Anthony Stoppiello grew up around blueprints. His father was a carpenter, and many relatives worked in the trade as well. His first real job in the business was as a laborer for a cousin's construction project in New Jersey. A new architect came on the project and would conduct a weekly review of the progress: Anthony was intrigued by the work. The architect urged him to go to school to learn more.
Anthony attended the Newark College of Engineering, studying architectural drafting, then transferred to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1964. By 1970 he began focusing on solar design when he entered the Arizona State University College of Architecture in Tempe, Arizona. John Yellot, "a mechanical engineer and a genius in solar design," became a mentor; Anthony received the S.W. Pine Design Award; and he was president of the architecture student government.
Despite a pithy foundation, he had a little trouble getting started. Anthony ran into that old adage where it is hard to gain experience until you have experience. Two old friends came to the rescue when they started a firm of their own and hired Anthony to trace drawings for them. He took off quickly, since he already knew how to read the blueprints from the days of his youth, he knew the terms and the symbols, and in three years rose from a junior to a senior-level draftsman.
As a practicing architect, he has worked with a couple of firms in the Portland area, and has worked on the World Trade Center, Portland; Willammette Center, and the Multnomah County maintenance facility. Anthony met his wife, Victoria, while she was station manager and he was construction manager for the remodeling of Portland radio station KBOO.
In 1984, the couple took a trip around the world after sending their daughter off to college. Following the trip, Anthony and Victoria decided to spend a year at the coast: Victoria's family had immigrated to the area in the late 1800s and they were well known on the Long Beach Peninsula. After the passing of Victoria's father, Finnish fisherman Butch Pitkanen, they inherited his house in Ilwaco, which is now their home.
Anthony has worked as a sole proprietor since leaving the major Portland-area firms in 1979, but that doesn't mean he works alone. His current partners in the practice include Victoria, who performs marketing, bookkeeping and site inspection services, and Tom Schloeder, a structural engineer who has worked with Anthony for over 10 years. They do not office in the same place, but they communicate regularly via phone, fax and Internet.
In October, 1998, he moved out of his home office and into the space formerly occupied by the Ilwaco Downtown Development Association at 112 First Street in Ilwaco.
As far as his specialty goes, when he began solar design back in his Arizona days, it was primarily a function of good site design. Architects used the path of the sun to plan for day lighting and space heating or cooling. By the mid 1980s, the environmental processes began to take hold, but they were primarily hidden: difficulty in obtaining large wood beams called for substitution of strand board, for example. Next, came the advent of more healthy products, such as better constituted paints or carpet fibers. There is even a resurgence in more environmentally-friendly forms of insulation, such as straw bales. Anthony is currently designing a home for a client that is built out of straw bales. From the outside, at least, the home may look like a typical dwelling constructed of bricks, stone or stucco. The main difference is found in the thickness of the walls (hay bales are 16 to 18 inches thick), and the fact that most straw bale homes must be built with a substantial framework first, with the walls added later so that the straw bales are not load bearing.
He enjoys helping people who do not typically work with an architect, and will do big projects or small, on a fee basis or hourly rate, and relishes solving design problems. He is president of the Ilwaco Merchant's Association, and on the board of the Oregon Solar Energy Association, among other civic activities. LCB
Anthony Stoppiello, Architect
Principals: Anthony and Victoria Stoppiello, Tom Schloeder
Address: 112 First Street
P. O. Box 72, Ilwaco, WA 98624
Telephone: 360/642-4256
Hours: 9a - 5p, M - F
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