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First Person: Designing dreams

CNJ staff photo: Liliana Castillo Clovis native Paul Reed says he wants to move Clovis’ architecture forward.

Paul Reed, 44, was born and raised in Clovis. For seven years, he has been a licensed architect in Clovis, but his life revolves around his two sons. Reed does 40 to 50 projects a year, from one-room additions to completing schools.

Keeping busy: One of my sons is 16 years old and the other is 13, and between the three of us, we are always doing something. My oldest plays a lot of sports. I told them just put the schedule on the wall and I’ll use it to find out where I’m supposed to be that day.

Marshmallow war: We had a marshmallow gun war in the house a couple of days ago. We just let it be what it was and when it came time to clean it up, we did. I’m still finding marshmallows everywhere. It’s for the fun of watching them enjoy life. I am their life and they are mine.

Starting early: I’ve wanted to be an architect since I was in sixth grade. I started my path through junior high and high school with that in mind. My uncle is a builder and we visited him one summer as we usually did; just seeing his office and drawings then going out and seeing the buildings. I remember thinking “Someone decided what goes into it. I want to do that.”

Drive-bys: I enjoy driving by a building and looking at it physically and knowing it was an idea in my head. It went from an idea to brick and mortar.

I’m not into monuments, but I always think “That’s going to outlive me.”

Rules aren’t meant to be broken: The frustrations of my job are all the regulations you have to go through. We deal with ADA, building fire codes, more and more energy codes as the world is going green. It’s another book we have to be referencing back and forth.

Dream vs. reality: People don’t realize how much money it takes. They have a dream and that’s how they want it. I try to marry their dream and reality together.

Future plans: I want to move Clovis architecture further down the road. When I have the opportunity, I put a curve in a design. People believe buildings are square. The perfect project would be a person giving me complete design control with no budget.

On his profession: Architecture is art. It is purely interpreted by the individual whether they like it or not.

— Compiled by CNJ staff writer Liliana Castillo