Alumni Spotlight:
Ashley Chiarelli
(B.Arch. & B.S. '12; M.S. '23)

Name: Ashley Chiarelli
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Major: Bachelor of Architecture & Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design | Master of Science in Foresight
Graduation Year: 2012 | 2023
Employer: Kirksey Architecture
Title: Associate Partner & Director of Strategy and Foresight

Why did you choose the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design? What drew you to design?
I discovered architecture late in high school. Given how academically focused I was, my decision to pursue architecture surprised some, despite my long involvement in theater, art, and photography. Architecture felt like the right meeting of everything I already was: too nerdy to be an artist, too artistic to be an engineer, and in need of a place where rigorous thinking and creative vision could actually coexist.

I grew up moving around a lot, but Houston became home during my middle and high school years; staying local had real appeal. The program is well regarded nationally, and at the time, I was very much on the traditional path, from an accredited program to licensure. When the Terry Foundation awarded me a full scholarship, the decision became unquestionable.

What I did not know yet was how far that path would bend. It turns out the part of architecture I was most drawn to had less to do with the building.

What is one of your favorite memories from your time on campus? Was there a particular professor who influenced your education?
The experience that most impacted my trajectory happened outside the classroom. While on campus, I worked at the Keeland Lab and spent my spare time building a database system to manage shop operations, not because it was assigned, but because the problem genuinely interested me. I taught myself everything about Microsoft Access, card readers, and barcode scanners.

That database is actually the reason I got my first job in strategy. A firm thought that an architecture student who builds databases in their spare time was exactly the right fit for this work. They were right. I did not know then that I was already doing the work I would eventually build a career around: finding structure in complexity and making systems that help people make better decisions.

As for a particular professor, no single person could claim it. It was the accumulation of different professors, conflicting perspectives, and divergent directives. The variety is where you find out who you are.

Tell us about a typical day in your job. Do you have a particular design or business philosophy?
No two days look the same. I am building a department from scratch inside an established architecture firm. On any given day, I might be facilitating a stakeholder workshop, building a scenario-planning framework, reviewing utilization data to challenge space need assumptions, or sitting with a project team to think through how strategy services could add value earlier in their process.

The common thread is that I'm almost always working at the edge of what's known, helping people make decisions when the information is incomplete but the outcomes matter.

My philosophy is simple enough: ask questions and sit with the silence long enough to hear a real answer. Most organizations already know more than they think they do. My job is to surface that knowledge, stress-test it, and translate it into something that can guide design decisions.

What is one career accomplishment of which you are particularly proud? How do you feel the College prepared you for this?
Launching Kirksey's Strategy and Foresight practice is the expected answer, and I am proud of it. But the accomplishment I value most is quieter: a consistent commitment to truly understanding client goals and advocating for solutions that best serve their long-term interests, even when those needs diverge from what the client initially imagined.

The pressure to move fast is real and legitimate; budgets, schedules, and momentum all matter. But in predesign work, the most important question is whether we are solving the right problem, and urgency can make it easy to move past that question before it has been fully examined.

I believe the greatest service I can offer my clients is to champion the needs of the end users, the people who will ultimately live and work in these spaces. Even when those needs differ from initial expectations, ensuring the design supports those who inhabit it leads to the most meaningful and lasting results. Holding that line requires staying in hard conversations without caving or becoming combative. It is a narrow channel to navigate.

Studio critique is a professional rehearsal for exactly this dynamic: defend your decisions in public to people with authority and opinions. You learn fast that bending to the room does not make the work better. You also learn that digging in defensively does not work either. I am still using that lesson every week.

What is one valuable lesson you learned during your time at the Hines College?
When I was six, my father was documenting our belongings for insurance, photographing everything, and making lists. I was worried about my stuffed animals. I lined them up, photographed them, and wrote out my own inventory on a yellow legal pad: my first database. I have always been this person.

Throughout school, my instincts often pulled me in a different direction than the rest of the room. At the time, that felt like a liability. In hindsight, it was the whole point. My instincts were worth examining, worth stress-testing, but they were not wrong just because the room saw it differently.

Architecture was the right degree for me, given the full range of what I am. My college experience was nontraditional. The career that followed was too. I would not change a thing.

What advice would you give to current architecture and design students?
The work I do is architecture, and it does not look like anything we did in studio. No renderings, no material selections, no construction documents; it is strategy, facilitation, and decisions determining how people experience space long before a single line gets drawn. It's one of many directions this education can take you.

The field has more surface area than school could ever make visible. Whether your path leads to a traditional practice or somewhere nobody has mapped yet, the skills you are developing – holding a position under pressure, finding structure amid ambiguity, thinking across scales – will carry you there.

Learn to tell the difference between feedback that sharpens your thinking and feedback that just moves you toward the middle. The middle is crowded. The edge is where the interesting work is.