Join us for Best Practice, a virtual fireside chat series dedicated to practice operations at architecture firms and beyond. From pain points to potential, hear how leaders in the architecture and engineering industry are innovating through new business models and managerial techniques. We’re chatting with Christian Stayner of Stayner Architects about how to design new models for practice.

Stayner Architects is an architecture practice located in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, not far from Dodger Stadium, and is led by architect and builder Christian Stayner, AIA, NCARB, LEED-AP.

Christian Stayner, AIA, NCARB, Managing Partner of Stayner Architects, is a licensed architect in California, Hawaii, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, as well as a licensed General Contractor (B Classification) in California.

Christian received his undergraduate degree in International Development from Harvard College and his professional degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. His undergraduate and graduate research focused on temporary settlement patterns caused by forced migration and protracted civil war, specifically a long-term refugee settlement in southern Somalia and in Berbera, the main port city of unrecognized Somaliland.

Christian has fifteen years’ experience in architectural design, project and construction management, and development. His expertise includes designing and managing projects from conception through ongoing operations, and works across scales, from campus master planning to single-family homes. He has consulted for governmental and non-governmental agencies, academic and cultural institutions, and private corporations.

Before full-time practice in 2015, Christian several academic appointments, including tenure-track professor at University of Michigan’s Taubman College, Woodbury University’s School of Architecture, and Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Art and Design. His research focused on geographies of architectural materials including production networks, infrastructures, and logistics.

Christian’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, California College of the Arts, the University of Virginia, A+D, and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art. Before taking on his current role at Stayner Architects, he worked as an architect in Rotterdam and New York City for firms including the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Thomas Phifer & Partners.