With 40+ years of experience in the industry, Rick Moore is admired by many as a professional full of wisdom. Understanding the value of working on behalf of our clients, Rick plays a crucial role on our team as a relationship manager. True to the title, he is responsible for building relationships with clients to establish their needs and foster long-term connections. Specializing in Senior Environments within Health Care and Senior Living, Rick is pushing the boundaries of how our industry approaches integrating care in living environments by positively impacting residents' lives.
A graduate from the University of Minnesota in 1976, Rick began his career at the healthcare-focused firm, Horty Elving. He continued his lengthy career with Horty Elving until 2014 when the firm merged with Wold Architects and Engineers. As an architect, Rick is in a unique position to design someone's future home. Throughout his career, Rick helps his clients' shift from an institutionalized approach to a caring, home-like environment. He does this by asking questions like, "What is important to residents and what will make this feel like home?" Rick gets to the heart of a client's design needs which leads to better quality of care.
Being well-versed in design, Rick thinks of creativity as having the ability to look at a client's breadth of criteria, and from there, being able to solve all of their problems elegantly and cohesively. To do this, he believes you need to understand the relationships of the various criteria and consistently think about how these relationships can define the building. He finds inspiration specifically for his Health Care Senior Living clients when he relishes what home means to him and understands what home means to the residents who will occupy the building.
Rick brought his design approach to Wold and the environments we create. As a creative individual, Rick’s favorite part of working at Wold is conceptualizing design solutions. Freehand sketching is one of the many ways he enjoys brainstorming his ideas. It’s no wonder that Rick says if he weren’t an architect, he’d probably still be designing in some facet.
While Rick devotes ample time to his career, he also has a lengthy list of hobbies that fill up his spare time. These include, but are not limited to, spending time at the cabin, fishing, collecting cars and model railroading. A focus on design runs through everything he is involved in. An example is the free time he spends designing and renovating items, including a mid-century house, a lake cabin, furniture and even a hydroplane boat (below)! Regarding his bucket list, Rick says he hopes to see all of the lodges in each National Park. On top of this travel goal, he also wants to revisit Rome, Italy, where he and his wife hope to take in all of the beautiful sights filled with architecture and art.
When asked what advice he has for new professionals in the industry, Rick says it's essential to see how your work affects the people utilizing the spaces you design. “Starting with a concept and seeing it through gets me excited to go to work every day. Especially when we hear how much of an impact these facilities make in people’s lives.” By listening to clients and understanding how Wold can help them, he is continually inspired to do what he loves.
After 40+ years of conceptualizing unique solutions, Rick is stepping back from his role on our team. Rick will continue to collaborate with our senior living team to provide insight on projects while allocating more time to spend with his family and pursue his hobbies.
I’ve enjoyed working with and getting to know Rick over the last 13 years. Throughout the project, from the planning stage to occupancy, I felt very lucky to have him and the other Wold staff working on the St. John’s project. The St. John’s Board definitely made the right decision to hire Rick and the team for our project.
-Scot Spates, CEO, St. John’s of Albert Lea
On behalf of the entire Wold team, we will miss seeing Rick every day and acknowledge the immense impact he has had on our organization and the industry at large.
If you enjoyed hearing Rick’s story, be sure to find out more about his work here. In the meantime, stay tuned for additional Focal Point’s coming soon!