Family doesn’t always influence career paths, but for architect Jessica Hutchison-Rough, AIA, and interior designer Caroline Swaback, Allied Member ASID, there are direct lines from their well-known architect fathers to their current success stories. “I grew up going to Taliesin West for Easter and other special occasions,” recalls Swaback of the fabled Scottsdale architectural compound where her father, architect Vern Swaback, studied with Frank Lloyd Wright and worked for decades before launching his own practice in the late 1970s. “Taliesin was a never-ending labyrinth of design that was fascinating.”
Hutchison-Rough was born in 1979, the same year her father, Lee Hutchison launched Urban Design Associates, where he became known for his detailed organic pueblo-style homes. “My mother was in education, but joined UDA not long after that as the office manager,” says Hutchison-Rough, “and my sister and I made ourselves at home in the office. We did filing, running blueprints and sweeping. I knew I wanted to be an architect since I was little.” For Caroline Swaback, the seed for a design career was further nurtured at home. “We had a cabin in Payson with a loft where my father had his drafting table and my sister and I had a playroom. Dad would draw pretend houses, and I would draw my dream house,” she says. “In the 1990s, my father designed our family house in North Scottsdale, and I remember going to the groundbreaking, then watching it being built. He designed the furniture and did the art for the house, too.” By the time she was a teen, Swaback was certain of a career path, drawn more to interiors than architecture, intrigued by the psychology of how space affects the inhabitants. As a teen, she interned at Studio V, the Scottsdale interiors firm founded—then spun off—by Vern Swaback and his partners. Supported and encouraged by her father, Swaback received her interior design degree from NAU. Hutchison-Rough also remembers going to job sites as a youngster, seeing projects from beginning to end. Starting with her high school years, Lee Hutchison helped her get internships with interior designers Billi Springer and Bess Jones, and Scottsdale’s planning department. “I even did site cleanup work for Manship Builders,” recalls Hutchison-Rough of her well-rounded introduction to design and build. “By the time I was in high school, I was drafting and rendering by hand.” She got her undergrad in architecture at ASU, where she did a brief internship with Jones Studio, then, with her husband, went to British Columbia, where she received her master’s in architecture at the University of British Columbia and became licensed in Canada. For Swaback, joining Studio V upon graduation from college seemed natural. “They have a broad range in their portfolio, and I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else,” she says. “The people here are my best friends.” Now a project manager and designer at Studio V, Swaback never worked directly with her father on a project, but her first job with the firm was the redo of a 1999 Vern Swaback-designed house for new owners. Hutchison-Rough had a more circuitous route back to Arizona. She was in Canada from 2000 to 2010, working on commercial projects in Vancouver. Tiring of corporate work and wanting to start a family, she moved back to Arizona and joined the family at UDA, where she began as a project architect. “The market was in a downturn then, and hiring me was a bargain,” she says with a laugh. Eventually, Hutchison-Rough began helping with marketing, creating a website, expanding the staff and updating UDA’s technology. By 2014, her parents instituted a transfer of ownership to Hutchison-Rough, and they fully retired in 2018. Will there be a third generation, this time inspired by the mothers’ career paths? Hutchison-Rough’s two children have desks at UDA, an echo of her own childhood surrounded by drafting tables and blueprint machines. It’s a little too soon for Swaback to tell. Her first baby was born earlier this year. For now, the two pay fond tributes to their fathers. “I learned so much from my father,” explains Hutchison-Rough, “lessons that I still use today.” Says Swaback, “I am proud to be Vern Swaback’s daughter. He’s always been happy to have me in the industry.”
Father’s Way
