IN/EX Architecture’s design work shows passion for making positive impact

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When Vanessa Villeneuve was just starting her career in architecture as an intern with a firm in downtown Rochester, she took Interstate 490 to the Clinton Avenue offramp every day.

And every workday she would see the blighted buildings on the northwest corner of Clinton and East Main Street, the abomination as Mayor Malik Evans has so bluntly called it.

“I used to get off of 490, go under the ‘Welcome to Rochester’ sign and then I’d hit the corner of Main and Clinton and be stuck at the light,” Villeneuve said. “I would see that building and it was so depressing.

“I would think, ‘If only I could do something.’ ”

Now, some 18 years later, Villeneuve, business partner Jason Simmons and the team at IN/EX Architecture has been hired by Home Leasing to transform those five dilapidated structures into The Mayflower, a combination of commercial and workforce housing.

For the architects at IN/EX, the project is squarely in their wheelhouse. The firm, founded by Villeneuve in 2018, has a strong focus on affordable housing developments but also creates custom homes, designs office buildings and provides municipal master planning.

And they do it within an environment that promotes a work/life balance while meeting timeline requirements of the clients.

That emphasis on work and life was what prompted Villeneuve to leave the corporate architecture structure to launch her own company. A year later she brought on Simmons, her mentor as an intern, as her partner.

“I get to work with one of my favorite people in the whole world every single day,” said Villeneuve, principal-in-charge of IN/EX, a certified Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (MWBE).

They recently added Karsten Solberg, Heather Landis and Robert Kocher to the team.

“Starting my own firm allowed me to do things my own way and to have control over my own schedule, especially the flexibility that’s needed after becoming a parent,” Villeneuve said. “That’s very difficult to manage in a traditional corporate architecture setting.

“But when you’re a self-accountable professional you don’t need your time micro-managed by other people. You know what needs to be done to do your job effectively and to keep the clients happy. Work is one facet of life, just one, but in traditional corporate settings that’s often forgotten.”

While there are a number of top-end architectural firms in Greater Rochester, IN/EX Architecture had no difficulty landing projects. The firm wasn’t even one month old and former clients were reaching out, including ODS Management, Inc., an affordable housing provider based in the Buffalo suburb of Williamsville.

ODS Management awarded In/Ex the contract for Wellington Woods and Wellington North in Brockport.

“It involved renovation of 109 apartments and construction of a new 50-unit building, so there’s a lot of trust from someone offering that up right off the bat,” Villeneuve said.

Affordable housing remains a staple of the firm, be it new design or adaptive reuse. IN/EX was the architect for Home Leasing on Holley Gardens in the Village of Holley, which earned an Excellence in Historic Building Rehabilitation award for turning a former high school into a residential building.

The firm has designed Alta Vista at St. Joseph’s Park, a six-story mid-rise affordable housing tower at Franklin and Pleasant streets for the Ibero-American Development Corp.

“To have the design of a six-story building in downtown Rochester is pretty cool,” said Simmons, a former partner at Glasow Simmons Architecture.

The firm also is doing design of a new affording housing community on Federal Street for the Rochester Housing Authority and Beechwood Family Apartments for Home Leasing. Together Simmons and Villeneuve have partnered on more than 60 affordable housing projects across Upstate New York with their former firm and with IN/EX.

“We’ve worked hand-in-hand for a very long time so we can count on each other to do parts and pieces of one another’s work, just as though we had done it ourselves,” Villeneuve said.

In/Ex is a preferred provided for NYSERDA as an integrated physical needs assessment provider. Through the assessments, IN/EX can help affordable housing developers tap into state’s preservation programs.

They’re not just a one-trick firm, however. IN/EX Architecture has the master planning contract with the town of Brighton, designed the new headquarters for DiPasquale Construction in Canal Ponds in Greece and is working on renovation at the Greek Orthodox Church on East Avenue in Rochester.

“More recently we’ve also been reaching out to different opportunities and responding to RFPs to diversify the portfolio,” Villeneuve said. “There’s many other things we can do, especially with the experience and specialties of our other three employees.”

But projects such as the restoration of Main and Clinton are truly special, and a specialty. Not that it’s going to be an easy remake. Hardly.

“The buildings are in quite a state of disrepair,” Villeneuve said. “There’s cattails growing on the roof and holes in the floor.

“But I feel that building is the most important marker for downtown revitalization because it’s right there as you exit the highway and it’s been a sign of blight for so long. It has bothered so many people.”

Twenty years ago, the buildings were scheduled to be razed as part of the creation of Renaissance Square. The project fizzled.

“It’s a historic element of the city that has been neglected for years but it would have been a shame to have torn those buildings down,” Simmons said. “As we got into the design and saw the history, just the importance of Main Street, to not be able to preserve something of that era would have been a loss.”

Preserving the past and creating a space to cherish are always front and center for Villeneuve and Simmons.

“Even our name, IN/EX, came with intense thought,” she said. “It is a shortened statement of interior/exterior. We think about things as a whole. We don’t just provide you a flashy box with some divided up rooms. We think thoughtfully and intently about the end user, specific needs, what furniture will likely go in the space and where, all to make sure the layout is the best that it can possibly be.”

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