Growth isn’t just about taking on more projects. Sometimes, it looks like adding new perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the people sitting around the table.
Over the past several months, Lucido & Associates has had the pleasure of welcoming three new members to our team: Project Manager Thomas Burns and Project Designers Michele Cavalieri and Chris Parris.
Each comes to Lucido from a different background and at a different point in their career, but all three bring something valuable to the way we think about the communities and places we help shape.
Experience Grounded in Community
Thomas Burns joins Lucido with four years of landscape architecture experience spanning parks and recreation master planning, regional park design, athletic facilities, and signage and wayfinding systems.
A graduate of West Virginia University with a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture, Thomas is also a LEED Green Associate. His particular interest in coastal landscapes and resiliency-focused design makes South Florida a fitting place to continue his work.
Thomas is passionate about creating places that serve both people and the environment—an approach that fits naturally with our own belief that good design should consider the many relationships between People, Landscape, Architecture, Community, and Environment.
A New Landscape to Explore
For Michele Cavalieri, joining Lucido also meant getting acquainted with an entirely new environment.
Michele earned her Master of Landscape Architecture from the Spitzer School of Architecture in New York City in May before relocating to Florida this summer. Since arriving, she has been exploring the region and learning something particularly important for a landscape designer working in a new part of the country: an entirely different plant palette.
Learning to identify Florida’s species and understand how they can thoughtfully contribute to the landscapes around us gives Michele an opportunity to begin her professional career with curiosity built right into the experience.
We’re excited to see how her education, fresh perspective, and growing familiarity with Florida inform her work at Lucido.
Bringing a Different Kind of Experience to Design
Chris Parris also joins us at the beginning of his landscape architecture career after recently earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida.
But his path to the profession looks a little different.
Before studying landscape architecture, Chris served in the United States Marine Corps as a Heavy Equipment Operator, giving him a unique background to bring into his work as a designer.
What drew Chris to landscape architecture is the combination of creativity and problem-solving—and particularly the process of seeing an idea move from an initial concept toward a place that can ultimately be experienced and enjoyed by a community.
Outside the office, he enjoys staying active, traveling, and exploring new places, so we have a feeling there will always be something new catching his designer’s eye.
Continuing to Grow
After more than four decades in practice, we know that a firm doesn’t stay relevant simply by continuing to do what it has always done.
It grows by bringing together established expertise with new experiences and fresh perspectives. By giving people opportunities to learn from one another. And by building a team capable of looking at the challenges facing our communities from more than one point of view.
We’re excited to see what Thomas, Michele, and Chris add to that conversation—and even more excited to have them as part of what comes next for Lucido & Associates.
Welcome to the team!
