Ron Stelmarski

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Ron Stelmarski ―

Connecting People and Places


― Connecting People and Places


Ron Stelmarski sees architecture as a connective tissue ― one that binds cities and people together. His buildings adapt to their sites in unique ways, heightening the relationship between landscape and architecture. The result is a body of work that is as engaging on the drawing board as it is on the street. Stelmarski’s projects grow out of his love of theory, history, and film. For him, the built environment is cinematic: a carefully composed story that, like frames of a motion picture, unfold as a viewer moves through it. “The trajectory of a film is not rigid, but elastic,” Stelmarski observes, “Both film and architecture have a spatial and a temporal component that bring them to life.”


― Connecting People and Places

The architect started his career working in a specialized area of interior design known as “branded environments,” which uses symbols to tell the story of place, vision, and brand. “There is strength in a film’s ability to use motif and imagery to simply convey complex ideas. Capturing the collective essence of a client or a product and translating it into the physical realm is not so different.” Stelmarski says. This approach has allowed him to craft a portfolio of corporate, commercial, and civic-minded projects that succeed through storytelling and uplifting the communities they serve.


Stelmarski’s affinity for architectural narrative is evident even in his early projects. The University of Cincinnati Lindner Athletic Center, a collaboration with architect and theoretician Bernard Tschumi, employs boldly deconstructed geometries and signature red accents. But all these details cumulate in a unique, linear plan whose walls tell the stories of the university’s brightest athletic and academic stars. “An architect takes a person through space, letting the story of a project unfold simultaneously with the viewer’s own journey,” Stelmarski says. “Just as a film director captures actors on a set.”

↑ Sketchbooks and drawings by hand are integral parts of Stelmarksi’s creative process.

← At Singing Hills Recreation Center, our commitment to Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (J.E.D.I.) informed our outreach as we encouraged participation from community members to ensure our design represented all uers fairly and equally.


― Connecting People and Places

When the Dallas Fire Department announced the need for an imaginative new Fire Station 27, Stelmarski and his team brought their passion for storytelling to the civic project. The 3-story design helps to tell DFD’s renowned history: No. 27 was one of the nation’s first integrated departments, and home to one of the city’s first Black firefighters, Milton Washington, hired in 1969. The new fire station, which opened its doors in 2015, is made of concrete, but lush landscaping and climbing plants keep it verdant and alive. The façade communicates strength, yet firefighters live comfortably inside with their families and enjoy the bright red atrium whose murals tell the stories of trailblazing brigades like Milton’s through a museum-like lens.

↑ Dallas Fire Station 27 is characterized by a cast-in-place concrete wall that wraps the building providing structural support while a recessed, 16-foot tall “27” announces the station to passers-by.

→ An early sketch for the CoverMyMeds project in Ohio shows Stelmarski’s intent to weave the building into the site.


Oklahoma University (OU) Medical Center in Oklahoma City is a project that also connects people to their city’s history. The project coalesced around Stelmarski’s design interpretation of the region’s “Glass Mountains,” natural rocky outcrops rising 200 feet above the plains that have an unusual crystalline sparkle. “New modes of thought about what design can be, or how it can deliver, encourage people to act differently and relate to one another in new ways,” he says. The reference grounds the project in its site-specific context, and the connection between building and site, story and metaphor, sparks conversation.


― Connecting People and Places

The streets of this historically Black neighborhood are lined with an eclectic mix of architectural styles, but one landmark structure is the Pittman Hotel. Designed in 1916 by William Sidney Pittman—a relative of Booker T. Washington and one of Dallas’ first Black architects—it originally housed the Messianic Temple Society, as well as the city’s first elevator open to Black citizens. Stelmarski and his team took the opportunity to breathe new life into the historic structure through adaptive reuse. By preserving its essential character, the design honors its lineage and connection to the Black community, but updates the site for modern use as a hotel.

↑ The new addition compliments the original building with a glass and metal corner detail that blends with the adjacent office building.

Today, the building is a registered landmark, so Stelmarski’s approach demanded both technical conservation skill as well as historic and cultural research. “Bringing the two together was integral to sensitively integrating the old and the new,” he says. The transformation from semi-abandoned site to thriving hotel and leisure center embraces the unique history of the Pittman, placing the story at the core of the design and vision. “When you uncover something about a site’s history, whether social or geological or structural, it’s a rallying call for clients, designers, and the public alike.” The project connects people to their own history, bridging the past and the present through design.


