Lewis was born and raised in the City of Maracaibo, Venezuela. Lewis left his native country upon completing high school to pursue his dream of studying Architecture in the United States. At only 16 years of age, all alone, and speaking only Spanish, he arrived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to begin studies at Louisiana State University. After mastering his second language and his core college curriculum, Lewis discovered that his passion actually lied in subjects related to nature and the environment even more so after attending a lecture by Roberto Burle Marx at LSU. Therefore, Lewis transformed his goals and earned his Bachelor degree with honors in 1988 from the prestigious LSU School of Landscape Architecture which ranks #1 in the country in this program. After graduating, Lewis relocated to South Florida to begin his professional career in the vibrant and dynamic urban area of Miami which, to him, is similar in atmosphere and aesthetics to his native tropical home of Venezuela.
Lewis’ early career was spent as a young designer in landscape architecture firms between Naples, Florida and Miami including Smallwood Landscaping and Raymond Jungles, Inc. He learned a variety of landscape design techniques and philosophies from these early mentors which he appreciated and eventually molded into his own personal style. Lewis became a partner in the firm Hall & Bell, P.A. working with Susan Hall and Deena Bell in 1996, and became a partner in the same firm in 2003 which evolved into the firm Bell + Aqüi Landscape Architecture, LLC (BALA) in 2008. After successfully collaborating for over a decade as a partner in those firms, Lewis decided to go on his own and established Lewis Aqüi Landscape +Architectural Design, LLC in September 2012.
When Lewis is not designing in the office or managing projects under construction, he is traveling around the world for enjoyment and artistic inspiration. Lewis is a talented designer, artist and photographer who is influenced by bold, contemporary art and architecture. Self- taught, with no formal training in photography, Lewis has an eye for creating photographic stories from a unique and imaginative perspective.
Lewis’ greatest satisfaction with photography is to capture scenes of our everyday environment creating images that render sharp focus, detail and dramatic contrast with one goal in mind: To create a view of common elements that may have been photographed thousands of times before, but have never been rendered in such a unique perspective. Always fascinated by the striking composition of plant materials and the landscapes surrounding us, Lewis’ photographic art and landscape design are a modern abstraction of nature: bold, energetic, colorful, and enigmatic.