Designing hope: Architecture alum responds to Maui wildfires

After wildfires devastated Maui in 2023, leaving thousands of families without homes, architecture alum Jordan Rogove ’98 led efforts to design prefabricated housing that offered survivors dignity and stability.

Following his graduation from Virginia Tech, Rogove began his career in an unconventional way — designing sets for concerts and television — before returning to architecture with firms in Paris and Chicago. After settling in New York City, he pursued his long-held belief in the power of architecture to improve lives, partnering with Wayne Norbeck ’98 to found DXA Studio and later Liv-Connected, a modular home development company. Also collaborating with Rogove and Norbeck as a partner with Liv-Connected is architecture Professor Joe Wheeler.

Rogove looked back on how Virginia Tech shaped his path — from the rigor and camaraderie of studio life in Cowgill Hall to transformative experiences at the Steger Center for International Scholarship and the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center — and shared the lessons, mentors, and moments that continue to guide his practice and his view of architecture as both creative discipline and public service.

How did Virginia Tech influence you?

My time at the Virginia Tech School of Architecture was transformative. I credit the first three years of studio with teaching me how to really see the world around me. The final two years abroad with the European Travel Program, the Steger Center in Riva San Vitale, and, finally, the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC), provided me with moments of discovery and revelation. I owe so much of my professional success to the curiosity, problem-solving ability, and rigor of practice to those years. Our studio (DXA Studio) was very intentionally designed to be like Cowgill Hall, open and alive, with frequent pinups and debate, and, of course, filled with study models!.

Who or what inspires you and why?

I am inspired by relentless optimists who work tirelessly at their craft, all in pursuit of making the world a better, more beautiful place. The list is all over the place — Abraham Lincoln, Michelangelo, Johannes Vermeer, and in the world of architecture, Corbusier, Kahn, and recent practitioners in Herzog & deMeuron and Peter Zumthor. I am filled with admiration for all their contributions to their respective worlds and use them as a measure of success. That remains ever elusive to me, but I won’t stop trying. I like to say that they stole my ideas before I had them.

What has your career path been like?

In the summers while I was at Virginia Tech, I was working for a production design company that designed and fabricated rock concert and TV sets. When I graduated, salaries for graduating architects were quite paltry, and the set company offered me double to return full time. I took it for a stretch and got to work on Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones shows and a bunch of the MTV “Unplugged” shows. It was a lot of fun, but it didn’t stir the blood like architecture. I returned to practice in Paris, Chicago, and, eventually, my current home, New York City. After eight years in a firm in NYC, I won a competition with friends of mine from Virginia Tech, got a lot of press, and we started DXA Studio.

What do you love about architecture?

To me, architecture is the culmination of all the arts and has an influence on all parts of our daily lives that often go unnoticed. A revelation early in my career that it can affect health and well-being has been particularly important. It has led to partnerships with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and most recently, FEMA, using thoughtful design to help provide dignified living and deliver better health outcomes to its occupants.

What is your fondest memory of your college years?

I remember struggling in the first-year foundation studio, not being able to keep up with a few of the more prolific students. My projects were passed over week after week by our professor, Jay Stoeckel, in our pinups, and I worried I wasn’t cut out for the program. I kept grinding, and iterating, and finally, several weeks into the semester, he came by my desk, picked up my model and said “Wonderful. Excellent work.” I almost started crying. To date, this might have been the greatest compliment ever paid to me.

Any advice to current students?

I had a professor at WAAC tell me before I graduated that the single most important thing I could do at whatever firm hired me would be to become indispensable. That I should make it a mission to identify what they were missing, become an expert in it, and elevate their practice. I followed this advice and kept my job through three recessions at firms that went from 120 architects down to 40. It quite literally kept me employed through the darkest days of the profession. 

What three things do you miss about campus or Blacksburg?

I miss the amazing sense of camaraderie in Cowgill. Because of the intensity of the program, a community is born each year between studio mates. Many of my classmates remain close friends. Fall in Blacksburg is unbelievable with the changing leaves and crisp autumn air. And, importantly, I miss the lively debates and celebrations in the Cellar (Restaurant).

What are your interests outside of work?

Travel remains my No. 1 interest away from work. As a father of three, there has been no greater joy than watching my kids take in Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Notre Dame in Paris, and most recently, an erupting Kilauea in Hawaii. Seeing the wonder in their eyes takes me back to my awakening on the travel program in fourth year, discovering Europe with the late, legendary Gene Egger. The personal growth and understanding that comes from such trips cannot be overstated.

Written by Madeline Fulk, a graduate student in architecture