Meet Kai

Kai studied art, math, and German at Georgetown University, and worked for the IT departments of the school’s Division of Facilities and Main Campus Libraries for 5 years after graduation before pursuing his architecture degree at the University of Kansas.  Kai’s experience at KU culminated in his graduating class’s first foray into prefabricated construction, as a variant to the program’s established capstone design / build program, known as Studio 804, where a team of students act as both design professionals and self-performing general tradespeople and complete an affordable single family residential project for sale and occupation within one academic year.

Kai moved to Columbus after graduating from KU in 2004 and has since practiced architecture in a variety of roles as part of the design and construction of diverse building types.  Kai’s experience includes preparing conceptual site and façade designs for multi-tenant speculative retail shell buildings; preparing construction documents and providing construction administration for custom single family residential and historic church renovations; and leading teams managing renovation projects for K-12, higher education, and workplace clients, where construction budgets ranged from $25k to $20m and project delivery methods ranged from design / build, CMR,  design / bid / build, to publicly advertised bids.

Kai serves as MKC’s Technical Director, where he applies his expertise to assist project teams with specialty detailing, code compliance, specifications writing, and reviewing documents for constructability, coherence, and quality.  Kai supervises the work of the firm’s project managers and manages projects independently.  He is driven by the desire to provide coherent documents for the builders who construct our designs, and a safe and enjoyable environment for the inhabitants of the completed work.

Kai has served as chair of the Committee on the Environment for the Columbus AIA Chapter and led a series of bike tours for design professionals, known as designRolls, for the local chapter.  Kai lives with his family in the Victorian Village neighborhood of Columbus, and finds comfort in difficult times by playing turn based strategy games, talking to himself in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, listening to the music of the San Francisco counterculture, and perusing the real estate listings in foreign countries.