RAYNA DENIORD, Designer

There is a curiosity that lives inside Rayna; interested in where ideas come from and how to best catch them, she throws a wide net when casting. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in Landscape Architecture, she moved to the Bay Area in 2000 to pursue her Masters in Design at California College of the Arts. Detoured by motherhood and the opportunity to work with designer Martin Venezky of Appetite Engineers, she learned to trust in the practice of intuition and how to balloon imagination through questioning. Fueled by this inquiry and how it might be realized spatially, she returned to the field of Landscape Architecture. Since 2004, she has been working with CMG, designing, managing and overseeing construction on projects including the SF MoMA Sculpture Garden, Pacific Overlook in San Pedro, and most recently, Facebook’s new campus in Menlo Park. Whatever the scale or scope of a project, she explores the fuzzy edge between thinking and doing by inviting play, cultivating curiosity and aiming at nothing, allowing whatever sort of meaning may (or may not) emerge. She sees her working process as an experiment in accrual, creating kaleidoscopic approaches to how imagination can reveal itself, shape program into form, and percolate aesthetic.

SELECTED PROJECTS
Facebook Campus
SF MoMA Rooftop Sculpture Garden
Pacific Overlook
CSU Fullerton Student Housing

EDUCATION
Cornell University
2000  Bachelor of Science Landscape Architecture

Brown University
1996  Began Bachelor of Arts

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS
2000  National ASLA Award for Excellence
1999  James R. Rose Garden Design Award
1999-2000  Masud Mehran Award
1999-2000  Charles and Carol Winter Mund Scholarship
1999-2000  Marvin L. Linder Scholarship
1998-1999  Marvin L. Linder Scholarship