Keeping Vero Vero: Architect Austin Dingwall in Service of Place
- Vero Minute
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
If you care about how Vero Beach will look and feel a decade from now, and you value the unhurried scale along Ocean Drive, the way something new on Cardinal meets the street, and how a block off 14th still reads as "Vero," you should know the name Austin Dingwall.
Austin is the principal of Dingwall Architecture and has just been named president of AIA Treasure Coast.
He holds graduate degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Michigan, a background that shapes how he thinks about buildings in relation to the places they occupy. He applies that expertise designing homes in places like Riomar, Windsor, and island neighborhoods where he believes every project must answer as much to the street and its relation to "place" as to the client.
Nicolas Glenn and Jaime Moscoso are also at the table for that work: drawing plans, working within site constraints, coordinating with builders, and thinking carefully about how each house will be experienced from the street. In established neighborhoods, that kind of attention is what keeps new projects in harmony with what is already there.
What Dingwall brings to AIA Treasure Coast is less a particular style than a particular standard. Mediterranean, transitional, Florida Cracker, mid-century modern. The appropriate style can vary. What cannot vary, in his view, is context and scale. He describes his role as something closer to a curator of Vero Beach's architectural character, someone whose job is not to freeze the town in place but to make sure what gets added belongs here.
The AIA can't "keep Vero Vero" on its own, nor does it claim to do so. What AIA Treasure Coast can do under Austin's leadership is press for professional standards that line up with what people here cherish: the quiet streets, the human scale, the neighborhoods that feel lived-in rather than overbuilt. AIA actively invites residents into that effort. Follow their programs, show up when they open conversations about design, and add your voice when the look and feel of Vero Beach is on the agenda.
Learn more about AIA Florida's statewide initiatives, including the work of the Treasure Coast chapter, at aiafla.org. Contact Austin and his team at Dingwall Architecture at dingwallarchitecture.com.
