Darren Hoppa, AIA, NCARB, LEED BD+C, WELL, recently joined Heitman Architects as a Senior Project Architect. He has more than 20 years of experience in architectural design and sustainability consulting across all phases of commercial design projects. He joins the firm from GHAFARI Associates in Chicago, where he served as a senior project architect for the last three years.
Heitman Architects designs corporate facilities for clients in the global food, advanced manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries. Among Heitman Architects’ recent Chicago area projects is the Method Soap manufacturing facility in the Pullman neighborhood, which was LEED Platinum certified.
Hoppa is a registered architect, and holds memberships with AIA, NCARB, USGBC, and International WELL Building Institute. He has significant experience in sustainable design, and is interested in how sustainable, environmental objectives are realized in highly cost competitive commercial real estate markets.
Hoppa has worked on residential and hospitality projects such as 1407 ON Michigan in Chicago, the Gratiot Exchange Apartments in Detroit, and on mixed use buildings including the Gateway Medical Office Building in Chicago. Some of his civic building experience includes Rosholt Public Library in Rosholt, WI. He also earned the GE Edison Award for Environmental Design and an Architizer A+ Awards Special Mention for Loyola University’s School of Environmental Sustainability.
Hoppa has also worked on numerous award winning projects, including two COTE Top 10 National Award projects– The Willingboro (NJ) Masterplan and Public Library and Rinker Hall, University of Florida’s School of Building Construction in Gainesville. The latter also won an AIA Design Award.
He has served as chair of AIA Chicago’s Committee On The Environment (COTE). He received a Master of Architecture degree from the School of Architecture + Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Carroll College (University) in Waukesha, WI. He also studied at Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris, completing foreign studies in Rome, Florence and Venice.
