Amy Upton Email & Phone Number

Beltsville, Maryland

Grimm + Parker Architects has been my professional home for the past 17 years where I have been able to help build sustainable and healthy community buildings where people learn, live, and work. I have worked on almost all of our high performance school projects, from the first LEED Gold School in Maryland in 2006 to our 77th LEED certified project this year. We are currently tracking 100+ LEED projects, 3 NZE projects, 5000+ green certified houses (tenant units) and over 14.5 Million SF of certified green construction. My role as Director of Environmental Design allows me to oversee the sustainable guiding principles on the projects firm-wide, and to help each team balance competing interests of program, schedule, budget, and site constraints with the drive for a high performance building that is environmentally-sensitive and a teaching tool for occupants and visitors, alike. My role as a Principal allows me the opportunity to work on projects from concept through construction administration, always learning lessons from tried and true design strategies, and piloting innovative materials and systems. I've worked on K-12 schools, Recreation Centers, Libraries, and Higher Ed buildings. I am currently working as Project Manager of two Net Zero Energy (also tracking LEED Platinum certification) Pre-K to Grade 8 public schools in Baltimore City, Maryland which just "opened" in September 2020! We also opened the new LEED-Gold Wheaton Library + Recreation Center in Wheaton, Maryland in 2019. This was a 7 year effort of design and construction to open a co-located facility of library, recreation, bookstore, and park in a community that really needed these amenities and activities.

Phoenix, Arizona Area

Summer intern at firm specializing in golf clubhouses while on summer break in graduate school. Measured existing conditions, drew design concepts for space planning, and detailed exterior pergolas and entry gates.

Burtonsville, Md

Architectural Intern at custom, high-end single-family residential firm. I learned the importance of producing high quality work in a short period of time. Shorieh was a terrific mentor - he even taught me how to mill wood for trim and how to weld. It was a small firm so I was given a lot of responsibility, designing, detailing, modeling, measuring, and learning how to manage multiple projects. It was a terrific detailing experience that I carry with me in my work on public buildings today.

Yardley, Pennsylvania

Summer and Winter break intern in Architectural Department of Toll Brothers using an early form of 3D BIM (Builder's CAD and Arris CAD) programs to incorporate selected design options into base single-family residential designs called "Lot Specifics".

Master Of Architecture, Master Of Architecture

Bachelor Of Science In Architecture