[ Previous | Next ]
Alumni Awards List

ANTONIO DUNCAN is a native Kansan. In high school, he was fairly certain that a Bachelor of Architecture was something he wanted to pursue, so he applied to attend K-State because of its reputation for graduating quality professionals.

As a practicing architect, Duncan feels lucky to have studied and graduated from K-State. He could have attended other schools, but K-State emphasized quality drawing skills and a high level of rigor from the first semester. He also feels fortunate for the breadth of the K-State faculty who allow for potential in design that Duncan never knew existed. The program also allowed opportunities for travel to places that a young man from Kansas had never considered. Today, it is K-State's unique and inventive faculty that Duncan remembers best, and he finds that K-State still provides the same potential for experiment and critical thought. What he learned while at K-State remains a constant influence in how Duncan practices his profession. Duncan believes that being an architect allows one to build within something that is more vast than other professions. Building within the framework of urbanity, and even now sub-urbanity, provides one with the opportunity to work in a lasting and sometimes compelling built form. It is this notion of a lasting reinvention of building and program that Duncan finds romantically attractive about being an architect. He cannot imagine doing anything else.

During his fourth year of studies, Duncan completed an internship at Perkins and Will Architects of Chicago where he was a design team member for the O'Hare Airport International Terminal. Duncan felt fortunate to have the opportunity to work closely with renowned architect and designer Ralph Johnson. Watching and working with design professionals who created architecture on such high levels of detail provided a foundation for Duncan's own career.

Following graduation, Duncan was employed by Bill Stout, Architect; Holt Hinshaw Pfau Jones; and Esherick Homsey Dodge and Davis, all of San Francisco. During this period, he received First Place in a local competition for the Architect's Beaux Arts Ball, Honorable Mention in the 79th Paris Prize Competition, and Honorable Mention in the Student Housing Competition for Drury College in Springfield, MO.

In 1993, Duncan chose to return to the Midwest where he worked from 1993 to 1995 for Abend Singleton Associates of Kansas City, Missouri. While there, he worked on the Kansas City Federal Courthouse and the Lebanon, Missouri, County Courthouse.

Duncan then took a break from professional practice to pursue a Master of Architecture at Harvard University, which he completed in June of 1997.

Since returning to professional practice in 1997, Duncan has worked for Helmuth Obata and Kassebaum of St. Louis, where his current title is Associate and Project Designer. Projects at HOK have included the Williams Corporate Headquarters in Tulsa, OK; the Lorain County Courthouse in Elyria, OH; the Denver Federal Courthouse in Denver, CO; and the Riley County Police Station in Manhattan, KS.

Duncan has served as a guest studio critic for the architecture program at K-State, as well as the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Washington University in St. Louis, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects and is a licensed architect in Missouri and Illinois.

Duncan and his wife, Tracy, have a 10-month old son named Benjamin. Tracy was a second grade school teacher until Benjamin arrived late last year.