Jonathan Dodd is an architect, a small-business owner and a real estate property developer who graduated first in his class from the University of Kansas School of Architecture in 1998.
What he’s most proud of, though, is the risk he took six years ago at age 30 to join Buxton-Kubick Interior Inc., ultimately forming what is now Buxton Kubik Dodd Creative.
“It was not an easy decision to take such a risk at that age with a family to support, but I did it knowing that I had the skills to be successful as an architect,” he says. “It drove me to work harder than I ever thought possible.”
As an architect, Dodd says his role is to be the visionary leader of project teams that include owners, engineers and builders, and to represent clients in the building process.
“I have a great responsibility for not only providing the client with a beautiful, cost-effective building that meets all of their needs, but I also have a responsibility to protect the lives, safety and welfare of the people who use and inhabit (the buildings),” he says. “In the past several years, I have helped many local business leaders and their companies reach their visions of what their companies can achieve by way of providing facilities that expand, restructure or reinvent how they operate.”
His designs include crime labs in Springfield and Carthage, offices for Deep advertising agency and The Vision Clinic’s renovation. Buxton Kubik Dodd Creative is now designing the Springfield Regional Police & Fire Training Center.
Dodd says church projects are particularly rewarding, because the facilities he designs enable churches to grow their congregations and improve ministry outreach in the community.
“I spent a lot of time growing up working on church construction sites with my father, who has been providing church furniture to churches for more than 35 years,” says Dodd, who was the architect for James River Assembly of God’s 100,000-square-foot Wilson’s Creek campus.
Dodd also is owner of Elements Inc., an Internet and furniture sales company, a member of the Highland Springs Design Review Board and a real estate developer for Aven Springs Estates in Ozark. No matter which job he’s fulfilling, Dodd is focused on making the Ozarks a better place for generations to come.
“I have been allowed the unique opportunity to influence the built environment in my community and feel strongly that it is my responsibility to my clients, friends, family and neighbors that my contribution as an architect is made with care and the understanding that the buildings I create will be here long after I am gone,” he says. “I will probably never know exactly how far the buildings we help design go toward helping others, but I would like to think that they are instrumental in adding to their success, whether in business or in life.”
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