Leslie Benson spent the first eighteen years of her life in the city of Springfield, IL, where in her 5th grade art class she was given the task of designing and building a house out of various shaped boxes made out of construction paper. From that point on she was pretty set on the idea of becoming an architect.

From Springfield she moved on to the crazy city of Los Angeles where she completed a five year Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Southern California. Though L.A. proved to be an amazing city to live and study in, after five years of warm weather year round, she was ready for a change and moved to Maine after graduation, in the summer of 2006.

The first portion of her time in Maine was spent living on her boyfriend’s grandparent’s land while constructing an organic timber frame structure. Months later, after too many days spent building with frozen fingers, she realized it was the right time to look into Portland’s architectural community and was pleasantly surprised to see how active it was.

In the spring of 2007 Leslie began working at Scott Simons Architects. She’s been working there for the past four years on a variety of projects, including the Portland Public Library, an education center at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and various other projects such as church and school renovations. She is currently focusing on a renovation/addition to a farmhouse in Falmouth. This is also Leslie’s fourth year on the board of Architalx, where she has served as treasurer for two years.

In her free time, Leslie continues to work on the timber frame structure and the perennial and annual gardens that have sprung up around it. She also enjoys playing and listening to music, cooking and eating good food, and traveling to places new and old.