Daina Furuya

Principal Architect

Shortly after moving from Japan in my teen age years, I was brought to the Unity Temple(Frank Lloyd Wright) in Oak Park for a field trip. The serene and beautiful space inspired me, and that was when I committed to becoming an architect. It was very inspiring to imagine the challenges of forming great spaces.

I pursued my architectural degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago(UIC), and finished my final year of the program at École National Supérieure d’Architecture a Versailles, France.

After graduation, I have been blessed with opportunities to work with the top-of-the-industry firms to gain experience in my apprentice years. I’ve learned of various stone species, fabrication process and design documentation(drafting) at International Marble and Granite. After that, my experience at Erik Johnson and Associates have taught me historic style residential aesthetic and design coordination of extremely complex high-end projects. Then, it was exciting to have exposure to commercial projects at Chicago Building Design. I was involved in helping more than 50 businesses open doors of their food and entertainment establishments in the City of Chicago. This experience was crucial as I have become very knowledgeable of the whole process of obtaining construction permits in one of the most difficult municipalities to do so.

In 2011, I finished the rigorous and arduous process of my licensing examinations and officially became a real architect- a dream come true! My second dream came true when the doors of my private practic, Tects LLC opened in 2014.

I feel truely fortunate to be able to make my contribution to our community through serving my clients in their Architectural projects.