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ROCKFORD, OR — Muffalo Designs announced that the firm has expanded their presence to Rockford and have hired two new team members. 

On Monday, they setup office in one of the city's finest skyrises. When asked why an existing building was chosen over designing a new office from scratch, Muffalo responded "Why build something for ourselves when we could build something for the community?"

As a way of providing support to the growing firm, and securing a high client satisfaction, the firm has added two new team members:

Silva Afonso, AIA. Afonso comes to the team from Portugal. His future was seemingly influenced by his parents, having been 'forced' to attend a culinary school in hopes that he would one day assume control over his father's well-known restaurant in Porto. However, it is never too late to take charge of your own life; Afonso began to take an interest in shapes and colours of various buildings. Soon after he realised where his heart was, he travelled to New York to study local architecture and to find his way into university. 

Muffalo has high hopes for Afonso: "He may be young, but when I look at him I see passion in his eyes and that is a drive that leads you to places you could never imagine."

Mark Webber, AIA. From a humble Dutch family, Webber originally dabbled in the cartoon illustration industry. The Antwerp-born illustrator decided to try his luck on the other side of the Atlantic, joining The Hustle Initiative as an intern. When the company went under, Webber followed Muffalo onto his new project, bringing his top-class drawing skills with him.

When asked what he looks for in employees, Muffalo encapsulated his desired in one word: "Passion".

"I don't want them to work for me because they get paid, I want them to love what they do. I want them to enjoy working here, not forcing them of course, I just want them to be happy. Because that means more than anything else when it comes to creative work."

Having trained at the University of Austin, Muffalo has spent the past 20 years working on projects across the US and the UK, at firms such as The Hustle Initiative and now Muffalo Designs. 

He said about his interest in architecture: "Ever since I was a young boy, all around me I saw potential. I saw potential for what things could be. The wall in my childhood room could be a canvas. The wooden blocks could be a house.

"You see, when I was a young lad, I loved to play with LEGO sets. My parents always brought me some. It was just a matter of time and, as I turned into my teen-ages, the LEGO sets turned into artwork and floor plans and visualisations."

However, whilst Muffalo was studying at the School of Architecture, tragedy struck. His mother passed away after a long-fought battle against breast cancer. Fortunately, he "managed to gain courage and power through the problems."

After graduating in 1995, he was offered a position at a notorious Austin-based architecture firm, The Hustle Initiative. 

"I actually built that company with my schoolmate from the ground up but unfortunately, as it usually is in business, our rivals ran it into the ground."

Now, Muffalo has put every drop of sweat into making Muffalo Designs a top-tier architectural firm. He has even gone as far as formulating what he calls the "The Master's Vision".

"What beautiful about this phenomenon is that it is not something unique to us. All humans have it. When you are driving down the road in between cornfields and you think 'Hmm. A farm house could fit right in', or when you are driving in the desert and think to yourself  'What if there was a luxurious hotel here?'

"These things come to you with an innate sense of creative rush. It is hard to explain, but to sum it up: it just comes to us on the spot. Unless of course, the client asks us otherwise."

Founded in 1997, Muffalo Designs is an architectural firm headquartered in Austin, TX that specialises in architecture, planning and design within private residential and commercial markets. Founder and Head Architect Mark Muffalo, AIA, has over 20 years of architectural experience and leads the small-sized firm whose capabilities include new construction, renovation, and master planning services.

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