Residential and retail architecture firm KTGY Architecture + Planning announced this week that it has acquired Simeone Deary Design Group, a hospitality-focused interior design and branding firm based in Chicago. Together, the firms intend to form a “fully integrated” architecture, branding, interior design, and planning practice, with the goal of providing a holistic approach to project design.
KTGY, founded in 1991, is one of the nation’s largest residential architecture firms by revenue, and has worked with the nation’s top 10 home builders and apartment developers alike. The practice includes the award-winning R+D Studio, made to develop unique architectural design concepts.
Tricia Esser, CEO of KTGY, says the firm had started searching for an interior design firm to combine with three years ago as a part of its strategic plan. “We knew our design clients needed that [interior design] service, whether it’s retail or residential projects for us,” says Esser. “We have great interior design partners, but our feeling was, if this could be within our firm, we could start these projects from the beginning with an understanding from inside out what the outside and inside of the project are going to look like, for a holistic experience.”
Chicago-based Simeone Deary Design Group was founded by Lisa Simeone and Gina Deary in 2002. Since then, it has completed a portfolio of over 100 interior design projects, including new construction, adaptive reuse, renovation, and conversion.
“We were always very architecturally driven, even though we are on the interior side,” says Simeone. “We always drew a lot of inspiration from architecture and felt very strongly that interior architecture drove interiors. So when we got the call from Tricia … and we saw who they were and what they did, we became very interested. And then, the first time we spoke with them and understood who they were, what their philosophy was, the talks just became more and more serious and geared to us specifically. [KTGY was] the perfect firm for us to do this with.”
The firms are in the process of integrating their operations, with the aim of combining their areas of expertise at every stage of a project.
“Placemaking … goes beyond hospitality and residential for us in terms of how people react to a space and live in a space,” says Simeone. "We really are experts in the way people live, the way people interact with their space. As we’ve come together we’ve realized we can really work together to inform those environments in really interesting and experiential ways.”
KTGY’s recent projects include a series of three modular housing developments for formerly homeless residents in Los Angeles, created in collaboration with the designer/builder team Hope Street Development Group. The 84-unit Hope on Alvarado opened recently in Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood, and two more developments, Hope on Hyde Park and Hope on Broadway, have broken ground with completion expected in Q2 2022.
While KTGY and Simeone Deary are not able yet to discuss their current joint projects, Esser considers the Hope Street projects a great example of what the two firms could do together. “In that project, a lot of those modules have to be designed ahead of time before they can be delivered to the site. The whole consideration of how the project’s going to feel once you open the doors is a great point of how we could have started that years ago together, before we even sit down with the client—what do we want the experience to be for this resident, and how do we make it the best experience it’s going to be for them?”
