DECADES is VMDO’s internal conversation series tracing fifty years of practice, one decade at a time.

The fifth and final session covered 2016 to 2025.

What follows is not a summary. It is an attempt to honor what was said.

Seoul, March 2020

Rob Winstead was in Korea for a DoDEA workshop when the world changed. Traveling home through the Seoul airport, he put on a mask for the first time. He wasn’t entirely sure why – just that something was happening, and that the airport was full of people from everywhere, and that instinct said: protect yourself.

Within days of returning, the VMDO office was empty. Policies were written overnight. Computers and printers were dispatched to homes. The firm turned on a dime.

“When you reflect back on it,” Rob said, “I’m really impressed by how well VMDO responded to that significant disruption.”

What followed was not simply adaptation. Pre-2020, nearly all of the firm’s work happened in the building on Second Street, together — so crowded the studio felt like it might need more space. After 2020, VMDO learned how to work differently. Remote collaboration became permanent. The physical office became more intentional. Entire projects were designed without a single in-person meeting. The disruption reshaped the practice in ways that are still being understood.

A Decade of Extremes

Five national AIA awards in a single year. Three record revenue years. Reach extending across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, into Maryland, and to South Korea.

And also: COVID, material shortages, cost escalation, projects redesigned midstream. Design-Build and Public-Private Partnerships accelerated as clients sought certainty in a volatile market. Architect of Record roles opened access to larger and more complex projects in partnership with national and international firms.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in our work,” Rob Winstead said. “Over time, you get more and more comfortable with just the uncertainty that’s a part of our world.”

The DC office, opened in 2018 with a handful of people and a shared printer, grew steadily into a driver of regional work, eventually earning certification as a DC Certified Business Enterprise. It grew fastest after the pandemic, when remote collaboration made geography less of a barrier and the DC practice could pursue work with the same depth the Charlottesville studio had long established.

Projects in this decade showed the range of what the firm had become — and, increasingly, where it was being invited to compete. Thurston Hall at George Washington University and a major residential life commission at the University of Miami both came through national design competitions, placing VMDO on shortlists alongside firms twice its size. That the firm won both said something about where two decades of residential life work had landed.

Thurston Hall — a 1929 brick residence hall — was transformed by a single act of subtraction: carving away the south side of the building to create a lively courtyard that became the building’s nucleus. What had been dense corridors and little natural light became a garden in the city, students immersed in outdoor space at the heart of their dormitory. LEED Platinum. A national AIA Architecture Award, a COTE Award, and a Housing Award in the same year.

Lubber Run Community Center in Arlington buried its parking underground and gave the park back to the people — a net-zero ready building that embedded itself into a tight urban site by getting out of the way. LEED Gold. AIA National Award.

The Shihadeh Innovation Center transformed a former elementary school in Winchester into a regional hub for career and technical education, serving a community where only one in three students had been pursuing postsecondary education. A different kind of project. The same underlying purpose.

Stewardship of the Firm

The decade closed the founding generation’s chapter and opened several more.

Bob Moje and David Oakland retired fully from the firm in 2018 and 2019 respectively. A third generation of owners had already taken shape. A fourth was emerging. Ownership nearly doubled in the number of partners. In 2024, VMDO reorganized around market sectors and practice groups — shifting how the firm grew its staff, won its work, and supported people across studios rather than within them.

Joe Celentano, marking his thirty-ninth year at VMDO, put it plainly: “We are stewards of this organization for a time. And then it’s our job to pass it on and make sure it thrives in the future.”

What stewardship looks like, this decade clarified, includes knowing when to let go. The founders had modeled it — divesting shares, stepping back before they had to. “They modeled that for me,” Rob Winstead said.

Tom DeBolt had a line he used to repeat: you’ve got to read to lead. Rob borrowed it and changed it: you’ve got to learn to lead. Stay curious. Don’t be afraid to innovate. Character and commitment trump skills or expertise.

New roles formalized what the practice had grown into: Directors of Sustainability, Visualization, BIM, Human Resources. VMDO signed the AIA 2030 Commitment. Achieved JUST certification — the first architecture firm in Virginia to do so. Launched scholarships at Hampton University and the University of the District of Columbia to grow the school-to-career pipeline for underrepresented communities. Published Ethos, an annual internal design retrospective beginning in 2019 — a scrapbook, in the firm’s own words, of what matters most.

Who We Build For

At the Marlow Heights opening, the room was full of people who hadn’t expected to be served. Actually delivering on that promise – showing up, doing what you said you would – was something close to the whole reason for the work.

The aspiration, for the years ahead, is to work more broadly in communities where the power of design can make the most dramatic impact. To practice not just with excellence, but with intention about who that excellence serves.

Still Asking

Fifty years ago, Bob Vickery wrote a question on a blackboard at UVA and never fully answered it.

What does it mean to make a mark upon the land?

He also left behind a sentence that the firm has returned to ever since: “The practice of architecture is always joyful, for the dedicated architect knows that one’s next creative act may help to elevate the human spirit as we search for the dream that is worthy of sharing.”

Each decade has offered a different answer to that question. A firm that held together through recession by cutting salaries in half and keeping its people. A girl at a construction fence weeping at what was being built for her. A second grader writing a poem that moved from a backyard to a galaxy. A team pivoting overnight, masked up in Seoul, finding a way through.

In 2025, VMDO received the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Virginia Architecture Firm Award for the second time – the first firm in the award’s history to be so recognized. It is rare to merit this honor once. It is rarer still to continue leading with such clarity, conviction, and generosity that a second honor feels not just appropriate – but necessary.

Rob Winstead closed the final DECADES session with a phrase that is not quite an answer to Vickery’s question but might be the spirit behind all the answers.

Practice with love. Love for each other, for communities, for the planet. There are a lot of things to be afraid of out there, but if we practice with love, we’re going to do the right thing.

Fifty years in. Still asking. Still building. Still becoming.

---

Decades: Design Thursday is a series marking VMDO’s 50th anniversary. Each session gathers colleagues across generations to reflect on a decade of practice.