Chris Demkow is an Architectural Designer and Consultant based in Cleveland, Ohio. He’s experienced in designing and planning a diverse range of projects for both residential and commercial clients, all with great imagination and a unique, creative, practical approach.

A brief history…

Chris Demkow has always seen the world for what is possible. A self-described “optimist”, he has always been driven by a challenge.

Chris first noticed his affection for design in high school. Though he excelled in most studies- his real interests lie in his love of art and its many forms and media.  He briefly considered the pursuit of degrees in architecture, graphics and even fashion design. However, post-graduation, he instead moved to Los Angeles to pursue his other passion, music. After receiving some attention and the first of two record contracts failed to fulfill his vision of success, Chris took his musical goals and connections back home to Cleveland.

There he continued to pursue his dream of a life as a singer/songwriter by forming a new project with local players and audiences. Those efforts eventually led to a second record deal which also fell flat, leaving Chris disillusioned and in search of a new creative challenge.

Upon moving back to Cleveland in 1995, Chris settled in the near west side neighborhood of Tremont. Tremont at the time was a combination of hard scrabble working class locals and some open-minded creatives looking to form a nest to share their love of art and free thinking lifestyles. It was in this budding community that Chris began to delve into his original interest in art. He was invited as one of the first to show his work in the now illustrious Tremont Art Walk.

Chris ambitiously, if not naively, chose to hang nearly forty pieces in his first public show. Anxiously he hung his show the night before the official Friday night opening, realizing by the night’s end that all of his paintings had “sold” tags on them! It was from this early and immediate success that things got even better if not more prophetic. In the coming weeks, a stranger casually viewed Chris’s sold-out work. This stranger, Gary Richmond, a recent transplant from Boston, planned to open a new restaurant in Cleveland.  He thought that Chris’s pieces reflected the color and energy he was searching for to define the interior of his new concept. Ironically, Chris and Gary were neighbors living only steps apart, so meeting each other was almost destiny. Once he was offered the opportunity to design Gary’s new project, Chris jumped in feet first and his life changed forever.

Through his experience helping to develop Johnny Mango’s World Café in Ohio City, Chris Demkow began his pursuit of learning everything he could about the world of hospitality design. Feverously reading everything he could from room layout to merchandising to color theory. Chris was hooked!

From the beginning of his accidental and newly found passion, Chris was also impatient; desperate to dig in and keep the project moving. He once asked the contractor when a wall might be finished so he could get to painting a planned mural. The contractor responded with a snark “you want it done so bad… why don’t you f’ing build it yourself?”. Chris’s response was “good idea!”, and so was born Worldfish Design Company, the one stop “Design/Build” firm that dominated the local restaurant scene in the early 2000’s.

Chris reached out to his local artist friends and offered them all real jobs. Collectively they learned the necessary construction skills needed to execute some of the hippest interiors in the region. Eventually evolving into Chris Demkow Design Companies (CDDC), Chris quickly gained a reputation as a uniquely creative, effective and successful Artist, Designer and now Contractor, getting asked to design homes, renovations and ever larger and more complex commercial projects. Always one to step up to challenges, Chris began learning more about the fundamentals of home construction, space planning and development, developing relationships with architects, tradesmen and all manner of mentors, gleaming off their collective experiences and gaining the design education he never formally pursued.

Twenty-five plus years later, Chris continues to strive toward further educating himself on all things design. Through observation and consumption of the many resources now at all our fingertips, he routinely explores all corners of visual and structural disciplines, new materials and related innovations. And he continues to explore new ideas and develop his own innovative approaches to methods and theories for good, sustainable and thoughtful design. Though no longer an active contractor, Chris is now the mentor, working with and advising local craftsmen, colleagues and clients on his concepts and best practices.

Chris continues to love music and art, and still dabbles in the creation of both. But Chris’s life is Design. And he is still driven to meet new challenges.