Currently, Stelmarski and his team are focusing on an emerging arts district at the edge of Dallas known as Deep Ellum. ― Many of Stelmarski’s projects have started as pieces of bigger-picture master plans. This broad way of thinking about a neighborhood or a city means that Stelmarski envisions the buildings as extending beyond a single street address, just as a film is much more than a single scene.


― Connecting People and Places

↑ Creative placement of light and color enliven the building masses and bring attention to the resulting voids on the façade of The Epic.

↑ The Richards Group building is defined by a bold, strategic void that provides visual depth and identity while connecting with the 122-million drivers that pass by annually.

→ The Epic is a series of stacked geometric forms, whose intentional shifts create balconies and provide shade.


These design interpretations are rooted in a rigorous creative process in Stelmarski’s studio, and a deep understanding that the details of a design matter even when they’re part of a largescale plan or neighborhood. These details are how the architect organically aligns his work within a streetscape, and often in unexpected ways. Currently, the designer is experimenting with strategic voids to give his buildings a threedimensional life. By cutting out pieces to create shade or balcony spaces, he is breaking out of the standard, rectilinear box format, opening his project sites up rather than encasing them.

The Epic, a multi-use office and retail tower in Deep Ellum, showcases Stelmarski’s playful use of light and shadow in architecture. The building presents itself to onlookers like a balancing act—a series of three asymmetrical forms stacked on top of each other, like children’s building blocks. The resulting overlaps and undercuts in the façade are, in fact, calculated voids and cantilevers. Each offers outdoor patios for fresh air, but they’re also shaded, protecting users from the hot Texas sun. “The recesses are my way of playing with visual variety at a large, urban scale,” he says. “They allow my projects to offer depth and atmosphere.”


― Connecting People and Places

Whether Stelmarski is taking photographs of his travels, watching films, or sketching in his Dallas studio, there are journeys unfolding in his mind. His design interpretations are rooted in the rigorous creative process of an architect who understands that details matter, even when they’re part of something larger. From the boldest incisions to the smallest details, Stelmarski finds the key to an organic alignment between architecture and streetscape, bringing the stories of people and places together.


↑ Horizontality has played a key role in many of Stelmarski’s projects as the large, open plans create strong visual connections and bring people together without hierarchy or elevator-based movements.

← Detail shot of the dramatic point at Baylor Scott & White Health Administration Center.



Selected Projects ―

Ron Stelmarski


Client: City of Dallas Size: 23,600 square feet Completion Date: 2015 Sustainability: LEED Gold®


Fire Station 27 ―

Dallas, Texas

When we set out to design the replacement station for Fire Station 27 we were faced with a challenge – an urban site that was too small to accommodate the program and required parking. Breaking from the typical firehouse designs in the city, our solution was to develop a multi-level facility to house the 15 firefighters per shift that live there “24 hours on and 48 hours off.” Creating a layout that would ensure their brief response time while maintaining their safety was key. The result is a facility that represents the most advanced design of all the City of Dallas’ fire stations.


― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places



Client: Baylor Scott & White Health Size: 300,000 square feet Completion Date: 2020 Sustainability: Greenpoint Rated Gold


Baylor Scott & White Health Administrative Center ―

Dallas, Texas

When Baylor Scott & White Health decided to consolidate multiple satellite administrative buildings into a single administrative center located on the medical campus, risks were high. Not only did we need to create departmental collaboration, but also a healthy environment for occupants. By working together, we creatively implemented elements to foster well-being, flexibility, and competitive edge, maximizing the efficiency of each programmatic component. The advanced design of the building promotes a sense of community, with large open office floor plates, where building occupants are never more than one floor from one other. Through this bold move, colleagues will be able to work together and provide a more cohesive service to patients.


― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places



Client: City of Dallas Size: 26,650 square feet Completion Date: 2021 Sustainability: LEED Silver ®


Singing Hills Recreation Center ―

Dallas, Texas

Inspired by the natural elements of the project site, the design team for the Singing Hills Recreation Center sought to enhance the beauty of the area by creating a facility that mimics the natural landscape in an abstracted way. By trimming the underbrush and lower limbs of the densely treed area, a space for human activity to take place among nature was revealed. The solid stone base establishes a natural material palette while the transparent glass walls showcase activity within the recreation center and create a sightlight to the incoming train traffic. At the completion of Phase 2, the new LEED Silver center now includes a full size gymnasium with seating for 300, game room, a fitness room, an exercise room, a multipurpose community room, a new Senior Center, and a new Technology Center. Singing Hills Recreation Center adjoins a site with the Dallas South Central Police Substation (also designed by Perkins&Will) and includes shared access to the Camp Wisdom Dart station.


― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places



― Connecting People and Places




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