JAVA Feb 2020

Photos: Roehner + Ryan
It’s not often you hear a story like that of Claire
and Cavin Costello outside of fiction. The pair
met on Cavin’s first day in Arizona, bought a
house together shortly thereafter, and then
started their architecture firm, the Ranch Mine, in
2009 at the nadir of the economic recession. Ten
years on, they’re happily married, have recently
welcomed a new addition to their family, and have
a thriving business. It’s like a fairy tale, and yet
reducing it to a trope glosses over all the work it took
to get where they are today.
Cavin Costello began his journey in Connecticut.
The son of a civil engineer, he can trace his initial
exposure to architecture to his father. “He actually
designed the house I grew up in, and [my parents]
still live in it today. Literally, the plans of our house
were on the wall.”
Outside of a love of building with LEGOs as a kid,
Cavin’s interest in the field lay dormant for years.
After acing a ninth-grade algebra test involving
proofs, his teacher took him aside, saying this is
the kind of math architects do, and that he should
consider becoming one. This ultimately led to his
pursuit of the field in college – a hefty commitment
involving six years of school, three years of work
experience, and all the accompanying licenses.
At the end of his studies, Cavin was ready for
a change of scene. “The built environment [in
Connecticut and Boston] was largely done,” he
says. “They’d been building in a European style for
three, four hundred years, so a lot of it was very
conservative in terms of how they do stuff – not
much experimentation. Then I had a professor who
had gone to ASU and worked with a very well known
architect, and he said I should look into what these
guys are doing out in Phoenix.”
The professor was referring to Phoenician architects
Wendell Burnette and Will Bruder (and Rick Joy in
Tucson). “I looked at their work and it was almost
alien to me from where I grew up, but super
exciting in that they were basically creating [a new]
architecture for the desert.” The possibilities of
architecture in Arizona led him to move to Phoenix
sight unseen upon completion of his master’s
program at Northeastern University in Boston.
Coincidentally, Claire was also moving to Phoenix
– although for her, as a native of the city, this was
a return trip. Having received degrees in English
and Communication from the University of Colorado
at Boulder, she made the move back with some
reluctance.
“Really, the only thing that brought me back was
my family,” she says. “I was pretty apprehensive of
Phoenix as a city at the time.” Over the years since
her return, however, she’s grown to be happy she
came back – and not just for the obvious reasons. “It
is starting to feel like a real city to me with extending
the light rail, adding density. And I do think there
is a significantly raised awareness of local artists,
restaurateurs, shops, etc., compared to when I was
growing up here.”
Regarding the decision to purchase a house and start
a business together so early on in their relationship,
Cavin admits, “Most people thought it was a
terrible decision.” It’s clear neither he nor Claire
was acting as rashly as their actions might suggest.
“We had both been trying to enter the work force
at an incredible economic low point, which had its
challenges,” says Claire.
With the housing market among the industries
hardest hit, architecture firms were having to let their
existing employees go, but would hire them back
before bringing on any new or unknown candidates
as the economy rebounded. For Cavin that meant, not
JAVA 13
MAGAZINE