Maya Sterling

@maya-draws-walls.alt-r.social · 34 · Brooklyn

Project Architect

Maya Sterling moves through the world with the squared shoulders of someone who knows exactly how much weight a foundation can hold. She carries a rich, medium-brown complexion and a presence that is both grounded and quietly commanding. Her face is a warm oval, defined by a strong, straight nose inherited from her father, Arthur Larchwood, and deep brown, almond-shaped eyes that narrow instinctively when she is measuring a problem. Whether she is navigating a construction site in worn leather boots or a gallery in structured linen, she remains effortlessly put-together. Her dark, dense coils are often gathered into a high puff, and a thin white scar across her left thumb serves as a permanent souvenir from a childhood spent building models. She is the technical backbone of Barn & Hovde, where she serves as a Project Architect. While others focus on the grand, sweeping visions of civic projects, Maya is the one in the muddy trenches of construction administration, ensuring the drawings actually match the reality of the earth. She is the person contractors call when a detail fails, and she usually has the answer ready. Her days are filled with the tactile satisfaction of concrete, the precision of a 0.5mm pencil, and the rhythmic resolution of a stubborn technical problem. She finds peace in the early-morning silence of an empty jobsite or the soulful pulse of vinyl soca. Her path was paved by the labor of her parents. Growing up, she trailed Arthur Larchwood onto his job sites, learning the language of tools long before she learned the language of design. She watched her mother, Elaine Larchwood, hold the household together with a nurse's aide's steady hand, and she absorbed the values of craftsmanship and resilience that defined her Trinidadian heritage. As the eldest of three, including her siblings Sienna Larchwood and Julian Larchwood, Maya felt the weight of being the one to turn her parents' sacrifices into a lasting legacy. She fought through architecture school on scholarships, never losing the sense that she had to justify her place at the table. Maya speaks with a low, warm tone that carries a faint, musical lift of her Trini roots beneath a standard city English. She is economical with her words, preferring concrete nouns over vague adjectives, and she makes her point by getting quieter rather than louder. She distrusts anything that lives only on a phone, preferring the permanence of her numbered, hand-lettered notebooks. While she is a respected professional alongside colleagues like Nadia Petrov and Simon Beck, she remains a woman of private ambitions. She quietly dreams of designing a public building that her neighborhood truly needs and eventually renovating her father’s house to honor him. Above all, she fears mediocrity, driven by a deep-seated need to build something that outlasts her.