William J. Doran, AIA
Architect, Educator, Visual Artist, and Graphic Designer
william@dorandesign.net
+1 225 892 6638

Good design is driven by a fervent relationship with its place—its culture, history, and people—followed by belief in the ability of humans to better their communities without blockbuster budgets or unbridled new development.

“Whatever the receptive and inventive powers of the mind may be, they produce only internal chaos if deprived of the hand’s assistance. The dreamer may entertain visions of unimaginable landscapes and of ideally beautiful faces, but he has no means for fixing fast these tenuous, insubstantial visions…What distinguishes dream from reality is that the dreamer cannot engender art, for his hands are asleep.”
-- Henri Focillon

The creative nature of design means confronting thresholds of new knowledge as often as possible. It means learning to continuously arrive at new ways of seeing the world. It is project-based and happens in the context of the real world. We work; we test; we make things. We study everything from environmental conditions and social issues to materials and construction techniques and are challenged to synthesize these things through the making of something more than the sum of its parts.