Over the years, Román Viñoly has worked at Rafael Viñoly Architects in a variety of capacities, including gopher, researcher, writer, visualization artist, photographer, filmmaker, communications director, strategic planner, financial manager, and project director. He founded the firm’s first in-house visualization studio and served as an integral part of the THINK team of architects, urbanists, engineers, technologists, and artists that was a finalist in the World Trade Center Design Competition after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York. He co-authored THINK New York: A Ground Zero Diary (Images Publishing Group, 2006) as well as the firm’s first monograph, VIÑOLY (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).
Away from the practice, Mr. Viñoly has worked as a professional filmmaker and cinematographer and in 2003 founded Firebrand: a TV, web, and mobile programming company backed by Microsoft, GE Capital, NBC Universal, and Allen & Company. Broadcast nightly to 97 million households in the United States, Firebrand was an entertainment and marketing hybrid that programmed TV commercials the way MTV originally programmed music videos to a growing audience that generated unprecedented response rates on its e-commerce platform.
Román is also the creator of Casapanal, a prefabricated prototype construction system that makes it possible to build a large variety of building types from a simple kit of parts that can be assembled by unskilled labor without heavy machinery. Essentially a large-scale “erector set” that is aimed at low-income and marginalized communities, it can be deployed as emergency shelters, dwellings, clinics, schools, office buildings, etc. These high-performance buildings resist earthquakes and hurricane force winds. Because they are easily reconfigured, they are adaptable to the changing needs of all user groups.
In 2014, Román and Rafael Viñoly founded Integrated Developments, a vertically integrated real estate development company. Its first project, Edificio Plaza Alemania, a 13,390-square-meter class A office building in Montevideo, Uruguay, that it owns and manages, was delivered on schedule and below budget in August 2019 and reached 72% occupancy within 3 months. Its latest project, MÉDANO, a 54,000-square-meter oceanfront luxury residential building on the outskirts of Montevideo that features mass timber construction, extensive green roofing, and a 5,500-square-meter utility scale photovoltaic plant on its 400-meter-long roof will be the most sustainable building in all Latin America when completed in 2027.
Besides involving himself with his partners in all aspects of the firm’s activities, Román takes primary responsibility for Growth and regularly speaks about the firm and its projects in the media and at industry and related events worldwide.
IE Business School, Masters in Business Administration, 2011
NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Masters in Fine Arts in Film, 1998
Haverford College, Bachelor of Arts in History, 1993