Michael Rotondi

Michael Rotondi (born June 26, 1949) is an American architect and educator.

He attended the Southern California Institute of Architecture when it began (SCI-Arc) in 1972 and, later, was director of the graduate program there.

Born in the Silver Lake/Los Feliz area of Los Angeles to Italian immigrants, Rotondi’s father was an executive chef (Italian cuisine), his mother a self-taught musician and seamstress.

As a child, he would build things with his siblings and, inspired by his godfather who was a contractor, would draw the front elevation of apartment buildings on Los Feliz Blvd, "then reinvent them," imagining what the interior spaces were like.

“We were always building, digging underground, digging out hedges in a hill to make a cage.

We were always constructing spaces for ourselves, not out of an urge to be builders but to make hideouts.” He recognized houses by Schindler and Frank Lloyd Wright in the neighborhood not by the architects’ names, but because they “just looked better.

It looked different than all the rest.”

In junior high school, he took drafting classes, where he "fell in love with" isometric drawing and realized his affinity for precision.

After high school he attended Los Angeles City College, taking preparatory architecture courses.

He then attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Pomona.

In 1972, Rotondi was one of fifty students to leave Cal Poly Pomona and attend the newly founded Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

Since SCI-Arc would not become accredited until after his graduation, Rotondi, like all early SCI-Arc graduates, received a certificate of completion (in 1973) rather than a diploma.

Since his initial involvement as one of the original SCI-Arc students, Rotondi has been active in advancing and improving the school.

He began his professional architecture practice in 1973 with Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall (DMJM), then from 1974-1976 practiced both independently and in collaboration with Peter de Bretteville and Craig Hodgetts.

He has been a member of two international practices (Morphosis from 1976-1991, and RoTo Architects 1991–present, which he founded).

He joined the already existing firm Morphosis as a partner with Thom Mayne, one of the co-founders of SCI-Arc, in 1976, where he worked through 1991.

He was director of the graduate program from 1978-1987, then succeeded Founding Director Kappe as the second Director from 1987-1997.

“I moved from student to teacher, to graduate school director to director of the institute.

I was part of and a witness to this extraordinary process.”

Rotondi’s earlier work is highlighted by industrial concepts and materials, and asymmetry, and is considered to be one of the primary figures of Los Angeles' Postmodernism school.

Between 1981-1991 while practicing at Morphosis, the firm received 12 awards from Progressive Architecture magazine and 11 from the American Institute of Architects.

On November 1, 1991 Rotondi founded a new firm, RoTo Architects, with Clark Stevens and Brian Reiff.

He views RoTo as "a collaboration of people working in an open practice where ideas move about for anyone’s use without the need to feel proprietary. Authorship is less important than collaboration.”

Rotondi is currently a Distinguished Faculty at SCI-Arc where he teaches design studios, thesis students and seminars on creative imagination.

He also teaches at Arizona State University, where he has been a long-time educator, and lectures at universities around the world.

His firm RoTo Architects works internationally in a wide range of fields including residential, commercial, cultural, and contemplative, and has been widely published and received numerous awards.

His practice also has a strong mentorship approach, where he is “trying to incubate the careers of the people that are here now.” The firm works on both commissioned and speculative projects, the latter being projects that were "invented" for the purposes of teaching are developed in the office, with the aim of turning them into real projects.

Among other honors and awards, Michael Rotondi received the Richard J Neutra Medal for Professional Excellence from Cal Poly Pomona in 2014, the AIA/LA Gold Medal for Presidential Honors in 2009, and in 1992 was honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters with their Academy-Institute Award in Architecture.