Masters of the Southwest: A Father-Son Duo is Redefining Sustainable Desert Living

On a sunny winter day, residents of Optima Kierland are pursuing their morning rituals—walking the dog, working out in the fitness room, running on a track around the rooftop pool, powering up a Zoom call in the lounge, heading to the underground garage for the commute to work. But the 1,000-unit condo and rental complex, spread across five towers, is not your typical brown-box-and-a-balcony multifamily project so prevalent around the Valley. Instead, it is a sustainable, architectural tour-de-force, balancing concrete and glass, shade and sunlight, voids and cubic forms, all cooled with lush plantings that defy boundaries between outside and in.

The project is one of the latest achievements by father-and-son architects David Hovey Sr. and David Hovey Jr., who, along with other family members, run Optima, headquartered in Scottsdale and Chicago. Known for their edgy, architecturally striking designs of multifamily complexes and innovative construction techniques and materials, the Hoveys—and their company—have found the secret sauce to success. Optima is a soup-to-nuts company that develops, designs, builds and manages projects, overseeing everything from site selection to specifying kitchen sink faucets.

“I’ve been a fan of the Hoveys’ architecture for a long time,” says architect Anthony Floyd, who heads Scottsdale’s green building program and has worked with the Hoveys on sustainability strategies for several of their projects. “They’ve changed how we view multifamily housing here. What they create is unlike what we’ve seen in Arizona—or even the world.”

The history of this modernist dynasty began with Hovey Sr. Born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and a U.S. Marine father, he moved with his family to Chicago when he was 15 years old. “Chicago is the foremost city in the world for modern architecture,” Hovey Sr. says. “Being there sparked my interest in architecture.”

Hovey Sr. enrolled in the Illinois Institute of Technology, where Mies van der Rohe had served as dean and shaped the school’s modernist bent. “Mies was no longer at IIT when I studied there,” he remembers, “but some of us went to his house one night and didn’t leave until 4 a.m. He lived in an old brick apartment—not one of his designs—because he didn’t want to be constantly accosted by clients.”

During college, Hovey Sr. worked as an assistant to the curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, igniting his love of modern art and inspiring his later work in metal sculpture. His first job out of school was with a small firm, but, wanting to experience a larger office, Hovey Sr. signed on with noted Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, working there for four years during the 1970s.

“My son and I are contemporary architects. We are interested in the design, materials and technologies of the 21st century. We’re not interested in allusions to the past.”

David Hovey Sr., FAIA, architect

But there was always an itch to do his own thing. “My IIT professor, Arthur Takeuchi, always said that an architect was the low man on the totem pole when it came to projects,” Hovey Sr. recalls. “He said the best outcome was to be not only the designer but also the developer and client.”

Heeding those words, Hovey Sr. launched Optima in suburban Chicago in 1978, along with his wife, Eileen Sheehan Hovey, who handled the real estate component of their projects. Before long, they were specializing in design-driven multifamily complexes around the city and, later, joined by their children, Tara Hovey, who handles financial strategies for the company, and David Jr., who earned his master’s in architecture at his father’s alma mater and now serves as CEO.

Frequent winter visitors to Scottsdale, the family opened a second Optima office in the desert in the early 2000s, sensing a market that was open to innovative modernist housing. By then, Hovey Jr. was helping push forward Optima’s shape-shifting experimentations with design, materials and construction methods. “When I was working as a construction superintendent on our job sites,” says Hovey Jr., “I observed inefficiencies between architecture and construction that could be improved by prefabrication.”

Though they became known for apartments and condos, the father and son have long experimented with techniques and approaches by building single-family spec homes, completing several over the years in North Scottsdale. “We had to find a new language for architecture here in Arizona,” Hovey Sr. says. “Studying Frank Lloyd Wright’s shelters, we learned to design optimum structures in the desert, ones that celebrated the indoor-outdoor relationship and incorporated sustainable features, such as solar power and passive cooling. We took what we learned from these spec homes and translated that into our multifamily work.”

After completing their first Arizona project, the Biltmore Optima, the Hoveys wanted to include landscaped roofs and terraces for the next site, Optima Camelview. Hovey Jr. worked with ASU to study desert plants in terrace- and rooflike beds at a site in Glendale. “We looked at about 150 kinds of plants and trees,” Hovey Jr. notes. “We learned which survived in extreme sun or shaded spots and which didn’t.”

Optima Camelview, a condominium project, won accolades and awards for its—literal—green design of lushly landscaped terraces, as well as other sustainable strategies, such as shaded glass walls, underground parking and public open space. Optima Sonoran Village, rental apartments in downtown Scottsdale, followed, expanding on the design theme, as did the recently completed Optima Kierland. Under construction now is Optima McDowell Mountain, which will be a six-tower development of rental apartments and condos, mixing in street-level retail and even more amenities and green elements, such as rainwater harvesting, than the previous projects.

As the Hoveys moved forward with projects, they developed relationships with core groups of craftspeople, such as Jerry Barnier, founder of Suntec Concrete. “We started working together about 15 years ago,” says Barnier, “and we found that the Hoveys are very receptive to pushing the design forward efficiently. They understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to construction. They push everyone to do their best work.”

Despite recent pushback about high-density development in some parts of the Valley, the Hoveys are secure in their place in the desert’s urban landscape. “Having density and height on a site allows us to create open space that’s accessible to the public—and not just our building residents,” Hovey Sr. points out. “It also gives us room to have setbacks that are landscaped. Our McDowell Mountain project is planned around a central park open to everyone.”

Always looking for future possibilities, the father and son prefer to concentrate on one or two projects at a time. “Each development we do is a progression, a journey of how we envision people living in the 21st century.”