DFDG Architecture

DFDG Architecture is a Phoenix design firm founded in 1970 that works across architecture and interior design, with a practice concentrated in healthcare, higher education, civic and commercial buildings in Arizona and the Southwest. The firm has spent five decades on institutional work in the Phoenix metro, and it partners regularly with national design firms on projects that need local code, climate and delivery knowledge. DFDG is a design partner on Arizona State University’s ASU Health Headquarters in the Phoenix Bioscience Core, a roughly 200,000-square-foot, $200 million building working alongside CO Architects and general contractor McCarthy Building Companies. That facility houses the John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering and must open before the fall 2028 semester.

Trauma-informed design is the specialisation that most distinguishes DFDG from other Arizona firms of comparable size. The practice shapes spaces to support safety, dignity and wellbeing for people who have experienced trauma, and DFDG applies it through a framework it calls SPACe: Safety, Privacy, Accessibility, Control and Efficiency. It surfaces most directly in the justice, public safety and healthcare work.

The building types run wider than the marquee projects suggest. Alongside healthcare and higher education, DFDG designs courts and justice facilities, public safety buildings, libraries, commercial spaces and parking structures. Interior design is delivered in-house rather than subcontracted, with a dedicated team developing palettes, materials and finishes in parallel with the architecture instead of inheriting a finished shell.

Two offices carry the work: the Phoenix studio at 4545 East McKinley Street, and a Tucson office at 5151 E. Broadway Blvd. Projects run throughout the state.

The client list is heavily municipal and institutional. It includes the cities of Tempe, Glendale, Mesa, Peoria, Goodyear and Queen Creek, Maricopa County community colleges spanning Phoenix College, Paradise Valley, Estrella Mountain and Chandler-Gilbert, plus Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University and the Phoenix Suns.

That mix reflects how the firm measures itself. DFDG states that 90 percent of its revenue comes from repeat business, and it frames integrity across four dimensions: design, service, relationships and the environment. On the design side the stated position is deliberately unromantic. Projects have to function in the real world, with no appetite for risky or fanciful moves in buildings where people live, work and play. Sustainability is pursued opportunistically rather than badged, with the firm looking for chances to build environmental value into each structure and space.

The mission the practice sets itself is to improve how people experience architecture and interiors by combining compassion with technical knowledge and design integrity, and its work approach is described in terms of adapting to each client’s specific needs rather than applying a house style.

Leadership sits with principals Darrin Orndorff, Chad Billings, Jim Lloyd and Mike Gibson, with Becky Tomasek leading interior design and Jana Brickey heading business development and marketing. Founder John Dick retired after 50 years with the practice he started.