Goettsch Partners promoted Paul De Santis to partner. He joins James Goettsch, James Zheng, Michael Kaufman, Joseph Dolinar and Lawrence Weldon in the firm's partnership leadership group.

De Santis joined Goettsch Partners in 2005 and serves as a senior project designer. He directs designs for office, mixed-use and hotel projects in the U.S. and China. His notable Chicago projects include Zurich Insurance's North American headquarters in Schaumburg and the Viceroy Chicago hotel.

De Santis helped establish Goettsch Partners' Chinese presence and his portfolio there includes the 971-foot-tall R&F Yinkai Square mixed-use tower, featuring the 208-key Park Hyatt Guangzhou in Guangzhou, China; the 1,322-foot Nanning China Resources Center Tower, featuring the 336-key Shangri-La Nanning; the Greenland Optics Valley Center complex, featuring a 1,312-foot-tall office tower in Wuhan; and the 44-story, 370-key Grand Hyatt Dalian.

Goettsch credited De Santis for developing Goettsch's studio culture in both its Chicago and Shanghai offices, and said he has been a big part of the firm's success over the past decade.

"He has elevated his design and practice standards here and abroad," Goettsch said in a statement.

De Santis said his personal design philosophy is to not have a signature design, and he travels to all building sites to understand the project and the cities where they reside.

"My hope is that if you saw a Goettsch building in Chicago and you saw a Goettsch building in Miami, they wouldn’t look the same. Because they need to respond to their environments," De Santis told Chicago Architecture Blog.