneficial that experience is for them as they enter the workforce.

Darby: Absolutely. Collaboration like this is crucial. And, you know, it’s one thing to be in the limelight as a politician or a leader, but sometimes I feel more like the Wizard of Oz, working behind the curtain. Real impact often happens not by being out in front but by standing alongside decision-makers, providing them with the right information to guide the process. Many leaders, particularly in government, aren’t trained architects or urban planners; they come from different professional backgrounds. So, when architects and urbanists engage with planning councils and policymakers, we can help shape decisions with our expertise. That’s where we make the biggest impact. One of the things I’m most excited about in my role as Vice President of Issues this year is continuing to build on the work of those who came before us. Our mission is to be more engaged, identify strategic opportunities, and form partnerships that ultimately create better outcomes for the public.

We'll wrap up with this last question, which is more of a look into the future. How do you envision our region in the next five to ten years, and how do you and your organization fit into that growth?

Darby: Yeah. Again, I follow a similar drive to what I have done in the past —bringing ideas together in a collaborative framework. For example, I’m currently involved with the I-345 committee, which recently received a presidential award from AIA Dallas. This committee is part of AIA Dallas but has expanded to include organizations like Downtown Dallas, Inc. (DDI), the Deep Ellum Foundation, and others. We've partnered to approach TxDOT regarding the I-345 corridor, which has been studied for decades. Now that TxDOT is moving forward with the hybrid trenched design, we're working on a strategy prioritizing urban neighborhood connectivity and quality design. Instead of treating it as just another highway project—like LBJ (I-635) in a canyon—we’re exploring ways to rethink the surface-level environment and the opportunities it presents. Our goal is to ensure that once this project is complete, Dallas can fully capitalize on it.

Initially, TxDOT presented a fragmented surface land-use plan that lacked long-term urban opportunities. So, I brought in an idea I’ve advocated for years: air rights over highways. Why not build buildings like housing and other structures over the trenched highway to create broader connections—similar to Klyde Warren Park but with a more strategic economic development approach? This could generate revenue for the city, address housing needs, including middle-income and workforce housing, and create stronger urban community connections between downtown, Deep Ellum, and The Cedars. Our group has been actively working on this. When we responded to the 30% design package, TxDOT quickly reached out, and we started having deeper discussions with them. This led to conversations with city council members, city staff, and neighborhood organizations like the Deep Ellum Foundation and DDI. Eventually, we brought everyone together—about 30 to 40 people from different departments, neighborhood groups, and professionals—to analyze the project’s potential impact.