Rene Duplantier
Project Designer
Rene Duplantier came on board as a Project Designer with MetroStudio in 2019. While attending The Design School at Arizona State University, he decided Architecture was his chosen career after doing well throughout a few extremely intense studios. Concurrently, he attended the Honors College at ASU, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Design and eventually got his Master of Architecture from Tulane University of New Orleans.
He started at MetroStudio as an intern during the summer of 2018 and was later hired on again part-time in the Summer of 2019. Ultimately Rene became a full-time employee. Since then Rene has been hard at work on various projects including: the redevelopment of the award winning Hotel St. Vincent on Magazine St.; State Street (Madison, WI) Hotel; a block-wide multi-use redevelopment on St. Charles Ave.; and multiple scattered sites for community housing in New Orleans at Lafitte among others.
He believes the most important part of any architecture project is building a strong relationship with the client to understand their needs and wants. In these two projects specifically, he played a key role in that process. Ultimately, with music and Architecture as his passions, Rene would like to be more involved in both in the future. As for Architecture, he hopes to work on more hospitality projects and public/institutional projects such as libraries and theaters. His goal is to be licensed in 5-10 years with more of an emphasis on fabrication within the practice of Architecture.
Rene believes there are few things more satisfying than coming up with a design, putting hammer to nail and seeing a piece of furniture or a building come to life. “I value the instinctual nature of architecture. I believe that architecture is simply building with intention. Anyone can build something with intent, whether it be a chair, a cabinet, a house, etc.”